Abstract

The advent of smart grid in the power infrastructure of the nations has provisioned a proactive and highly efficient power management at the generation end and user end as well. The smart meters being a fundamental part of the grid system are responsible for the intermittent sharing of usage data that further assists the utility for decision making. However, the inclusion of digital technology accompanies some major challenges like data security, data loss and communication issues etc. Smart meters are lightweight devices hence susceptible to errors frequently and therefore can cause loss of data. If the unavailability of usage data is significantly high, this can be problematic for the utility in context with further power generation and distribution decisions. This article presents a comprehensive discussion of the fault-tolerant aggregation models for the smart grid environment. A thorough investigation of the most recent research on handling of unavailable data is provided. Finally, the paper identifies the major challenges and future research possibilities for an efficiently fault-tolerant aggregation in the smart grid environment.