Towards an IoT/Big-Data Platform for Data Measurements, Collection and Processing in Micro-grid Systems

The resent infrastructure of the buildings is becoming socio-technical systems that integrate different heterogeneous entities (e.g., sensors, actuators, lighting, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning), occupants, renewable energy, storage systems), which could interact dynamically and in a collective manner to balance between energy efficiency, occupants’ comfort, sustainability, and adaptability. This new infrastructure is known as the “Micro-grid” (MG) system concept. However, the main challenge for this infrastructure is real-time monitoring and data processing, which requires the use of new information and communication technologies. In addition, incorporating mechanisms and techniques are required in order to have buildings more energy-efficient while ensuring occupants’ comfort by allowing entities interaction for suitable actions (e.g., turning On/Off HVAC and lighting, balancing the fluctuation between power production and consumption). In this work, a new holistic architecture of smart buildings is presented by improving the main layers of MG systems. This architecture is proposed in order to integrate all buildings’ aspects with the main trade-off is to efficiently manage the building while maintaining a suitable occupants’ comfort. In fact, an MG system is structured into three layers following the proposed holistic architecture. More precisely, we shed more light on the MG system’s layer by integrating recent IoT/Big-Data technologies for data gathering, processing, and control. A set of sensors are installed for power measurement in the MG system while the measured data is gathered and transmitted to an IoT/Big-Data platform for analysis, processing, and storing. The main aim is to store a historical of data (e.g., power production/consumption, weather conditions) from the installed MG system with open-access tools.