A Case Study of IoT-Based Water-Energy Nexus Monitoring Platform for Household Applications in Smart Cities

Abstract

With the lack of water and the increasing cost of imported fossil fuel in Jordan, the need for more efficient utilization of energy usage for pumping water in household applications is of top priority. Sudden power demands affect the stability of the entire power grid. There should be a balance between power generation and load consumption sides. IoT infrastructure helps in maintaining this balance via having a closed-loop control mechanism. This paper introduces a platform that can be implemented as part of a cloud solution that aggregates sensory data of water tank levels and displays real-time data for both energy and water consumption. The collected data is then analyzed to show the correlation and to give an indication of user water and energy consumption in household applications in smart cities. The correlation is minimized via adaptive and customized thresholds for each user according to the consumption pattern. Results show that there is a significant improvement in the water supply system by having less correlated user power demand in a certain time instant.