Standards for Cyber-Physical Energy Systems—Two Case Studies from Sensor Technology

Abstract

Cyber-physical energy systems (CPES) describe a specialization of the cyber-physical system concept, in which energy systems are transformed into intelligent energy networks. These systems provide the basis for the realization of smart microgrids and smart grids. In the last decade, numerous research projects have intensively explored the fundamentals and modeling of CPES and validated them in pilot projects. In the meantime, more and more CPES solutions have been appearing on the market and the battle for the most suitable standards has begun. This paper gives an overview of the currently available standards for CPES sensor technologies and assesses the suitability for implementation. In two case studies in the application area of operational energy management in German companies, a sensor retrofitting is described-once with proprietary technology and once using the standards Long Range (LoRa) Wide Area Network and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). As a result, the shortcomings of the standards for their use in CPES are shown and discussed. OPC UA, which was originally developed for the manufacturing industry, turns out to be to be a suitable standard for a wide range of CPES implementations.

Suitability of OPC UA for distributed energy monitoring

“…As part of a prototypical case study, we carry out a retrofit on a classic energy meter and convert it into a CPS. As application case, we use an existing energy management system, which meets the requirements according to Table 2 and has an implemented OPC UA client, so we can build on existing work (Krutwig, Kölmel, Tantau, & Starosta, 2019).…”

Performance Analysis of Point-to-Point LoRa End Device Communication

“…By analyzing the PRR value for various payload lengths, the optimum data rate (R b ) can be evaluated from (2). N is the number of packets that can be transmitted, PL is the payload length and t is the time duration, which is three minutes or 180 seconds.…”

“…LoRa is a new long-range communication technology in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT), among Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) [1] and WIFi [2][3]. LoRa allows users to transmit data to a long-distance node with the compensation of a low data rate.…”

“…Normally, LoRa network consists of end devices, gateways, and a network server as shown in Figure 1. End devices send data to a network server through gateways [2,5,10,[13][14]. End devices perform the physical layer process and gateways act as repeaters that can collect all data from different end devices.…”

A novel holistic approach for performance evaluation in Internet of Things

“…Among the variety of LPWAN technologies, LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) stands out. 8 LoRaWAN operates over the Long-Range (LoRa) modulation scheme promoted by the LoRa Alliance. 9 Long coverage ranges, low power consumption, and support for a massive number of IoT devices using a limited infrastructure are the main assets of LoRaWAN, positioning it as one of the current top IoT technologies.…”