IOT BASED ADVANCED ENERGY MANAGEMENT OF MICRO-GRIDS · A micro-grid is a building ... implement e ective energy management of micro grids ... decentralized, more sustainable, and

IOT BASED ADVANCED ENERGYMANAGEMENT OF MICRO-GRIDS

Leo Raju 1 ,Sajna G.2 ,Prithika rani M3

Electrical and Electronics EngineeringSSN College of Engineering

Chennai, [email protected]

June 25, 2018

Abstract

The power sector is undergoing a profound change inthe recent times. Depletion of fossil fuels andenvironmental considerations have forced it to embracerenewableenergy resources. A micro-grid is a buildingblock of a smart grid and is playinga major role inenabling adoptionof renewable energy resources. However,as the power generated from renewable resources is varyingin nature, it impacts the stability of the micro-grid, andhence new approaches to coordination and control arerequired for their integration. We propose IOT baseddemand side management for effective energy managementof a network with three micro-grids each one consists oftwo solar units, a wind unit and a load. We set up anexperimental test-bed with the help of Arduinomicrocontroller and Internet of Things platform Ubidots toimplement effective energy management of micro gridswherein load requirement is satisfied with the best of theresources available across the three micro-grids foreconomic and environmental optimization

Keywords: Micro-grid; Energy management; Demandside management; Arduino; IOT.

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International Journal of Pure and Applied MathematicsVolume 120 No. 6 2018, 1443-1453ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)url: http://www.acadpubl.eu/hub/Special Issue http://www.acadpubl.eu/hub/

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1 INTRODUCTION

Environment consideration is leading proliferation of renewableresources in electrical industry. We are moving towards a moredecentralized, more sustainable, and smarter power system. Theprimary objective of energy management is to integrate renewableenergy resources into the grid, achieve and maintain optimumenergy procurement and utilization, which may help inminimizing energy costs and reducing environmental effects [1].Supervisory control and data acquisition(SCADA) is a centralizedapproach and is used in most of the existing research onmicro-grid operation problems.Distributed energy management isrequired in providing necessary system flexibility to deal withongoing integration of volatile and intermittent renewable energyresources[2].Smart grids, or intelligent electricity grids that utilizemodern IT/communication/control technologies, become a globaltrend nowadays[3].IOT based energy management is discussed in[6] and [7]. Here the environment variables are sensed throughArduino micro controllerand given to cloud through IOT. In thereceiving end the data is received through an Arduino and givento LEDs for verification of operations.Thingspeak is used as anIOT platform but when we have more micro-grid components andenvironment variables, Thingspeak is inadequate. Arduino basedenergy management of rural micro-grid is given in [8].IOT fordemand side management is given in [9]. But the implementationdetails given in the references are not comprehensive enough. Wehave used Ubidots as an IOT platform for effective energymanagement of three micro-grids and also verify Demand Sideand Demand Response management programs that enhanceflexibility by communicating energy market price volatility to theend customer in the micro grid thereby providing customerparticipation in reducing the stress on the grid and providing aneffective energy management.

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2 ENERGY MANAGEMENT

SCENARIO

A. Smart Grid

Smart grid is an automated electric power system that monitorsandcontrols grid activities, ensuring the two-way flow of electricityand informationbetween power plants and consumers and allpoints in between. In its most basic form, implementation of asmarter grid is adding intelligence to all areas of the electric powersystem to optimize our use of electricity. Demand sidemanagement, Demand Response, Dynamic pricing, Self-Healing,Two way communications, are some of the features of the smartgrid. A virtual power plant(VPP) is a system that integratesseveral types of power sources, (such as wind turbines, smallhydro, photovoltaic, back-up generator sets, and batteries) so asto give a reliable overall power supply acting as virtual grid [4].

B. Microgrid

A micro grid is the building block of smart grid. It is a small lowvoltage group of resources which supplies to specific loads. Theresources are mainly of renewable energy resources like solar andwind. It can operate in stand-alone mode or connected to gridthrough point of common coupling. It is mainly used in remoteareas where there is no electricity. But after smart grid conceptsare introduced, the significance of micro-grid has increasedconsiderably in the recent times. In future there will not be singlegrid. There will be network of micro-grids enabled with smartgrid features like dynamic pricing, demand side management,demand response, self-healing etc., The micro-grids with featuresof smart-grids are called as smart micro-grids.They use renewableresources hence are moreenvironmentally friendly with lowercarbon footprints. They require fewertechnical skills to operateand rely more on automation [5].

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3 IOT BASED ENERGY

MANAGEMENT OF

MICRO-GRIDS

A. Arduino Microcontroller

A microcontroller is a compact integrated circuit designed togovern a specific operation in an embedded system. A typicalmicrocontroller includes a processor, memory and input/output(I/O) peripherals on a single chip.The Microcontroller should havesufficient input pins for sensing theenvironment values. As manyas 15 analog input pins and 10digital output pins are there inArduino UNO microcontroller. For higher input and outputs wego for Arduino Mega. It has 18 analog pins and as many as 54digital pins for communication.

B. Internet of Things(IOT)

The Internet of Things is a group of technologies and processesthat enable devices of all types with an ability to communicateinformation about their status to other systems through internet,creating the opportunity to evaluate and act on this new source ofinformation. The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed orcontrolled remotely across network, creating opportunities formore direct integration of the physical world into computer world,and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economicbenefit in addition to reduced human intervention.

C. ESP8266

ESP8266, an open source 8 pin wifi module is used to access theinternet(TCP/IP) through AT Commands or built-in libraries. Itbasically gives the Arduino board, the ability to transfer data tothe Internet or receive data from the Internet. One of the mainadvantages of using ESP-8266 over other conventional WifiModules and Wifi shields is its cost. But, with less cost comes thedifficulty. ESP 8266 uses 3.3V logic whereas our Arduino Boardsuse 5V Logic. So, in order to interface ESP and Arduino, we need

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to use the USB TO TTL CONVERTER, which will easily do thenecessary alterations according to the needs of wifi module. But,in order to still further reduce the cost, we are going for a simplepotential divider circuit. While going for such method, we have toensure that the ESP gets proper driver current and hence we usethe combination of 2.2K and 1.1 K(1K+100 ohm) resistors to stepdown the voltage to 3.3 V.

D. IOT Platform Ubidots

The Internet of Things platform that we used in our project wasUbidots. Ubidots offers a platform for a developer that enablesthem to easily capture sensor data and turn it into usefulinformation[10]. Ubidots platform is used to send data to thecloud from any Internet-enabled device. After experimenting withvarious Internet of Things platforms such asThingspeak,Thingsworkzetc, we fixated on Ubidots because itsupports a large number of Internet of Things devices, looks easyto use, has a simple GUI, and has a focus on security.

E. IOT in Energy Management of Micro-grid

Internet of Things applications, offers a range of possibilities forhow electric utilities can move forward. Internet of Things canimprove the efficiency and performance of the power grid in threephases: first, by gathering data from sensors to improve theresilience of the grid; then through enablement, where utilities usethat data to actively manage resources; and finally, optimization,where all stakeholders are able to make informed decisions aboutpower usage and generation. By Incorporating IOT Concepts, wewill be able to monitor the load usage and manage the powerconsumption. The mobile phones and smart meter will be linkedto a cloud storage like Ubidots, an open source data-analyticsplatform used for IOT purposes which is used to send data to andreceive data from the internet. Thus, any device can be controlledfrom anywhere in the world provided an internet connectivity.Ituses API to store and retrieve data using HTTP protocol. It helpsin varioussensor logging application and location trackingapplications. Used to collect sensor data to the cloud, analyze,

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visualize and act the data. Thus, it is an online API for IOTbased Big Data Analytics through which you can monitor the loadusage of every individual consumer from anywhere around theworld. Not only that, we will also have access to on/off ofNon-Critical loads by setting its preferences using any device thathas Net Connectivity like our mobile phones wirelessly. With thehelp of IOT, the consumer utility will learn the prices set bydifferent Prosumers in a local area for the poweravailable withthem and come up with a better pricing for the power itscustomer has to sell the price back to the grid or a nearby localmicro grid.

4 IMPLEMENTATION

We consider three micro-grids each with two solar units, a windunit and battery. An experimental set up is arranged withpotentiometers representing all the micro-grid componentsconnected to Arduino Mega board. The range of values are fixedas 0-1024 in the potentiometer for all the environment variables.This value can be varied from minimum(0) to maximum (1024) byvarying the potentiometer. The environment variable values canbe fixed accordingly. Values from the potentiometers of theArduino board are sensed and sent to the IOT platform, Ubidotsusing a wifi module, ESP8266. Ubidots uses API key to store andretrieve data using HTTP protocol. It helps in various sensorlogging application and location tracking applications. It is usedto collect sensor data to the cloud, analyze, visualize and act onthe data. Thus, it is an online API for IOT based Big DataAnalytics through which you can monitor the load usage of everyindividual consumer from anywhere around the world.ATcommands are used to send the data from Arduino to the IOTplatform, Ubidots. These commands are instructions which areused to control the modem. The baud rate of the ESP module isset as 9600 for communication with Arduino. The joint accessprotocol is used to establish wifi connection between the Arduinoand the server. Joint access point prints the Service Set Identifierof Access point to which ESP8266 is connected to and itcommands the ESP8266 to connect the Service Set Identifier with

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the Supplied password. The transfer control protocol is used toidentify the IP of the web server we use. The link of our channelis then given and as the values of the potentiometer changes, thevalue that gets printed on the serial monitor gets updated to thecloud

Fig.1 Block Diagram

Matlab has an inbuilt function to receive and send data to cloud.So, from Ubidots, the values are received on Matlab andoperations such as choosing the most efficient source based oneconomic as well as environmental concerns are performed.Thecontrol centerin the Matlabalso calculates the power that is to besupplied by various renewable sources in the micro-grid at aparticular time based on the operating efficiency and costeffectiveness of the sources. After performing these operations, thevalues are sent back to Ubidots using the inbuilt function in theMatlab as shown in Figure 1.Ubidots gives values in the form ofLED patterns which is sent to the receiver setup that consists ofan Arduino with ESP8266 and LEDs. Based on the resultingcommands received the corresponding LEDs glow indicating theresulting operations in all the components of microgrid.

A. Case Study

In this case study, the demand on micro-grid 1,2 and 3 are 1616KWhr, 390Kwhr and 970 KWhr respectively.The combineddemand on the grid is 2977KWhr. The total generation capacityof the grid at that instant of time is 2700KWhr. Therefore, there

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is no choice for the control center rather than switching on all thesources in micro-grids and then drawing the excess demand of277KWhr from the grid. As shown in the console output inFigure.2. Since the stress on the grid is at its peak, the cost perunit during this hour is also high. In the output all 12 LEDsrepresenting solar1,solar2,wind and battery of each micro-gridalong with the grid LED glow to indicate that all of the sourcesincluding the grid is in use as shown in Figure .3.

Fig.2 Console Output

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Fig 3 LED Output

5 CONCLUSION

The energy management of micro-grids is implemented in networkof micro-grids. The three micro-grids each with a load, unit, 2solar units, a wind unit and battery cooperate for effective,distributive energy management using IOT. We have implementedexperimental set up for a detailed analysis of energy managementof a heterogeneous cyber physical micro-grid; using Arduinomicrocontroller and IOT platform (Ubidots) to verify micro-gridcontroller operations remotely for economic and environmentaloptimization. In future all the smart grid features can beimplemented in micro-grid to make it into smart micro-grid. Ourwork can be scaled up and contributes significantly for ongoingsmart grid research.

References

[1] N. D Hatziargyriou, B, Microgrids: Architectures and Control,Wiley-IEEE Press, West Sussex. United Kingdomage citation.(references)

[2] D. E. Olivares, A. Mehrizi-Sani, A. H. Etemadi -”Trends inmicrogrid control,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid, vol. 5, no. 4, pp.19051919, 2014.

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[3] W. Hu and P. Wang and H. B. Gooi, ”Toward OptimalEnergy Management of Microgrids via Robust Two-StageOptimization,” IEEE Trans. Smart Grid,,vol.9, no.2, p.p 1161-1174,2018

[4] Eun-Kyu Lee, Wenbo Shi, Rajit Gadh, Wooseong Kim, Designand Implementation of a Microgrid EnergyManagementSystem, Sustainability, p.p 1-19, 2016.

[5] C. Colson, M. Nehrir, and S. Pourmousavi, ”Towards real-timemicrogrid power management using computational intelligencemethods,” Proc. IEEE-PES General Meeting, pp. 18, 2010.

[6] Jongbae Kim, Jinsung Byun, Daebeom Jeong, ”An IoT-Based Home Energy Management System over Dynamic HomeArea Networks,” International Journal of Distributed SensorNetworks vol.11, issue 10. pp.205-219, 2015.

[7] Leo Raju, A. A. Morais, R.S.Milton, Advanced EnergyManagement of a Micro-grid Using Arduino and Multi-agentSystem,Springer, Singapore, 2018 pp.65-76.

[8] S.R.R.D, Purusothaman,R.Rajesh, K.K.Balaji,V.Vijayaraghavan,”Design of Arduino-based communicationagent for rural Indian microgrids,” in Proceedings of the IEEEinnovative smart grid technologiesAsia, 2014.pp. 630634.

[9] Giampaolo Fiorentino , Antonello Corsi- ”Internet of Thingsfor Demand Side Management”, Journal of Energy andPower Engineering 9 (2015) 500-503 doi: 10.17265/1934-8975/2015.05.010

[10] Cloud Storage used for Internet of Things. Available from:https://ubidots.com

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IOT BASED ADVANCED ENERGY MANAGEMENT OF MICRO-GRIDS · A micro-grid is a building ... implement e ective energy management of micro grids ... decentralized, more sustainable, and