Design and Evaluation of an SNMP-based Energy Consumption Monitoring System for Electrical Grids

Communications and data infrastructures are evolving in the most diverse views, ranging from the processing capacity, passing through wide geographic coverage, and finally to the resiliency and redundancy required in today's applications. However, physical problems such as excessive heat generation and increasing energy consumption continue to be increasingly present. Inspired by the evolution of the concept of Smart grids, we will approach the implementation of an integrated system for monitoring and measuring electricity consumption variables in data centers using open hardware and software libraries based on industry-wide standards such as Ethernet and the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Such system is conceived as a basic element for the complete management of a physical Information and Communication Technology infrastructure, since data centers are highly complex elements connected to and representative of Smart grids. For validation, a field-tested hardware and software prototype was developed, one that was capable of performing non-invasive measurements of electric current in data centers and make the data available via network, either in a local infrastructure or in a distributed architecture. Therefore, it could be implemented from small local data centers to huge distributed projects like Smart Grids, securely, inexpensively and highly integrable with other tools and systems.