IoT and AI-Driven Approaches for Energy Optimization in Off-Grid Solar Systems

The growing reliance on renewable energy sources, particularly solar photovoltaics (PVs), requires intelligent management strategies to address challenges of intermittency, storage, and efficiency in autonomous microgrids. This review investigates IoT-based solutions for energy optimization, focusing on hardware platforms, communication protocols, and intelligent control strategies that enhance the reliability and autonomy of PV-powered systems. This review follows a structured methodological protocol including predefined research questions, database selection, screening criteria, and systematic categorization of studies of IoT-enabled solar microgrid applications, relying on peer-reviewed journal articles, reputable conference proceedings, and scholarly works published between 2020 and 2025. The focus centers on microcontroller-based platforms (e.g., Arduino, ESP32, NodeMCU, TTGO LoRa32) and Single-Board Computers (SBCs) (e.g., Raspberry Pi), alongside the integration of optimization algorithms with Machine Learning (ML) and Neural Network (NN) approaches. Results highlight that lightweight microcontrollers offer cost-effective monitoring, ESP32 and NodeMCU balance real-time analytics with energy efficiency, Raspberry Pi supports edge-level AI processing, and LoRa enables scalable long-range communication for remote PV systems. Furthermore, optimization algorithms (PSO, WOA-SA) and neural models (ANN, LSTM, CNN–LSTM) are explored as methods to improve forecasting accuracy, fault detection, and demand-side management. Conclusions indicate that IoT-based architectures significantly improve energy efficiency, support predictive maintenance, and enable scalable deployment of autonomous solar microgrids. The study emphasizes the necessity of hybrid IoT architectures, combining edge and cloud intelligence, to balance computational complexity, power constraints, and cybersecurity requirements. These findings provide practical insights into designing robust, cost-effective, and scalable IoT-enabled PV microgrids that contribute to decentralized and sustainable energy transitions.