Electricity is a physical phenomenon that has become one of the main parts of all people’s lives. Living, meeting fundamental needs, communication and civilization without electricity are unimaginable. The IoT based smart electricity, by providing some excellent solutions enables you to control and manage your electricity consumption efficiently. The internet of things, in the field of energy and electricity, provided some useful solutions like smart energy meter and smart grids that enables home and industrial consumers to minimize their power consumption efficiently. The smart electricity meter is an intelligence platform that frequently collects and records abundant useful information about your consumption and provides them to customers and electricity suppliers to control and monitor the electricity consumption in an efficient way. These intelligent platforms have numerous benefits like reducing your energy consumption, minimizing your energy costs, improving your safety, reducing the negative environmental impacts and providing accurate information about energy consumption for future planning. Based on these numerous benefits, it seems that the IoT based smart electricity is a fundamental requirement for smart cities’ successful development.

History of the IoT based smart electricity meter

Almost as soon as electricity is distributed in cities and provided for fulfilling the community’s needs, the demands for a device that separately measures and records the amount of electricity consumed by individuals rises. The path from the primary form of electricity metering to today’s smart electricity grids and smart meters took a long time and effort with contributions from different scientists in different times. The first electricity meter was devised by Edison based on placing two electrodes in two electrolytes and the individual’s consumption measured based on the weight of electrodes after passing currents of electricity through them. Other inventors between 1872 and 1886 devised some kinds of electricity meters that measured the electricity’s flow of current, but not the amount. In 1889, the electricity meter devised by Thomson became very popular. This device could successfully measure the amount of consumption, but by gradually weakening the magnets inside of this meter, it was inclined to calculate the amount of electricity more thanthe real consumption. The historical milestone of electricity metering occurred in 1972 when Paraskevakos in a spin-off invention devised the primary form of the IoT based smart metering. This solution leaded to better managing, monitoring, and planning for electricity consumption that ended up with consumers having efficient consumption and assisted electricity suppliers in improving the distribution system and infrastructure.

Benefits of the IoT based smart electricity

The IoT based smart electricity, by using smart grids and smart meters, create numerous benefits for users and suppliers. The smart grid provides useful data for authorities and electricity suppliers to find out how they can cut power consumption in the peak-time without generating negative impacts on customer’s lives. The IoT based smart grids are excellent solutions for optimizing the electricity assets function, energy storage options, self-detecting problems and self-healing, enhancing control over the used energy, improving safety during distribution and consumption processes, reducing costs and providing a sustainable solution for minimizing carbon footprint. The smart electricity grids will be able to generate more electricity through the existing infrastructure and reduce the amount of electricity waste. It can also allows customers to have access to a source of renewable energy and improve customer’s accessibility to the source of renewable electricity by minimizing the downtimes issues. This intelligent solution equipped with smart self-healing microchips that ensures a quick recovery after damage, improves the self-detecting and resolving of a problem in the electricity infrastructure. Customers can efficiently  use this platform for recognizing the defects and waste for reducing the consumption, the costs and carbon footprint and simultaneously maximizing the safety and electricity monitoring.

Smart city and the IoT based smart electricity

Nowadays, the electricity suppliers are looking for a sustainable and renewable energy resource to provide more electricity for customers. Enthusiastically, they are looking for a solution to improve their infrastructure and distribution systems for maximizing the customer’s accessibility to electricity and minimizing the risks and downtime issues. For this reason, it seems that smart electricity plays a vital role in the development of smart cities. The IoT based smart electricity, through providing excellent platforms like the smart grids and smart electricity meter, allows managers and suppliers to have access to the wide range of the useful information about the amount of usage, peak-time consumption, distribution or equipment defects, and safety problems. This solution enables them to monitor and manage all the accidents and challenges from a remote place. Due to the accurate, responsive monitoring system and fast interconnection communication between grids and control center that are provided by this intelligent solution, managers can easily monitor the problems and quickly respond to them from a remote place. These smart grids collect and record necessary information about the customer’s consumption, sudden changes in voltage, recognizing defects in the distribution network, electricity flow of current and other critical data about electricity distribution and consumption that assists authorities for a better planning and decision-making. It’s not hard to figure out that the development of smart cities, strongly depends on the development, modernization, and standardization of infrastructure in the energy, gas, electricity, water and other fundamental industries. The IoT based smart electricity is one of the critical factors that make this modernization possible.