IoT Solution for Real-Time Energy Generation and Usage Monitoring Delivered in Just 5 Months

Customer

The Customer is an international nonprofit organization that works in the fields of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. It has member organizations in almost 30 countries, including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, and China.

Optimizing Green Energy Usage

The Customer wanted to switch its offices to alternative energy sources and needed a solution to monitor the energy usage and help optimize it. Due to the lack of in-house IT competencies, the Customer sought a reliable IT consulting company to design and develop the solution.

IoT-Based Solution for Real-Time Energy Generation and Usage Monitoring

Owing to ScienceSoft's 30+ years in software development, experience in IT consulting services, and a vast portfolio of successful projects, the Customer has chosen ScienceSoft as its IT partner.

ScienceSoft provided the Customer with a cross-functional team: a project manager, an IoT consultant, a solution architect, a hardware consultant, a .NET developer, and a QA specialist.

Solution planning

Our team interviewed the Customer's stakeholders and employees, detailed and analyzed their needs. Based on the analysis results, we introduced a clear concept of the future IoT-based solution, including:

• A requirements specification document with mapped out and prioritized features.
• The optimal architecture and tech stack. We suggested microservices architecture to guarantee easy scalability, high performance, and exceptional fault tolerance.
• A plan of the necessary integrations of hardware (IoT sensors) and software parts.

IoT-based MVP delivery

To quickly assess the benefits of the concept without huge financial investments, ScienceSoft suggested building an MVP based on ThingsBoard, an open-source platform for IoT data collection, processing, and visualization. The team chose ThingsBoard over other cloud-based IoT platforms due to its high scalability and deep and extensive customization capabilities. We agreed with the Customer to deliver an IoT-based solution for one office first. The solution was to gather data from ~50 energy generators and consumers, analyze it and present detailed real-time info about the energy generation and usage. Further, the solution could be rolled out to other offices and evolved, e.g., ML capabilities could be added.

Finding the right sensors

Our hardware consultant researched for the optimal IoT sensors, shortlisted the vendors, and arranged the supplies.

Data processing pipeline design and implementation

ScienceSoft's team built and tested an IoT data processing solution based on ThingsBoard, MongoDB, Akka, and a custom message broker. The pipeline handled HTTP and MQTT protocols and multiple data formats. The custom message broker acted as a middleman between the devices and ThingsBoard. In addition to ensuring loose coupling, the custom message broker handled data validation and merging.

Data visualization

ScienceSoft's team configured dashboards for IoT data visualization. The dashboards enabled a comprehensive view (historical and real-time data) of the electricity generated and used by all devices and each device separately.

The Customer Got Control of Its Energy Consumption

In just 5 months after its initial request, the Customer got an IoT-based MVP to meet specific needs in controlling energy generation and consumption. Users could easily understand the efficiency of energy generators, see which appliances are the primary power guzzlers, monitor and understand usage patterns and make informed decisions on appliance usage to maximize energy savings. For example, with the new solution, the Customer was able to recognize and understand the root cause of repetitive electrical short circuits.

Technologies and Tools

.NET 6, MongoDB, Akka, Angular.js, ThingsBoard.