Real-Time Monitoring of Energy Contributions in Renewable Energy Communities Through an IoT Measurement System

This paper presents an IoT-based monitoring system designed to measure energy exchanges within Renewable Energy Communities. The proposed system utilizes embedded devices functioning as IoT power meters, which communicate via LoRaWAN technology and employ the MQTT protocol. Members of the energy community can monitor energy flows in real time, enabling them to remain constantly informed about potential penalties and adopt behaviors that optimize incentives linked to the self-consumption of generated energy. Moreover, in the case of Renewable Energy Communities, incentive schemes can be adopted which allow exploiting the advantages of using storage units. In this context, it is important to correctly measure the energy terms which can be incentivized. This is not an easy task, especially when dealing with storage units for which the concept of negative energy input is used to identify the energy absorbed from the network to be fed back into the network when needed. This paper aims to propose the use of distributed power meters to identify the various energy contributions relevant for incentive calculations, such as negative energy input, produced and withdrawn energy, and self-consumed energy. A case study, involving some resources of a Renewable Energy Community, is presented, evidencing the advantages of the proposal.