Open -source technologies and IoT as a tool for meeting the challenge of mass-scale Solar Home Systems monitoring in developing countries

Solar Home Systems have been widely introduced in developing regions, usually in poor and isolated locations with lack of access to electricity, clean water and/or sanitation. Mass-scale monitoring of these photovoltaic systems would provide valuable information such as their detailed real performance, facilitating the detection of operation failures associated with technical and/or maintenance issues, improving the long-term usage by the final users. Current challenges that new monitoring systems will require are presented, along with an assessment of current available methods and technologies, including the recent advances on open-hardware and software platforms and the rapid upcoming of the Internet of Things.