Integration of Intelligent Electrical Devices with Legacy Approach in IoT-Based Smart Grid Systems
Smart Grid. Legacy IED. Cloud Computing. Edge Computing. IoT.
The evolution of the Smart Grid towards the Internet of Things (IoT) is an evolution of the electrical system, it is a natural trend, and it foresees great importance in the scope of mission-critical infrastructures for all countries. The IoT-defined Smart Grid system upgrade will potentially lay the groundwork to achieve future benefits, enabling new opportunities in the Smart Grid market to arise and add value through smart innovations and also ensure better reliability and energy efficiency, which can lead to a reduction in the production cost and systems maintenance at the same time.
The fundamental step that is behind the IoT-defined Smart Grid system upgrade lays in the need to adapt the smart grid infrastructure by the digital layer, to turn it comply with the IoT paradigm. For this to be possible, it is necessary to use emerging technologies such as 5G, cloud computing and edge computing.
In this context, the interoperability between legacy systems and intelligent electronic devices (IED) used by the Smart Grid has become an important issue, since each manufacturer can adopt a different standard, energy distributors already have their systems consolidated and any change in this balance directly affects the system's infrastructure.
Thus, this work aims to propose a solution that allows the integration of legacy intelligent electronic devices in a Smart Grid environment based on IoT, allowing the inclusion of multiple IEDs in a scalable and flexible environment made possible by the SG-Cloud-IoT ecosystem, presented in this work.