The observing and metering processes are necessary in renewable energy conversion systems as applied in smart grid applications of conventional grid. In this study, the requirements of the renewable energy sources examined with a solar microgrid model that is developed via Matlab/Simulink. The dc-ac conversion system utilized in this paper contains three solar power plants with maximum power point tracking (MPPT) system and a multilevel inverter to create three-phase ac line voltages. The transmission line is modeled at the output of the inverter with a length of 25 km by using real line parameters. The infrastructure of power line communication (PLC) is managed by binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modems that are located in different places. The usage of the proposed energy monitoring technique eliminates additional monitoring costs due to the fact that the power lines are not only exploited to carry the generated voltage, but also utilized to convey the drawn power rate of loads at the back-end of the microgrid. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.