Remote monitoring system design for photovoltaic panels

Abstract

The design and implementation studies of a remote monitoring system are presented in this study. The proposed design is improved in terms of smart metering infrastructure based on current, voltage, and power measurements. The communication among the photovoltaic (PV) panels and host PC is performed by designed ZigBee transceiver system. Sensing circuits are very important devices to measure for both current and voltage magnitudes of electrical systems. The measured data are processed by the microcontroller unit (MCU) and are modulated after signal processing operations for wireless transmission. Although the transceiver is configured to execute bi-directional communication, unidirectional data flow is performed where the smart metering system transmits data to monitoring substructure. The monitoring software is also implemented in the context of the presented study. The Visual Studio.Net software development kit is used to design and to code the software. The performed experimental studies showed that the proposed real time monitoring and smart metering system could be exploited to monitor current, voltage and power magnitudes of the PV panels in an efficient way.