Powering Up an IoT-Enabled Smart Home: A Solar Powered Smart Inverter for Sustainable Development

Smart cities and smart homes have a larger number of devices requiring continuous electricity. An inverter circuit is often used to cope up with power failures. Such inverters can also be used in the period of high demand for power to reduce the load on the grid. On the other hand, utilizing renewable energy is an important aspect of sustainable development. A solar-powered inverter reduces the usage of grid power and makes efficient utilization of solar energy. Further, the inverter can be integrated with microcontrollers to work on predetermined time slots to substitute the grid power. This paper describes the design of a novel solar-powered smart inverter that automatically switches the power supply from the grid to the inverter during peak hours. It is designed to suit smart home requirements up to 1 kW and a holistic design is presented. The performance of the circuit is analyzed and compared with similar works in literature to show the improvements. Simulations and hardware implementations show that the proposed system ensures an uninterrupted power supply for smart homes.