Empirical study: IoT-based microgrid

This work presents an IoT-based smart grid system implementation as proof of concept to examine the emerging business and technological needs in smart grids and analyze the efficiency of smart grid communications. As part of the work, we describe the smart grid system architecture consisting of a physical photovoltaic-powered microgrid laboratory, communication subsystem, and cloud-based smart grid management system along with the implementation details. Next, we discuss the obtained results in terms of messaging service quality and system availability, flexibility, and robustness. We show that our system can exchange telemetry and control messages in less than 1 s, depending on message size. Finally, lessons learned and future challenges are outlined, including communication transparency and efficiency, scalability of management and communication subsystems, characterization of message severity associated with quality of service requirements, and other non-technical considerations.