Design, Implementation, and Deployment of an IoT Based Smart Energy Management System

Growth of population and the inception of new devices every day comes with an incessant rise in energy consumption and has brought great challenges in terms of energy management at the consumer side. With the evolution of technology, smart meters (SMs) are not only considered merely as tools to measure energy consumption but act as a main resource of energy management systems. The application of SM spans over a wide range of advantages, including accurate billing data, information of utilization at the user end, the establishment of two-way communication and remote control of the user equipment. SM is the most essential element of a smart power grid that with the help of any smart energy management system (SEMS), assesses, measures, controls, implements and communicates power allocation, utilization, and consumption at both, single device, and network level. Data provided by the SMs is used by power supply companies to revolutionize power distribution and consumption through various techniques such as, non-intrusive load monitoring and demand-side management (DSM). For efficient data gathering and utilization, internet of things (IoT) is emerging as a key partner in the power industry leading to effective resource management. This paper provides presentation, deployment, and validation of an IoT based SEMS strategy and its related benefits to overcome challenges of energy management at consumer side. The presented SEMS incorporates various communication interfaces and protocols to integrate with any software-based smart solution. In this work, Entrack software is used for data gathering and analysis. As a proof of concept, the presented system is tested and implemented in 4 different buildings of a well-known private company in Pakistan, i.e., Stylo Pvt. Ltd. The case study analysis in this work shows the effectiveness of the presented IoT based SEMS.