Development of Solar Intensity Radiance Data Acquisition

Accurate monitoring and measurement of solar photovoltaic panel parameters are important for solar power plant analysis to evaluate the performance and predict the future energy generation. There are always challenges of getting such data due to huge amount of money to be spent on state of the art equipment or the purchase of reliable satellite weather data. This study aimed at the development of a cost- effective parameter-measuring and logging system for solar photovoltaic system. A PIC Microcontroller, Liquid Crystal Display, 10W Solar Panel, Real-time Clock, and analog processing circuit are the essential parts of the developed solar data logger. The system measures various parameters, including voltage, current, light intensity, together with date and time. Current sensor and voltage sensor were integrated on data logger board to measure parameter that affected efficiency of PV system. The accuracy of the developed system was determined by comparing the measured parameters with that of conventional standard measuring instruments which shows good agreement. One of the benefits of the data logger is the ability to automatically collect and store data over a long period of time. The data can be plotted into V-I graph and P-V graph for analysis. The developed data logger can be used as portable recorder to compare the solar power in different area at specific time and seasons