An IoT-Based Solution for Monitoring and Controlling Battery Energy Storage Systems at Residential and Commercial Levels

Abstract

Today, increasing numbers of batteries are installed in residential and commercial buildings; by coordinating their operation, it is possible to favor both the exploitation of renewable sources and the safe operation of electricity grids. However, how can this multitude of battery storage systems be coordinated? Using the Application Programming Interfaces of the storage systems’ manufacturers is a feasible solution, but it has a huge limitation: communication to and from storage systems must necessarily pass through the manufacturers’ cloud infrastructure. Therefore, this article presents an IoT-based solution which allows monitoring/controlling battery storage systems, independently from the manufacturers’ cloud infrastructure. More specifically, a home gateway locally controls the battery storage using local APIs via Wi-Fi on the condition that the manufacturer enables them. If not, an auxiliary device allows the home gateway to establish a wired communication with the battery storage via the SunSpec protocol. Validations tests demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed IoT solution in monitoring and controlling ABB, Sonnen and SolarEdge storage systems.