Autonomous Multifunctional Measuring Device for Monitoring the Characteristics of Photovoltaic Modules

摘要

Abstract The study provides a multifunctional measuring device that searches for the maximum energy output using a certain algorithm and calculates the fill factor and efficiency of a solar module. It also monitors the air temperature and relative humidity, the temperature of the solar module, the level of solar radiation, wind speed, and current and voltage of the solar module. An electrical circuit for measuring the current–voltage characteristic of photovoltaic modules is proposed. In addition, rechargeable batteries allowing measurements without connecting the device to a power supply ensure autonomy of the device. An algorithm is proposed for finding the point of maximum power of a photovoltaic module. The device is developed on the basis of an ATmega2560 microcontroller with additional sensors. The measuring device software sends all acquired data from the device to a computer to be saved in a database.