A Serverless Advanced Metering Infrastructure Based on Fog-Edge Computing for a Smart Grid: A Comparison Study for Energy Sector in Iraq

Ammar Albayati,Nor Fadzilah Abdullah,Rosdiadee Nordin,Asma Abu-Samah,Ammar Hussein Mutlag

doi:10.3390/en13205460

Ammar Albayati, Nor Fadzilah Abdullah + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en13205460

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Abstract

The development of the smart grid (SG) has the potential to bring significant improvements to the energy generation, transmission, and distribution sectors. Hence, adequate handling of fluctuating energy demands is required. This can only be achieved by implementing the concept of transactive energy. Transactive energy aims to optimize energy production, transmission, and distribution combined with next-generation hardware and software, making it a challenge for implementation at a national level, and to ensure the effective collaboration of energy exchange between consumers and producers, a serverless architecture based on functionality can make significant contributions to the smart grids advanced metering infrastructure (SG-AMI). In this paper, a scalable serverless SG-AMI architecture is proposed based on fog-edge computing, virtualization consideration, and Function as a service (FaaS) as a services model to increase the operational flexibility, increase the system performance, and reduce the total cost of ownership. The design was benchmarked against the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity (MOELC) proposed designs for the smart grid, and it was evaluated based on the MOELC traditional computing-design, and a related cloud computing-based design. The results show that our proposed design offers an improvement of 20% to 65% performance on network traffic load, latency, and time to respond, with a reduction of 50% to 67% on the total cost of ownership, lower power and cooling consumption compared to the SG design proposed by MOELC. From this paper, it can be observed that a robust roadmap for SG-AMI architecture can effectively contribute towards increasing the scalability and interoperability, automation, and standardization of the energy sector.

Highlights

In the past few years, the use of technologies associated with distributed energy management and renewable energy has increased considerably
This study suggested fog computing as a solution to reduce the cost of transporting and processing data, it overlooks any discussion regarding Edge computing
The paper proposed a comprehensive Serverless Fog-Edge Computing for smart grid (SG)-AMI architecture to improve the SG design provided by Iraqi Ministry of Electricity (MOELC)

Summary

Introduction

In the past few years, the use of technologies associated with distributed energy management and renewable energy has increased considerably In this account, the smart grid (SG) is found to be a prominent solution to improve the efficiency and transparency of energy transfer between producers and consumers. The smart grid (SG) is found to be a prominent solution to improve the efficiency and transparency of energy transfer between producers and consumers This new approach follows the principles of transactive energy (TE), a systematic process of controlling and managing energy flow while maintaining a dynamic balance across electrical systems to market-based standards and economic values [1]. AMI with bi-directional capability (read and write to smart meters) was developed to enhance the unidirectional and static Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) It consists of a combination of networks and systems responsible for analyzing and collecting data from smart meters and handles power and services-related applications based on them. AMI facilitates the flow of data in a bi-directional way within three network-zone systems, i.e., Wide Area Network (WAN), Neighborhood

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