Edge Computing for IoT-Enabled Smart Grid: The Future of Energy

Abstract

The explosive development of electrical engineering in the early 19th century marked the birth of the 2nd industrial revolution, with the use of electrical energy in place of steam power, as well as changing the history of human development. The versatility of electricity allows people to apply it to a multitude of fields such as transportation, heat applications, lighting, telecommunications, and computers. Nowadays, with the breakout development of science and technology, electric energy sources are formed by many different technologies such as hydroelectricity, solar power, wind power, coal power, etc. These energy sources are connected to form grid systems to transmit electricity to cities, businesses and homes for life and work. Electrical energy today has become the backbone of all modern technologies. To ensure the safe, reliable and energy-efficient operation of the grid, a wide range of grid management applications have been proposed. However, a significant challenge for monitoring and controlling grids is service response time. In recent times, to solve this problem, smart grid management applications based on IoT and edge computing have been proposed. In this work, we perform a comprehensive survey of edge computing for IoT-enabled smart grid systems. In addition, recent smart grid frameworks based on IoT and edge computing are discussed, important requirements are presented, and the open issues and challenges are indicated. We believe that in the Internet of Things era, the smart grid will be the future of energy. We hope that these study results will contribute important guidelines for in-depth research in the field of smart grids and green energy in the future.