A Microservices-Based Solution with Hybrid Communication for Energy Management in Smart Grid Environments

The increasing variability of residential demand, combined with the expansion of distributed generation and electric vehicles, has introduced new challenges to the stability of Smart Grids (SGs). Centralized management models lack the flexibility required to operate under these conditions, reinforcing the need for scalable and data-driven architectures. This study proposes an energy management solution based on microservices, supported by hybrid communication in Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN), integrating Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) and LoRaMESH to enhance connectivity, local resilience, and reliability in data acquisition for Internet of Things (IoT) and Demand Response (DR) applications. A prototype composed of a Smart Meter (SM), a Data Aggregation Point (DAP), and a Concentrator (CON) was evaluated in a controlled environment, achieving Packet Delivery Rates above 97%, an average RSSI of -92 dBm, and a Signal-to-Noise Ratio close to 9 dB, validating the robustness of the hybrid communication. At a larger scale, data from 5567 households in the Low Carbon London (LCL) project were used to generate representative Load Profiles (LPs) through seven aggregation and clustering techniques, consistently identifying the 18:00-21:00 interval as the critical peak, with demand reaching up to 42% above the daily average. Fourteen load shifting algorithms were evaluated, and the Hybrid Adaptive Algorithm based on Intention and Resilience (HAAIR), proposed in this work, achieved the best overall performance with a 1.83% peak reduction, US$65.40 in cost savings, a reduction of 60 kg of CO₂, a Comfort Loss Index of 0.04, resilience of 9.5, and reliability of 0.98. The results demonstrate that the integration of hybrid LPWAN communication, modular microservice-based architecture, and adaptive DR strategies driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a promising pathway toward scalable, resilient, and energy-efficient SGs.