The Standards-Based Microgrid Meets the Industrial Internet of Things
Last week, the Industrial Internet Consortium — a group of more than 150 companies working on a common path toward ubiquitous, standards-based machine-to-machine communication — launched an ambitious project aimed at bringing real-time data analytics and control to the world of microgrids, and potentially, the grid at large.
Building on work being done by Duke Energy and its “Coalition of the Willing” vendor partners, the project, officially titled the Communication and Control Testbed for Microgrid Applications, is seeking to test a common set of technology standards and data models for distributed energy devices and computing platforms.
The end goal is to allow smart solar PV inverters, energy storage systems, plug-in electric vehicles, responsive building energy loads, and other grid-edge systems to work in real time with the utility smart grid platforms they’re connected to — not through complicated, project-by-project integration, but in a more “plug-and-play” fashion.
