# Smart Energy Meters for Smart Grids, an Internet of Things Perspective
## 4 Conclusions and Future Direction  
The literature for smart meter implementation is vast and implements the various technologies that are reported here. However, the implementation technologies offered by the IoT ecosystem are not exploited fully. Firstly, the hardware utilized is usually single-node architecture, whereas modern hardware design choices have enabled multiple small, distributed node-based implementation, which is not yet fully exploited in the smart meter implementations reported in the literature. Another aspect is the design of a framework, while there are multiple solutions with regard to sensors, sensed values, pre-processing, application area, AI algorithms, and development eco-systems, a coherent framework that can be used as an automated solution deployment is lacking. With the advent of smart solutions and the increasing complexity that smart metering system is expected to handle in such smart solutions, such an automated deployment system might prove to be useful and allow access to the ever-increasing options available to smart meter designers with transparent complexity and portability. Similarly, newer technologies such as block \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Application** & **References** & **Sensing** & **Smart Grid Measurement** & **Communication Protocols** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Load Forecasting} & [236; 237; 238; 239; 240; 241] & Voltage, current, and power & Aggregation at various levels such as locality, substation and transmission & Cellular for aggregation of data and local networks such as Bluetooth for home area data collection \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Theft detection} & [245; 246; 247; 248; 249; 250; 251] & Complex power & \begin{tabular}{c} Phasor measurement, synchro-phasors, RAPD \\ \end{tabular} & NB-IoT, 4G, 5G, and Wi-Fi \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Anomaly detection} & [252; 253; 254; 255; 256; 257; 258; 259; 260] & Complex power, voltage, current, phase & \
\begin{tabular}{c} Phasor measurement, synchro-phasors, \\ waveform analysis, RAPD \\ \end{tabular} & Cellular and Wi-Fi \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Consumer profiling} & [261; 262; 263; 264] & Waveform analysis & Waveform analysis & Cellular, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, LoRA \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Activity detection} & [265; 266; 267; 268] & Power, voltage, current, waveform & Waveform analysis & Cellular, LoRa, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Fault detection} & [269; 270; 271; 272; 273] & Power, voltage, current, waveform &
\begin{tabular}{c} Waveform, power quality, \\ differential phasors \\ \end{tabular} & Cellular, NB-IoT, Wi-Fi \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 10: Applications of smart meter data with description of different component technologies employed. Figure 4: Usage cube for different IoT technologies for smart meters. chain, federated learning, and the vast number of measurement tools and techniques at the disposal of academics and researchers have yet to be tapped. With the ever-increasing complexity and energy demands, this untapped spectrum presents a great opportunity. The suggested research gaps could lead to smart energy systems that are based on cutting edge technologies in sensing, communication, and computation, increasing efficiency and functionality. Using heterogeneous and distributed nodes with automated design and integration would mean the usage of advanced software paradigms that allow the handling of complex implementations. Such an integration of measurement infrastructure could lead to the promised benefits of smart energy systems. Additionally, the distributed processing and sensing nature proposed by the current survey necessitates new theoretical breakthroughs or extensions of current distributed computing research for smart meter systems such as the one proposed in [274]. This includes agent-based, hierarchical and managed systems, perspectives, algorithms, frameworks, etc. By allowing cross-disciplinary theoretical interventions, novel energy applications could result in even more novel application dimensions.