IoT-Based Monitoring and Management Power Sub-Station of the University of Mosul

Abstract

Managing power plants usually involves monitoring many data and parameters that occur within minutes, hours, or days. Nowadays, a mount of digital data can be exchanged, analyzed and easily accessed through modern technology called the Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, an IoT (using Wi-Fi development kit called Photon) is used to remote control and monitor the performance of the University of Mosul power plant. This includes monitoring the Power Factor, supplied voltage and total load current of each sub-station within the university area. The system also applies a safety feature to completely close the power plant in the event of a serious condition such as a fire. ThingSpeak is used in this paper as an IoT analytics platform service which lets the programmers collect, visualize and analyze incoming data streams to the cloud. The collected data is sent to the ThingSpeak by the Photon devices, create instant visualization of live data related to the monitored station, and send the required alerts. The engineers responsible for the station can monitor the progress of the work of the station through any connected device - a computer or a smartphone - from anywhere in the world and even reprogram the system during operation, if necessary.