An integrated home energy management system by the load aggregator in a microgrid using the internet of things infrastructure

Smart technologies enable the significant participation of consumers in demand-side management programs. In this paper, the management of electrical energy consumption for a set of residential houses in a microgrid by a load aggregator for a 24-h planning horizon is studied. In this study, consumption management programs are implemented on controllable equipment by sending binary codes by the load aggregator via the internet of things (IoT) infrastructure to residential sockets. To increase the level of customer convenience and provide more flexibility for consumers to participate in demand response programs, a parameter called the value of lost load (VOLL) has been introduced. According to the results, in addition to no need to use the energy management system for each residential house, only by moving shiftable loads to off-peak hours, 18.34% of energy consumption costs are saved daily. Also, from the load aggregator’s viewpoint for every 10% change in status from normal to the scheduled priority, there is a reduction of about 3.4% in the consumer’s peak-load cost. If solar arrays and storage resources are used, more than 18% of the total consumption cost can be saved

Supporting development and management of smart office applications: a DYAMAND case study

To realize the Internet of Things (IoT) vision, tools are needed to ease the development and deployment of practical applications. Several standard bodies, companies, and ad-hoc consortia are proposing their own solution for inter-device communication. In this context, DYnamic, Adaptive MAnagement of Networks and Devices (DYAMAND) was presented in a previous publication to solve the interoperability issues introduced by the multitude of available technologies. In this paper a DYAMAND case study is presented: in cooperation with a large company, a monitoring application was developed for flexible office spaces in order to reliably reorganize an office environment and give real-time feedback on the usage of meeting rooms. Three wireless sensor technologies were investigated to be used in the pilot. The solution was deployed in a "friendly user" setting at a research institute (iMinds) prior to deployment at the large company's premises. Based on the findings of both installations, requirements for an application platform supporting development and management of smart (office) applications were listed. DYAMAND was used as the basis of the implementation. Although the local management of networked devices as provided by DYAMAND enables easier development of intelligent applications, a number of remote services discussed in this paper are needed to enable reliable and up-to-date support (of new technologies)

Simulation support for internet-based energy services

The rapidly developing Internet broadband network offers new opportunities for deploying a range of energy, environment and health-related services for people in their homes and workplaces. Several of these services can be enabled or enhanced through the application of building simulation. This paper describes the infrastructure for e-services under test within a European research project and shows the potential for simulation support for these services

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

Smart Grid Communications: Overview of Research Challenges, Solutions, and Standardization Activities

Optimization of energy consumption in future intelligent energy networks (or Smart Grids) will be based on grid-integrated near-real-time communications between various grid elements in generation, transmission, distribution and loads. This paper discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of communications research in the areas of smart grid and smart metering. In particular, we focus on some of the key communications challenges for realizing interoperable and future-proof smart grid/metering networks, smart grid security and privacy, and how some of the existing networking technologies can be applied to energy management. Finally, we also discuss the coordinated standardization efforts in Europe to harmonize communications standards and protocols.Comment: To be published in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

IoT system for anytime/anywhere monitoring and control of vehicles’ parameters

This paper presents an IoT (Internet of Things) system designed to allow the monitoring and control of parameters of the users’ vehicles, anytime and anywhere in the world, through the Internet. The system prototype was developed and tested using an electric vehicle (EV) and the respective sensor systems. The main components of the proposed IoT system are: a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) intra-vehicular wireless sensor network (IVWSN); a mobile device that acts both as the vehicle’s gateway, connecting the IVWSN to the Internet, and as the vehicle’s human machine interface (HMI); an online server/database, based on Firebase; a client, which can be either a mobile device or a personal computer; and a residential wireless sensor network (WSN). The use of a wireless network to collect sensor data inside of the vehicle introduces some advantages when compared with conventional wired networks, whereas the inclusion of a residential WSNs in the proposed IoT architecture allows the provision of additional features, such as automatic control of the EV battery charging process. Experimental results are provided to assess the performance of the developed IVWSN and HMI.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145- FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Smart home energy management system based on a hybrid wireless network architecture

Currently, in electrical energy sector, due to the population growth and the increasing energy consumption demand, the electrical grid is becoming more and more complex. This creates new challenges in term of electrical energy management. Our contribution in this area, presented in this paper, consists of the design, implementation and test of a wireless monitoring and control system for household electrical appliances. This system offers to the residential customers a helpful tool to monitor and control the energy consumption of their household appliances. The developed system is composed by a set of components connected to each other using wireless network technologies: the monitoring devices, the gateway and the client devices (with the respective user interface). For the development of this system, we opted to use a hybrid wireless network solution based on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). We describe the design and the implementation of the monitoring device hardware, as well as the calculation methodologies to obtain the electrical quantities and to reduce as much as possible the measurement errors. This paper describes also the development of the BLE/Wi-Fi gateway and the Graphical User Interface (GUI). The performance of the developed monitoring device was evaluated by means of experimental tests, where we achieved a voltage measurement error below 0.2% and a current measurement error below 0.5%.FCT - Fundació Catalana de Trasplantament (UID/EEA/04436/2019