# Internet of Things (IoT) and the Energy Sector
## 3 Enabling Technologies
### Communication Technologies  
Wireless communication systems play the major role in activating IoT. Wireless systems connect the sensor devices to IoT gateways and perform end-to-end data communications between these elements of IoT. Wireless systems are developed based on different wireless standards and the use of each one depends on the requirement of the application such as communication range, bandwidth, and power consumption requirements. For example, often renewable sources of energy, including wind and solar power plants are mostly located in very remote areas. Therefore, ensuring a reliable IoT communications in remote places is challenging. Employing IoT systems on these sites requires selection of suitable communication technology that can guarantee a continues connection link and support real-time data transfer in an energy efficient manner. Due to the importance of communication technologies in IoT, in this subsection we review some of these technologies. We also indicate to few examples to show their role in the energy sector. Then, we provide a comparison in Table 1 to show the difference of each of the technologies when applied with IoT. The short range wireless technologies, e.g., Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) ([[https://www.wi-fi.org/](https://www.wi-fi.org/)]([https://www.wi-fi.org/](https://www.wi-fi.org/))) for IoT applications in the energy sector has been widely studies. In the energy sector, the obvious cases of using Wi-Fi include energy metering and building energy management [57; 58; 59; 60; 61]. However, due to high power requirements of Wi-Fi, this technology is not the best solution in the energy sector. Low power wide area network (LPWAN) communication technologies such as narrowband IoT (NB-IoT); ZigBee; Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technologies; as well as the emerging LPWAN technologies such as LoRa, Sigfox, and LTE-M operating in unlicensed band [62] are better solutions to be used in the energy sector. Because, these emerging LPWAN technologies enable establishing a reliable, low-cost, low-power, long-range, last-mile technology for smart energy management solutions [63]. Therefore, in this paper, we explain the short range and emerging LPWAN technologies and review some examples for their applied cases in the energy sector. We also explain the satellite technology which plays an important role in providing global IoT connectivity for industrial sectors located remote areas. In addition, in Table 1, we illustrate the different features of these technologies. _Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)_ is a short range wireless communication technology for IoT that enables exchanging data using short radio wavelengths ([[https://www.bluetooth.com/](https://www.bluetooth.com/)]([https://www.bluetooth.com/](https://www.bluetooth.com/))). BLE is less costly to deploy, with a typical range of 0 to 30 m, which enables creating an instant personal area network [64]. BLE targets small-scale IoT applications that require devices to communicate small volumes of data consuming minimal power. Industries in the energy sector with a well-designed IoT strategy can create new forms of machine-to-machine and machine-to-human communication using this technology. In the energy sector, BLE is widely used on the energy consumption in residential and commercial buildings. For instance, the authors of [65] describe a smart office energy management system that reduces the energy consumption of PCs, monitors, and lights using BLE. Another study proposes an energy management system for smart homes that utilizes BLE for communication among home appliances aiming at decreasing the energy at homes [66]. Similarly, using BLE the research in [67] introduces a fuzzy-based solution for smart energy management in a home automation, aiming improving home energy management scheme. _Zigbee_ is a communication technology, which is designed to create personal area network and targets small scale applications ([[https://zigbee.org/](https://zigbee.org/)]([https://zigbee.org/](https://zigbee.org/))).