IoT enabled smart power quality analysis in three phase electrical systems with practical implementation

Disturbances in the electrical network in residential, commercial, and industrial settings often lead to equipment malfunction, shorter component lifespan, and higher operational costs. Therefore, it is essential to monitor irregularities in power supply to ensure improved performance. Power Quality Analysers (PQA) play an essential role in managing the health of electrical systems by measuring all fluctuations in real-time. This study focuses on the experimental analysis conducted using an Internet of Things based smart PQA system. The authors designed a low-cost hardware system using ZMPT101B and ACS712 voltage and current sensors connected with an Arduino Mega microcontroller and ESP32 Wroom gateway. The proposed system monitors several important parameters such as voltage, current, power, frequency, power factor, and line-to-line voltages from three-phase systems and stores all data online using the ThingSpeak platform. The main contribution of this experimental case study is to create a real-time power quality data collection system using IoT sensor network and comparing its performance against conventional FPGA-based PQA systems. The proposed Smart PQA system promises a cost effective solution to collect real-time power quality data on the cloud platform for timely decision making. However, the error analysis using mean squared error, root mean squared error and %error against the conventional system also highlights the possible applications & future scope in the improvement of the proposed design. In future, this system can be scaled to achieve wide range of applications such as timely monitoring, critical assessment, and control of power quality parameters in residential, commercial, and industrial settings.