Software and Hardware Implementation of a Graphical User Interface for Solar Power Plants

This paper presents the design of a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) that monitors and controls the real time parameters of a data logger placed in a solar power plant. To obtain the plant parameters in real time, some hardware such as PLC, energy analyzer, inverter and sensor groups are used in the study. Modbus TCP/IP port of the PLC is connected to internet protocol (IP) channel of the energy analyzer for transferring the data from the PLC to the analyzer. Inverter and sensor groups communicate with the PLC via RS485 channel. Thanks to the system achieved, all data are transferred from the PLC to cloud and also saved into a MS-SQL database. Thus, all data of the plant such as current, voltage, power, energy, irradiation, temperature, wind values and operating statuses of the devices is presented to operators both graphically and numerically in order to make the monitoring and controlling operation easily from anywhere at any time.