Internet of Things A to Z

15Implementing the Internet of Things for Renewable Energy

Lucas Finco¹ and Daniel Minoli²

¹Principal Consultant, Strategain, New York, NY, USA

²IoT Division, DVI Communications, New York, NY, USA

15.1 Introduction

The previous chapter described at a broad level the concept of the Energy Internet of Things (EIoT); this chapter takes the discussion in the direction of practical considerations in the process of implementing the EIoT concepts covered in that previous chapter.

Fundamentally, the energy process entails generation, distribution, monitoring, control, and consumption. Each of these areas is currently experiencing innovation. In the generation arena, the promise of renewable sources of electricity, including the emergence of distributed energy resources (DERs) is significant. Renewable generation technologies are clean, abundant, and now widespread. Some of these technologies have low ongoing operational cost, although infrastructure investments are required to build the systems necessary to manage them. At this time, the electricity industry operates on the assumption that humans can control every detail of the production and distribution. However, renewable sources of power generate an amount of electricity that typically fluctuates from moment to moment. Furthermore, they generate electricity at the “wrong times” of day, creating availability when there is low demand and shortage when demand is highest. Thus, while renewable resources have been added to the grid ...