It starts with the cloud
The cloud uncouples computation and storage from physical hardware for end users. You don’t have to worry about over or under provisioning hardware - you can scale it immediately.
Then moves to Apache Kafka®
Because the smart grid relies on two-way communication, you need software that can handle the messages that are sent between devices, such as smart meters, and the applications you use to deliver services. And that's a lot of messages.
Apache Kafka is popular because of its resilience, scalability, and speed. For instance, OVO Energy uses Aiven for Apache Kafka to support over 1 million smart meters. In fact, Aiven for Apache Kafka serves as the backbone for their entire data infrastructure.
And ends with redundancy, analytics, and long-term storage
A cool thing you can do is mirror your primary Apache Kafka cluster to a second in another region or cloud altogether. This way, you can rest assured that your pipeline will have minimal interruption if something happens to your primary cluster. We have lots of customers doing exactly that.
Aside from preparing for the worst, you’ll want to process, filter, and enrich your data in real-time with a platform such as Apache Flink®. From there you can send it to a NoSQL, analytics-driven database like Apache Cassandra®.
Let’s look at a sample architecture.
How OVO used Aiven services for over 1 million smart meters
OVO Energy has spent the last decade investing in tackling the most important issue of our time; the climate crisis. Their goal is to become a net zero carbon business by 2030 and bring their customers along for the ride.
OVO needed a fault-tolerant, high-performing messaging system that would act as a go-between for applications that hadn't even been built yet.
In other words, they needed Apache Kafka.
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Find more about Aiven for Energy
Our account managers and customer success engineers have a great amount of experience working with Energy customers and can consult with you on how Aiven can help you overcome your challenges. Simply fill out the form to the left with your contact information, a little background information, and we’ll get back to you shortly.