A Communicating Solar Panel
ATIFI Youness1, RAIHANI Abdelhadi1 and KISSAOUI Mohammed1
1 Electrical Engineering and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (EEIS), ENSET Mohammedia,
Hassan II university of Casablanca, Morocco
Abstract. In the sense of supervision and in the context of the development of
photovoltaic installations, it seems very important to share the data or the phys-
ical and electrical characteristics that by turning the solar panels, these data will
be exploited to locate the defects or to have a database that will be exploited
for predictive studies ... However, this sharing must be secure and on a large
scale...
The objective of this study is to produce a prototype of a smart solar panel ca-
pable of enriching us with data and information on location and climate as well
as production. In addition, the smart PV solar panel is equipped with a network
of sensors.
However, this network must allow the necessary measurements of the panel pa-
rameters and climate namely panel temperature, current, voltage and PV power
as well as ambient temperature, solar radiation.
Finally, the smart PV solar panel must share the data of the mentioned pa-
rameters with the cloud service.
Keywords: PV panel, IOT, Embedded Systems, Arduino, ESP 8266, Renewa-
ble Energy, Smart Systems.
1 Introduction
In Morocco and all over the world, electrical energy consumption is very much
faster. It seems that, there is a trend towards energy consumption, which will con-
tinue to increase, driven by economic growth on the one hand and increased per
capita electricity consumption on the other, regardless of the scenarios envisaged.
We periodically talk about various technical solutions to keep this pace of vie.
The depletion of fossil resources in the long term, the soaring prices of crude oil, and
the fight against greenhouse gas emissions make it urgent to control consumption
and diversify energy sources: the use and development of renewable energies.
Supervision has an imperative value in the objective of limiting production losses
and improving the performance of installations. Thanks to an alert system, a defect
analysis is possible to reduce the cost of maintenance and avoid unnecessary travel
[1].
2
In this sense of supervision and in the context of the development of renewable en-
ergies, it seems very important to share data or physical and electrical characteristics
which by turning the solar panels, these data will be used to locate defects in a pho-
tovoltaic power plant or to have a database that will be used for predictive studies.
However, this sharing must be secure and on a large scale.
This study consists of making a simple solar panel into a smart solar panel capable
of enriching us with data and information on location and climate as well as produc-
tion.
In addition, the smart PV solar panel is equipped with a network of sensors. How-
ever, this network must allow the necessary measurements of the panel parameters
and climate, namely panel temperature, current, voltage and PV power as well as
ambient temperature, solar radiation, wind speed and direction.
Finally, the smart PV solar panel must share the data of the mentioned parameters
with the cloud service.
Fig. 1. The organization of the sensor node.
The paper is organized as follows: energy management strategies in a microgrid are
described in Section 2; the Microgrid cost model is developed in Section 3; The
application of the optimization strategy is analyzed in Section 4; Results and
comparisons are checked in Section 5.
2 Related Works.
Photovoltaic energy is a clean, green, and virtually inexhaustible energy. To improve
the production, transport and even consumption of this energy, a control and super-
vision system can be a solution to limit production losses and improve the perfor-
mance of installations. Thanks to an alert system, a fault analysis is possible to re-
duce the cost of maintenance and avoid unnecessary travel.
There are many systems for evaluating the performance of a photovoltaic installa-
tion. These systems, usually specific to inverters, evaluate the performance of the
3
installation by measuring the power provided by the panels and the associated en-
ergy. Some systems allow, for example, the comparison between the actual produc-
tion of an installation and the theoretical production. An alert is sent to the user
warning of anomaly on the PV installation. This methodology allows the detection
of an anomaly on the installation but has limitations, on the location of defects and
is generally carried out retrospectively [2 9 25].
We can distinguish between two types of superior strategies: classic strategies and
advanced strategies, in this part we present you a kind of comparison between these
two types of strategies [2].
Table 1. comparison table between supervision strategies.
Classic Supervision Advanced Supervision
Advantages -High Transmission -Real-time navigation.
Speed.
-Ease of modification of the
control law.
-Weak connection between
the hardware volume and the
complexity of the problem.
-Large-scale communication.
Disadvantages -Controller volume propor- -Speed inversely proportional to
tional to the complexity of the complexity of the problem.
the problem.
-Depends on the geographical
-Changes to the control state.
involve wiring changes.
Lately several researches aimed at the integration of IOT systems in the field of solar
energy, this immigration to IOT systems is justified by several reasons namely the
high cost of supervising conventional installations, the problems of continuity of
service and the lack of data sharing as well as in old installations it is difficult to
continue production and locate defects [3 Vinay Gupta 4 A F Gunawan, ]
The use of IOT in this sector makes it possible to face all these problems and improve
the production chain especially in large solar projects.
4
3 Map Modeling
3.1 Characteristics of the panel studied
For this study we chose the BP Solar 340 photovoltaic module. The BP Solar 340
provides cost-effective photovoltaic power for general use by direct operation with
direct current loads, or with alternating current loads on inverter systems. This genera-
tor is efficient thanks to the use of polycrystalline cells, its performance has high tem-
peratures and robust design make it a durable generator in the field and easy to install.
La figure (Fig.2) gives the characteristics of the BP Solar 340 module under standard
conditions (1000 W/m², optical mass: AM 1.5, Cell temperature: 25 °C).
Fig. 2. Panel Characteristics.
3.2 Constituents of our IOT system
And as this study is part of IOT projects, it is necessary to collect all the technolog-
ical systems that can intervene to build a smart and connected solar system. Table 2
shows the minimum environment to make the system studied smart and communi-
cating.
Table 2. constituents of our IOT system.
Sensors Connec- Integration Data pro- Net-
tion cessing work
-Current and
voltage sensor
WIFI Advanced Arduino
A 219 B ESP Middleware Mega 2560
8266 (Thing- Internet
-Temperature speak)
and humidity
sensor DHT11
and LM35CAZ
5
-Illumination
sensor ALSPT19
-Wind sensor
PCE-WS P et
PCE-FST-200-
202-I
The choice of the different elements was carefully made we take in consideration the
characteristics of the solar panel and the cost the reliability as well as the speed of each
component and the storage memory of the processing unit [5 6 7 8 9 10 11].
This IOT system is organized into four parts, the first part is a map that receives the
physical and electrical quantities (temperature, humidity, voltage, current and sunshine)
and the second part is a data processing unit, the third is a remote data communication
unit and the last part is the exploitation of data on the cloud using the ThingSpeak web-
site.
Figure (fig.3) present the final electrical diagram of the map under ISIS Proteus.
Fig. 3. Electrical diagram of the board.
4 Implementation and results
The design and simulation of the Arduino board card and sensors firstly were done on
Proteus 8 professional platform (as shown in the figure 3) and the final simulation was
done on the real board card Arduino ATMEGA 2560.
6
4.1 Operating algorithm and simulation results
The flowchart in Figure 4 describes the operating algorithm of the electronic board.
Fig. 4. Operating flowchart.
At startup, the card allows the user and thanks to its LCD display to have information
about the designer of the board, the company and finally the name of the card.
Once the start is complete it appears on the LCD display the most important
information such as the date, the hour, and the temperature.
The microcontroller updates the results after every 5 minutes and returns the new values
to the display and storage organs.
The storage of the data is done thanks to a text file, executable by the Excel software,
Figure 6 shows the content of the text file after a series of measurements, the update in
this case is accelerated to have the maximum amount of data and to check the proper
functioning of the simulation.
Fig. 5. Organization of data.
4.2 Prototype of the smart panel
Figure 6 shows the final view of the prototype, all the components of which are
grouped in a suitable box.
7
Fig. 5. Prototype of the smart panel.
The display of the data on the ThingSpeak Middleware is organized in the represented
form by Table3.
Once the connection of ESP and middleware are established, the owner or user of the
card can access his channel in private or public mode to follow the operation of his card
or to make interventions if necessary. The data is displayed in real time and in the form
of graphs. Figures 5-11, ..., 5-14 show the results of measured magnifier displays.
Table 3. The organization of data on ThnigSpeak.
Graphic field number 1 Current in mA
Graphic field number 2 Power in mW
Graphic field number 3 Voltage in V
Graphic field number 4 Irradiation in W/m²
Graphic field number 5 Temperature in °C
Graphic field number 6 Humidity in %t
Graphic field number 7 Cell temperature in °C
Once the connection of ESP and middleware are established, the owner or user of the
card can access his channel in private or public mode to follow the operation of his card
or to make interventions if necessary. The data is displayed in real time and in the form
of graphs. Figures 6, ..., 9 show the results of measured magnifier displays.
Fig. 6. Power and Current Display.
8
5 Conclusion
Where control and management in a distribution network is not based on good
strategies result in an inefficient and unstable power supply to charges and entails high
operating costs for consumers However, energy management in a micro grid requires
an intelligent optimized controller to organize and manage the operation optimally and
efficiently.
This study shows you the effectiveness of determinist optimization strategies
compared to other strategies based on rules in a micro grid with five sources under
different charging conditions.
The main objective of the optimized controller is to minimize the total cost of operation.
The aim is soon and in new research work to develop a controller based on stochastic
optimization strategies such as the genetic algorithm.
we chose to treat the genetic algorithm in our next work because we want to make at
the end a kind of comparison between heuristic and metaheuristic strategies, and we
want to treat the advantages and limitations of this algorithm to open to other
techniques.
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