Event-driven IPv6 communication for the smart grid infrastructure

There is a common understanding that we need to use energy in smarter and more efficient ways. In order to achieve increased energy efficiency for households there is a need to adjust energy consumption based on the dynamic needs of the people living there, and the available energy and costs at a specific time. Involved energy devices, such as electricity, gas and water meters, need to have a certain amount of “smartness” however without a common way to integrate them we risk ending up with a multitude of heterogeneous smart devices that need to be manually controlled one by one via device-specific interfaces and protocols. We believe that using IPv6 on every device is an important step towards creating a controllable and interoperable energy infrastructure. When every device can publish data and be directly addressed globally, real time monitoring and control becomes possible and more sophisticated as other parties can easily interact with it over Internet and integrate its functionality. Additionally the user is in control over which data to share, with whom and for what purpose (e.g. with the energy providers for billing), as well as which policy should be used when conditions change. In this demo we show how a Smart Home with an IPv6-equipped electricity smart meter prototype can report meter readings to cloud hosted business services, which collect readings from a number of meters, and can detect deviations from expected usage. In case of unexpected power shortage or surplus, the price is accordingly adjusted and the smart meters are informed. In the case of a price increase, it is up to the user to either pay the higher price, or to reduce her consumption (automatically based on their predefined policy). Similarly for a price drop, the user can choose to execute energy-hungry tasks. By allowing a energy gateway to control not only electricity but also other devices in the household infrastructure such as heating, the energy management can be made more efficient.