An IoT-Based Data Collection Platform for Situational Awareness-Centric Microgrids

This paper presents a data collection architecture for situational awareness (SA)-centric microgrids. A prototype has been developed which can provide enormous data collection capabilities from smart meters, in order to realise an adequate SA level in microgrids. A communication framework based on the publish-subscribe model is also proposed and implemented for the communication layer of the SA using the message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol over two different physical (PHY) layers (i.e., WiFi and GPRS). An Internet of things (IoT) platform (i.e., Thingsboard) is used for the SA visualisation with a customised dashboard. It is shown by using the developed system, an adequate level of SA can be achieved with a minimum installation and hardware cost. Moreover, the Modbus protocol over the RS-485 is applied for the smart meter communication.