Data Acquisition System for Photovoltaic Water Pumping System in the Desert of Tunisia

This paper presents a data acquisition system with available components and study of the feasibility of different existing methodologies linked to the field's data acquisition from remote photovoltaic (PV) water pumping systems. The data transmission serves to collect field's parameters such as water flow rate, global irradiation on an inclined and horizontal surface, voltage and current of photovoltaic field and ambient temperature. Various existing techniques are studied especially satellite, Radio, GSM (global system of mobile communication) and GPRS (general packet radio service). The system's hardware and software and an application to test its performance are described. The system will be used for reading, storing and analyzing information from several stations of PV water pumping located in remote areas in the arid region in the south of Tunisia. By this integrated system, we can constitute a complete data base of the different parameters related to PV water pumping systems in Tunisia. This data could be available on internet to interested parties.