Smart Grid Information Processes Using IoT and Big Data with Cloud and Edge Computing

Smart grid applications typically use cloud computing to address the computational requirements for efficient electricity delivery. Recently, the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in increased number of devices connected to the smart grid, including consumer gadgets, measurement equipment, and electrical and electronic devices such as smart power converters, phasor measurement units, and smart meters. These heterogeneous devices that are present in all the four stages of a smart grid—generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption—generate huge amount of structured, semi structured and unstructured data. Gathering, storing, and processing such huge data volumes using cloud computing creates problems of bandwidth, latency, disaster recovery, and cost. To overcome these problems, we present a theoretical discussion on the usage of IoT, edge computing and big data to collect the data from smart grid, process the data using edge computing and big-data analytics, and use the data for smart grid maintenance, energy information and future decisions. Further, we highlight how edge computing and big-data approaches have mitigated the above mentioned problems by shifting the control, intelligence, and trust to the edge of the network.