Behind-the-Meter Edge Computing Applications for Residential PV Systems Using Hardware-in-the-Loop

Investments in solar energy technologies have significantly risen over the past few years as new manufacturing techniques have driven solar panel prices down. More and more corporations and individuals alike are opting to install solar panels to provide power, which may require smart inverters connected to the internet. Utility companies are also eager to access this data to monitor grid health and manage energy sources effectively, with some areas of service containing thousands of such distributed energy resources (DERs). Thus, a strong and secure network is needed to move data generated by thousands of inverters to the cloud to visualize grid health, as well as edge devices receiving commands from the cloud to control output to sustain grid health. This article will describe the creation of a new behind-the-meter edge device (BTM-ED) that is used in a real-world solar testbed to move inverter data to a centralized platform for processing and visualization. The cloud also sends commands to the inverter, changing operating modes as needed. This article will also focus on the scalability as well as its integration with the new BTM-ED. The BTM-ED also aims to be a cost-effective solution for utilities monitoring residential solar energy and testing was performed on commercially available devices. In addition to real-world data from the testbed, both the device and cloud are stress-tested with simulated inverters. The article will describe the testbed setup, testing of multiple computing devices for the edge platform, testing the edge device in both real and simulated environments, and the scaling of the cloud back-end.