###### Abstract
In addition, providers may take advantage of smart meters to reduce operation costs by over 10% due to load shifting, while also reducing stress on the grid, thereby minimizing faults [9]. Although smart meters establish several benefits, certain short-term mainly challenges should be addressed. The installation of the modules is quite challenging; for example, in Greece, 95% of the meters are electromechanical and need to be swapped [10]. The large amount of data transmitted by the smart meters need precise handling and safeguarding as the privacy of customers is not negotiable. In addition, massive data centers, with high energy demands, are required to store all the information, making them vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This concept is defined as the Internet of Energy, an interconnected network for smart management between the generation, transmission and distribution systems [11]. Therefore, data management and transmission (up to 3 TB annually by each meter) without bandwidth loss is essential for ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) by the aggregator of the distribution system [12]. * A typical smart meter schematic, along with its layout, illustrating the three different parts (modem, contacts and chassis) is shown in Figure 2[2, 13]. As mentioned above, electricity theft has to be addressed, as economic losses are vast, reaching over 100 billion dollars in the US alone, while causing high degradation in power quality [14]. Incentives such as tariffs for low energy costs at off-peak hours or weekends will enable the consumers to avoid theft attempts. The utilization of smart meters takes advantage of this scheme, as the time frame for data logging is fast and dynamic pricing in real time can be achieved [15, 16]. It also manages the integration of smart grid schemes, as each consumer can install renewable energy sources, mainly solar, at their homes, to produce their own power for self-consumption, charge electric vehicles, or supply energy back to the grid. Hence, the monitoring of produced, consumed and grid-supplied energy is enabled, and a reduction in greenhouse emission is achieved, reaching savings of over 12% [17, 18]. A typical smart grid scheme is presented in Figure 3.  
Figure 2: Smart digital meter: (a) schematic diagram with the processing and communication layers; (b) layout of the meter, illustrating its connectors and modern [2, 13]. Usefulness, ease of use, and remote control are key factors for the consumers' acceptance and adoption of a smart meter [19]. Energy savings and adaptability to the smart grid system also have a significant influence towards that goal. However, certain users do not comply with this rule, as there are concerns about data privacy and radiation through the mobile communications network that smart meters utilize, affecting the behavior of the consumers [20]. This matter needs to be addressed, reinforcing the transition to smart metering and the era of smart grid applications. The goal of this paper is to test and validate the performance of five different arrays: an electromechanical meter, two smart meters, a digital analyzer and a digital multimeter. Through this experiment, the real and reactive power of a modern industrial building will be measured simultaneously by the modules in order to assess the benefits of smart meters, including accuracy, consumer behavior and the potential risks of their adoption, such as the radiation caused by 4G communication. The communication protocols that can be applied in smart metering systems to ensure data privacy, robustness and user electricity consumption behavior will also be reviewed. The rest of this paper is structured as the follows. The research methodology is assessed in Section 2. The findings of the analysis are summarized in Section 3, followed by the discussion, while Section 4 concludes the article. Here, this study's shortcomings are discussed, and directions for future work are proposed.