This paper presents a novel IoT-based architecture that utilizes IoT hardware, software, and communication technologies to enable real-time monitoring and management of solar photovoltaic systems at large scales. The system enables stakeholders to remotely control and monitor the photovoltaic systems and evaluate the effect of various environmental factors such as weather, air quality, and soiling. The system was implemented and evaluated in terms of network delay and resource consumption. Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) was used to facilitate wide-scale real-time communication. The average network delay was found to be less than 1 s, proving the architecture to be ideal for solar and smart grid monitoring systems. As for resource consumption, the evaluation showed the hardware to consume about 3% of the panel’s output, while the application also utilized a very small percentage of the CPU. This led to the conclusion that the proposed architecture is best deployed using low-cost constrained edge devices where a combination of IoT-based paradigm, efficient MQTT communication, and low resources consumption makes the system cost-effective and scalable.

Using IoT and smart monitoring devices to optimize the efficiency of large-scale distributed solar farms

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02111358/document

Open source low-cost power monitoring system

Studies on temperature control systems have been continued until today even though it has already been well established due to its growingapplications in the industrial process, household appliance for cooling/heating, and etc. With a proper tools and a detailed study, a good control system can be designed to be robust and relatively free from instabilities. For this, LabVIEW and Arduino are recommended as tools for users to express their design creativity and implement ideas on creating systems for temperature control. This is useful for educational purposes especially for university students to use in their design projects. This paper proposes a PID control scheme implemented by using an Arduino microcontroller and Virtual Instrumentation (VI) software called LabVIEW for monitoring and controlling the temperature of a heating element which is sensed by thermocouple as the measuring device. The temperature is varied accordingly to the several setpoint, and error will be generated when the measured temperature does not reach the originally set point. Experimental results show that PID controller is capable to track and control the heater temperature towards the designated reference temperature. The small scale of this system and the ease of use allows Arduino to be practical in laboratory setting and also as a teaching platform for basic control programming.

Development of Experimental Simulator via Arduino-based PID Temperature Control System using LabVIEW

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are often deployed remotely; hence, typical disposable chemical batteries with limited lifetimes may not be suitable for powering the network. In such cases, photovoltaic (PV) systems that generate electricity from sunlight can serve as a better alternative energy source. The intensity of sunlight varies over time, and thus the rates at which the batteries in the PV system get charged also vary. Monitoring the charging and discharging currents and voltages of the batteries enables us to modify the operation of the system in order to improve its overall efficiency. Moreover, it enables us to detect any fault in the solar panel, battery, or network node. We have designed an independent, low cost, ultra-low power microcontroller-based wireless solar power monitor that can be plugged easily into a PV system. The monitor measures the currents and voltages across the panels, batteries, and the load, and periodically transmits these values through an independent wireless interface to a control center for observation and analysis. We have performed a power analysis of the monitor and learnt about the power consumption in its various states. The use of this power monitor should extend the overall life of the PV system and also minimize power failures in the WSN nodes powered by the PV system. This paper reports about the design of the power monitor as well as the results of our analyses.

Designing a Wireless Solar Power Monitor for Wireless Sensor Network Applications

According to the 2011 census, 68.84 % of Indians (around 833.1 million people) live in villages. The rough terrain and meager transportation systems in some villages constrain on-site monitoring of the health of the electrical power distribution system. This paper presents a remote monitoring system, supplemented with data analytics capability that affords real-time performance monitoring of the renewable energy system and also helps in the maintenance schedule. The device can be enhanced to monitor the system's load factor and automate the load-shedding, to protect the system in adverse situations. (Abstract)

IoT Based Solar Power Monitor & Controller for Village Electrification

This paper proposes an effective and efficient graphical user interface (GUI) to real time control and monitor the DC power generated by solar panels and DC power consumed by load locally and remotely. There are two GUIs provided server and client. Server computer needs to be installed near to solar panels for monitoring and controlling locally while client GUI can be accessed by using a web browser from any part of world, authorize person can monitor and control all operations. Server and client GUI are designed by using LabVIEW and LabVIEW UI builder while hardware is developed with Arduino Uno, current and voltage sensors, relays and charge controller. Monitoring interface uses real time measurement results to prepare the power, current and voltage graphs, it is also possible to record and reach database file to analyze history of renewable energy source (RES) system. This will also help to increase performance of the existing solar system also other alternative resources of energy. In this system monitoring interface contains power production and consumption, voltage and current graphs and meters on a GUI. Controlling feature includes turn on/shutdown of solar system, increase or decrease energy consumption, generation and switching to other available system.

Aziz Altaf Khuwaja

Papers

Solar power remote monitoring and controlling using Arduino, LabVIEW and web browser