IoT-Based Solar Monitor System

Energy monitoring of PV-based energy systems is required for several convincing reasons, including the rising need for the same, high operational costs, and high energy prices. This paper presents the development of a real-time, IoT-based solar monitoring system. General purpose microcontroller has been integrated with current and voltage sensors to collect the data. The collective data is displayed, and the power produced is calculated using an IoT analysis platform. Actual current, voltage and power measurements have been done using an available ammeter, voltmeter and wattmeter respectively. Calculation of the error between the actual measurements and IoT-based measurements is calculated under various load conditions. A tiny flash memory card has been used for long-term storage. Thing Speak an IoT-based analytics platform service has been used for visualization and analysis. The performance evaluation which is done on the basis of error calculation reveals the conformity between the actual and the IoT-based measurements. The developed system has been validated under constant temperature and humidity conditions. In future, the model can be tested for variable temperature and humidity conditions on hybrid PV systems.