Application of nonlinear Kalman filters to the identification of customer phase connection in distribution grids

This paper presents a state estimation approach to address the problem of identifying the phase to which single-phase customers are connected in three-phase distribution grids. The proposed method performs Kalman filtering on the information provided simultaneously by the smart meter of every customer and the aggregated energy consumption measured at each phase of the secondary substation feeding the set of customers. Different nonlinear formulations of the Kalman filter are tested and their performance compared, showing that the ensemble Kalman filter provides better estimation results when the system size increases. The accuracy, robustness and limitations of the estimator are also tested when measurement errors are considered.