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Iot-Based Experimental Prototype For Monitoring of Photovoltaic Arrays
Iot-Based Experimental Prototype For Monitoring of Photovoltaic Arrays
Iot-Based Experimental Prototype For Monitoring of Photovoltaic Arrays
Abstract— In this paper a smart prototype has been designed has been designed, in this application the authors used a
for monitoring of PV arrays using Internet of Things (IoT). An Raspberry PI and thinkSpeak of MathWorks to monitor the
electronic sensing board has been designed. A website application data of the designed system. An on-line IoT based remote
has been also developed in order to monitor the data online monitoring system for PV arrays is proposed in [5], and a fault
(electrical PV array current and voltage, air temperature and diagnosis approach, based on extreme learning machine, is
solar irradiance). The designed prototype has been verified studied. The proposed system consists of data acquisition, data
experimentally at Renewable Energy Laboratory in Jijel gateway and PVMC website. Data acquisition part successfully
University (Algeria). Experimental results showed the capability collect data and transmit them to data gateway, the data
of the prototype to monitor the data without using additional
gateway also capture video and acquire position information
circuits and efforts. The prototype could be used for fault
detection (FD) in PV arrays by integrating for example a FD
then upload them to PVMC website for supervision. A
algorithm. smart solar PV remote MS and control unit using IoT was
developed in [6]. With reference to the authors, the designed
Keywords—Photovoltaic array, monitoring, IoT, fault detection. system facilitated preventive maintenance, historical analysis of
the plant, as well as real time monitoring and FD.
I. INTRODUCTION In [7] an effective implementation of an intelligent remote
The photovoltaic (PV) market has seen over the last years a monitoring system for solar PV Power Conditioning Unit
remarkable growth as a result of various stimulating factors: (PCU), presented. The designed system could be installed in
the significant cost reduction of the PV modules on the solar PV-PCU in order to solve management problems,
market and the changes on support policies. These factors maintenance and shortens the mean time to repair. According
have make the return on investment of a photovoltaic system to the authors the result shows that the system can monitor,
more interesting [1]. Monitoring systems (MS) are essential for store and manipulate data from solar PV-PCU. Consequently,
supervising, controlling and performing fault detection (FD) of the remote monitoring functions are realized in real-time. In [8]
PV systems, therefore many MSs have been recently designed the authors discussed a low IoT based embedded solar PV MS,
aiming to perform a real-time monitoring of PV systems GPRS module and low cost MC were used. A sensor network
(PVSs)[ 2]. based on IoT for a robust and complex short-time (ST)
prediction system of the power output from photovoltaic
Internet of Thing (IoT) simply can be defined as a concept modules was presented in [9], and the results demonstrated the
which permits communicating different equipment to each ability of the designed approach for ST-prediction.
other using Internet or others networks, without human
interaction. The first clear vision of IoT was firstly introduced The main objective of this work is to design a low-cost
in 1999 [3]. The main idea is to connect all devices, systems prototype for monitoring electrical and climate data of a PV
and services to share data between these elements. Actually, it array (such as PV array current, PV array voltage, air
is well known that IoT allows objects to be sensed and/or temperature and solar irradiance) in real time. Two sensing
controlled remotely over existing network infrastructure, electronic circuits based on the Arduino Mega 2560 have been
making opportunities for pure integration of the physical world developed. IoT technology is used to transmit the monitored
into computer-based systems, and the main advantages are: data on the internet using a Wi-Fi module ESP-01, as well as
accuracy and efficiency improvement as well as economic we have developed a website to store and display the monitored
benefit, and the most advantage is to reduce human data in real time.
intervention[4]. The main application around the world are: The rest of the paper is organized as follows, Section II
IoT - connectivity and new business models, smart homes, describes more details about the methodology and materials.
smart cities, healthcare Industry, etc. Results and discussion are reported in Section III. The last
The application of IoT in solar energy PV systems is section reports some concluding remarks.
recently started, for example in [4] a solar energy MS using IoT
6
P V m odule current(A )
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
60
P V m odule power(W )
40
20
Fig.3a. Test facility at REL, Jijel University.
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
PV module voltage(V)
Fig.1b Measured I-V and P-V curves for one PV module PV-MSX120
(Voc=16.78, Isc=5.31, Vmpp=11.97, Impp=4.71, FF=0.63, T=24 degree C,
G=734 W/m2 )
2018 International Conference on Applied Smart Systems (ICASS'2018)
24-25 November 2018, Médéa, ALGERIA
D. Transmission techniques
In literature, numerous transmission techniques can be used
for monitoring purpose, such as Ethernet network and Zigbee
wireless network. In this paper ESP-01 Wi-Fi module is used
for monitoring data of a PV array. The implemented code into
the Arduino Mega board is developed using Arduino IDE and
the procedure of the process is shown as:
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper a low cost prototype used to monitor data from
a PV array has been designed. Recorded data has been sent to
the cloud via IoT for online monitoring of a PV array.
The experimental results demonstrate that the developed
monitoring system provide users with web-based interface, in
which users can browse the real-time PV array data such as PV
array current, PV array voltage, air temperature and solar
irradiance. The main advantages of this project are: human
intervention is significantly reduced, real time monitoring and
historical data analysis, low cost and easy implementation.
This work can be further improved and extended for fault
detection in photovoltaic systems [10]. The designed website
also could be enhanced in order to display and indicate any
fault that could be occurred on the PV systems.
14.5 30
29
28
14
Air temperatute (Degree C)
27
PV string voltage (V)
26
13.5
25
24
13
23
22
12.5
21
20 (c)100 120
12 0 20 40 60 80 140 160 180 200
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 time (min)
time (min)
(a)
650
7.4
600
7.2
550
7 500
Solar irradiance (W/m 2)
PV string current (A)
450
6.8
400
6.6 350
300
6.4
250
6.2
200
6 150
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
time (min) time (min)
(d)
(b)
Fig.4a-d. Monitored data via IoT( PV array voltage, PV array current, air temperature, solar irradiance within 3 hours on 18/09/2018 at Jijel
university, Algeria
2018 International Conference on Applied Smart Systems (ICASS'2018)
24-25 November 2018, Médéa, ALGERIA