Internet of things based smart energy management in a vanadium redox flow battery storage integrated bio-solar microgrid

In this paper, an optimized energy management scheme for Solar PV, Biogas, Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) storage integrated grid-interactive hybrid microgrid system has been implemented using a low-cost Internet of Things (IoT) based smart communication platform. The energy monitoring and control architecture of the proposed system consists of four main parts; 1) Low-cost energy meter for real-time data acquisition for multiple renewable energy sources (Solar PV, Biomass), VRFB storage, grid and loads. 2) Monitoring, control & fault detection using Raspberry-Pi (Single Board Computer) platform and MODBUS over TCP/IP platform. 3) Cloud-based remote monitoring unit (RMU) using Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) server and ThingSpeak Middleware. 4) Capacity measurement of biogas production along with automatic start/stop control of biogas engine-generator. 5) VRFB storage scheduling for peak demand shaving. A PSCAD simulation study has been done to realize the hybrid microgrid interconnection. The developed smart communication system performance is validated by a practical 10kW(P) solar PV, 15kVA biogas plant, 6 kWh VRFB storage integrated hybrid microgrid which satisfies peak demand management and ensures zero loss of power supply probability for dynamic load profile. Four real-life case studies have been done for the practical realization of the proposed energy management algorithm performance. Another significant contribution of this paper is the utilization of the solar PV power even during grid outage scenario at day time. It is made possible by intelligent interfacing of biogas power generator which acts as a reference AC bus for the grid-tied solar inverter and thus the available solar PV power can be used to serve the critical loads during grid outage condition. The proposed smart hybrid microgrid solution claims to be a generalized one, low cost compared to existing alternatives and applicable to satisfy scalable community energy security as well.