An IoT Concept of the Small Virtual Power Plant Based on Arduino Platform and MQTT Protocol

In this paper, a new IoT concept of the small virtual power plant is proposed. The main principle is the smart control of the high-voltage power lines by the low-cost and low-voltage Arduino platform with Mosquitto open-source message broker that implements the secure TCP connection based on MQTT IoT protocol using specific topics, passwords, and SSL cryptography. The C# Windows form app and Arduino sketch were developed with MQTT publisher and subscriber, respectively. The hardware simulation of the proposed concept is realized using the solar panel (12.5 V, 180 mA), two relays SRD-05VDC-SL-C, buck (DC/DC YEC SD200) and buck/boost (DC/DC Tusotek TS-IPS-VO2) converters, and two small power banks (first one is to supply the consumption simulated by Arduino Uno with LED, second one is to supply the smart power distribution block). The hardware was tested successfully in three regimes: the charge of battery by the solar panel, the power supply of the Arduino Uno board with LED using the power bank or solar panel. The proposed infrastructure can be directly applied to the power off-grid solutions of the smart houses if gridtie inverter is added as well as generation and storage parts are more powerful.