Microservice-Based Architecture for an Energy Management System

This article proposes a microservice-based architecture for an energy management system (MS-EMS) to address the fragility, poor flexibility, and hardware dependence of EMSs. Compared with the service-oriented architecture (SOA), the proposed architecture can significantly improve the load performance and scalability of an EMS through fine-grained decomposition of the system and decentralized data management. Container and cluster technologies are used to manage the microservices. A k-fault (k ≥ 2)-tolerant model is proposed to improve the reliability of the MS-EMS. The model employs containerized microservices as essential components to achieve a parallel connection of the essential components using the horizontal-scale technology of the containers. On the other hand, a MILP model-based algorithm for managing computing resources is also suggested. By minimizing the number of worker nodes of the cluster, where the MS-EMS is deployed, we can improve the utilization of the computing resources and avoid unnecessary costs. The result of the performance analysis showed that the reliability of the MS-EMS is 99.99965625%, which is two orders and one order of magnitude higher than those of the existing EMSs and the SOA-based EMS (S-EMS), respectively. Moreover, the cost of the MS-EMS is also lower than those of the existing EMSs and S-EMSs. The proposed architecture is implemented in a realpower system and has shown favorable operation performances, indicating a promising prospect for future applications.