Internet of things in LV grids: Framework and experiments

Abstract

Changes in recent renewable energy-related grid codes may lead to introduction of thousands of remotely controllable inverters in the LV grid. To maintain their supply quality, the distribution system operator (DSO) would need to coordinate together with active end users to optimally operate and control their inverters. A generic ICT architecture and royalty free application are therefore required to interconnect these inverters and the grid operator. In this paper, we have used internet of things paradigm to develop an ICT framework that can be used by DSO to control these inverters remotely. Moreover, since the proposed ICT framework fully compatible with the existing communication infrastructure, it can be easily used by DSOs. To test the proposed ICT framework, a testbed is also constructed. In addition, as a part of the proposed ICT framework, a generic application programmable interface is developed. The scalability and the interoperability are added to the application by programming it using open and royalty free java and java agent development environment tool.