Distributed data acquisition and monitoring system for an integrated energy application

This paper describes a distributed data acquisition and monitoring system using a multi-agent framework for a demonstration project for integrated energy application implemented in the National Research Council Canada, Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation. The physical energy system includes three major components: renewable energy source - a building integrated photovoltaic system; a hydrogen generator - an electrolyser and a hydrogen storage system. A distributed data acquisition and monitoring system based on our previously developed agent system framework is implemented for remotely acquiring real-time parameters from the individual devices and real-time monitoring the system running status. As the first step to approach the distributed cooperation and coordination among different technologies in an integrated energy application, this implementation of a distributed data acquisition and monitoring system paves the way for its further deployment in the distributed coordination and control for each individual device to further make the entire system more scalable and robust.