The requirements of Industry 4.0 and the change in energy policy are many and diverse. This is especially true for power distribution too: consumers need to be identified and consumptions need to be individually traceable. The best possible use must be made of energy from cost and availability aspects. Real-time information about the system status is also required, as is a safety and testing status. System components talk to each other, share their statuses with each other and coordinate themselves as effectively as possible. Data is transferred via cables or wirelessly to cloud services, allowing all manner of data aggregations and analysis options. Control algorithms and criteria can be freely defined by the operator based on this. HMI interfaces allow users to communicate with the system to submit individual requests and coordinate them with the system.
Intelligent Power Distribution (IPD) allows a variety of functions to be supported in a single low-voltage distribution solution. Essentially, the challenge is to implement transparency, analysis and control options. To do this, electronic components (master, slave, I/O and protect) based on the Powerline, Bluetooth and GSM communications technologies were developed which transmit the system status to a specially developed cloud-based software interface (the IPD portal), where the information can be processed.