Abstract
Recently, with the birth of globalization, the world has witnessed a huge growth in its energy consumption. From an agricultural society, the world has transformed itself into an industrial and knowledge society. This transformation leads to a surge in energy consumption which led to an increase in carbon emission. For this reason, renewable energy systems with zero carbon emission has become a vital need for economic comfort and environmental security. However, the main disadvantage of renewable energy is its intermittency and prediction. Solar and wind generation are usually unpredictable, which leads to several problems if the network heavily relies on renewable energy as the primary source of electricity. This chapter describes the integration of the internet of things (IoT) with renewable energy systems to cover these problems. The authors will start with an introduction to renewable energy systems and their limitations. Then, they focus on the advantage of using IoT to enhance renewable systems.
TopRenewable Energy Systems
Recently, electrical energy generation from renewable sources such as solar or wind energy and biofuels has gained strong momentum from many researchers, organizations, and countries. Indeed, relying on fossil fuels to support electrical demands increases the carbon emission into the atmosphere, leading to severe environmental and health consequences. For this reason, many countries, including the US, China, and France, have recently started using renewable energy systems such as solar and wind to produce green power with zero carbon emission (Hamilton, et al., 2021).
Renewable power systems can be organized according to the type of energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, ocean, hydropower, and biomass waste (Guney, 2016). This section will briefly describe only renewable energy systems based on solar, wind, and geothermal.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Renewable System: It uses renewable sources, including solar, wind, geothermal power, or ocean waves, to produce electricity.
Gearbox: It is a system of gears inside an engine or a vehicle.
Smart Device: An electronic gadget that can share, connect, and interact with users and other devices.
Internet of Things: An open and broad network of intelligent objects capable of sharing and arranging information. Then, it acts according to the current situation and status of the environment.
Information Technology: The use of any electronic device such as computers, storage, networking and other physical devices in order to create, process, exchange and manage all kind of digital data or information.
Sensor: A device that detects and responds to some type of input from the physical environment.
Photovoltaics: The process of converting light into electricity based on semiconducting materials and photovoltaic effect.
Photovoltaic Effect: A process that generates electricity from a photovoltaic cell when it is exposed to solar radiation.
Actuator: A part of a machine that supervises movements and controls the system.