Low-Cost Data Acquisition Systems for Photovoltaic System Monitoring and Usage Statistics

This paper presents the design of a low-cost DAS (data acquisition system) for monitoring a PV (photovoltaic) system’s electrical quantities, battery temperatures, and state of charge of the battery. The electrical quantities are the voltages and currents of the solar panels, the battery, and the system loads. The system uses an Atmega328p microcontroller to acquire data from the PV system’s charge controller. It also records individual load information using current sensing resistors along with a voltage amplification circuit and an analog to digital converter. The system is used in conjunction with a wall power DAS for the recording of regional power outages. Both DASs record data in microSD cards. The data have been successfully acquired from both systems and have been used to monitor the status of the PV system and the local power grid. As more data are gathered, it can be used for the maintenance and improvement of the PV system through analysis of the PV system’s parameters and usage statistics.

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