Smart-grid and solar energy harvesting in the IoT era: An overview

摘要

As the need of energy is increasing worldwide, the energy availability globally is quite less than the demands for it. Thus, the importance to consider other means of electricity generation is looked into for Sub-Saharan Africa, which is enormously rich in solar radiant. With just an average of 5.5 kWh/m(2), countries in the region can generate over 2000 TWh of electricity daily by just covering 1% of its total land area with solar panels. To meet up with the citizen's energy demands, steps have to be initiated to reduce the continuous dependence on fossil fuel. This can be done by integrating renewable energy sources into the grid. It of course requires urgent need to upgrade the existing grid systems into a Smart Grid. The advantages for this smart grid upgrade and the development in storage devices have been highlighted in this article, including its possible optimization and metering technologies.