Data Acquisition System for Solar Panels

PV plants require monitoring to determine their performance ratio which is observed over time. Before constructing a solar energy system, it is important to know in advance how much energy such a project could potentially harvest from the sun and to identify the sources of losses which usually are pollution, cloudiness, and heat. For this reason it is essential to consider the solar irradiance. This paper describes the design and implementation of a data acquisition system used to determine the Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI). It also uses and open-source clear sky model to estimate if the full potential of the solar energy is harvested on cloud free days. The necessary data travels with the aid of a Raspberry Pi from the pyranometer to a virtual machine hosted in the university. This VM uses a suite of available open-source solutions through its application of visualization, monitoring and analysis software. The collected solar radiation values from the pyranometer are cross referenced with the ones obtained from the solar radiation prediction model. This monitoring and analysis system is integrated alongside a PV plant to determine the performance of the energy harvested from the solar panels.