A real time, wireless and low cost data acquisition system for residential PV modules

The extensive increase in photovoltaic (PV) system installations is related to the drop in the renewable energy equipments cost. A big number of these PV generation systems are installed in inaccessible locations. Therefore, sophisticated wireless data acquisition systems are required for the monitoring of these installations. In this context, the present paper deals with a low cost measurement system based on an STM32 microcontroller. This system aims to measure the current and the voltage and to calculate the resulting power and energy of a residential PV system. The collected data are stored into a micro SD card, and are sent to the user via Bluetooth. This measurement system will afford a real time monitoring of the installation that will facilitate its maintenance, fault detection and will provide a record of all the data at fixed intervals.