Arduino Based Automatic Solar Panel Dust Disposition Estimation and Cloud Based Reporting
Hebatullah M. Malik, Maha Alsabban, Saeed Mian Qaisar
Abstract
Recent technological encroachments have evolved the usage of Internet of Things (IoT) and it is becoming an elementary part of our life. Regarding the photovoltaic (PV) renewable energy-based systems there is a lot of potential to integrate the IoT based solutions in order to enhance the generation capabilities and to diminish the energy losses in the electricity production. Energy losses can occur due to several causes in the case of PVs. This work deals with the photovoltaic energy losses caused by the dust deposition. The idea is to intelligently employ the IoT framework in this regard. The system is based on a modular design approach. Each module digitizes the status of a concerned PV panel by using an embedded front-end controller. The readings are conveyed to a specifically developed automatic maintenance decision algorithm. The intended PV module data is logged to cloud in a real- time fashion for post analysis. In parallel, the designed software analyzes the instantaneous open-voltage value of the PV panel and make real time decisions if a maintenance notification is required or not. In this fashion, they can efficiently act for the PV maintenance in order to get the most out of the PVs over the system lifecycle. The constructed prototype successfully achieved its goals of automatically detecting unexpected voltage drops from a PV panel due to dust disposition and reported it to the concerned parties.