Have you seen the latest book making waves in the digital utility world: Energy IoT Architecture: From Theory to Practice by Stu McCafferty?
We recommend you check it out, as well as our full interview about the title with Energy Central Expert Stu McCafferty, as he discusses the book, the process of writing it, and how none of it would have happened without Energy Central.
Energy Central, a leading platform for professionals in the power utility industry, has supported the development of the book “Energy IoT Architecture: From Theory to Practice” by Stu McCafferty. Stu, who has published several articles on the Energy Central platform, turned to the community for feedback and support as he developed his book. The book is aimed at various stakeholders, including utility architects and system operators, policy makers, professors and students, cloud companies, and other energy industry innovators, and the general public.
In a recent interview with Energy Central, Stu McCafferty explained that the book is focused on the idea of embracing the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, intelligent edge devices, and a new “clean energy” economy. The book describes a new IoT reference architecture that recognizes the fact that many, if not most, of the grid generation, storage, and flexibility assets are behind the meter and owned by customers and third parties. Creating an ecosystem that integrates these assets and new players needs to be the focus of our efforts going forward – and IoT offers a compelling solution that is interoperable, scalable, flexible, and democratized.
The book describes a three-layered architectural approach that takes a standards-focused approach to simplify interoperability and eventually drive towards a plug-and-play ecosystem using Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) as a basic building block at the building level. This would essentially turn customer buildings into flexible VPP assets, simply and elegantly.
In an interview with Energy Central, Stu talked about the reception he has received thus far for his book, and how Energy Central played a role in its development. "The response has been greater than I anticipated," he said. "I have received numerous emails and texts from people across the globe – the US, Australia, Germany, the UK, Asia, and Canada – with pictures of them holding their new copies of the book. And, it has only been out for a couple of months. Honestly, I have been quite surprised."
Stu McCafferty attributed the response he received from the community on Energy Central as one of the drivers for his book. “I owe Energy Central and its community everything for this book. It would have never happened if it weren’t for the opportunity to publish the ideas, get feedback, and realize that there was a lot of interest.” The community provided feedback and support as he developed his book. Stu wrote the book to provide a common reference architecture for people who are on the same path.