Scalable and Robust Smart Energy Metering Solution for ESP32 based meters

Client Overview

UK based Smart energy provider catering to 400K+ customers across 2 countries 

Business Need

  • The client was facing scalability and stability issues with AWS based smart energy metering solution they had in place even with just 5K-10K devices in the field. They wanted a cloud native architecture solution custom made to suit their deployment setup
  • The client also had connectivity issues with OTA Server and as a result, the OTA success rate was around 20-30%

Plexusbit Contribution – Smart Energy Metering Solution

  • Developed a gateway that served as an entry point for each device and facilitated secure communication with AWS services. The gateway processes 6million+ messages to/from devices on daily basis 
  • Migrated from TCP based protocol to MQTT protocol to ensure efficient and reliable communication between the devices and the cloud.
  • Microservices architecture implementation to ensure scalability and fault tolerance
  • Developed analysis framework to track and root cause the connectivity drop while performing OTA
  • Optimizations made in networking stack of OTA Service to improve reliability
  • Developed dashboards to track connectivity drop, OTA success rate, online/offline meters count and some for predictive maintenance
  • ESP32 based device software enhancements for efficiency and sleep mode implementation for battery saving purpose

Business Impact

  • Client could expand customer base by 4000% from 10,000 users to 400K+ devices in the span of 3 years
  • OTA success rate touched 70-80%

Solution Diagram

IoT cloud smart energy metering solution

If want to build a smart energy meter solution customized to your needs or have an IoT project that you’d like to discuss, please feel free to contact us

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