The ERDA/LeRC photovoltaic systems test facility

A test facility was designed, and built to provide a place where photovoltaic systems may be assembled and electrically configured, to evaluate system performance and characteristics. The facility consists of a solar cell array of an initial 10-kW peak power rating, test hardware for several alternate methods of power conditioning, a variety of loads, an electrical energy storage system, and an instrumentation and data acquisition system

Preliminary results from the advanced photovoltaic experiment flight test

The Advanced Photovoltaic Experiment is a space flight test designed to provide reference cell standards for photovoltaic measurement as well as to investigate the solar spectrum and the effect of the space environment on solar cells. After a flight of 69 months in low earth orbit as part of the Long Duration Exposure Facility set of experiments, it was retrieved in January, 1990. The electronic data acquisition system functioned as designed, measuring and recording cell performance data over the first 358 days of flight; limited by battery lifetime. Significant physical changes are also readily apparent, including erosion of front surface paint, micrometeoroid and debris catering and contamination

PEMBUATAN SOFTWARE TELEMETRI SISTEM MONITORING DAYA LISTRIK PANEL SEL SURYA MENGGUNAKAN JARINGAN Wi-Fi

The software telemetry monitoring system for electric power of solar cell panels using Wi-Fi network. This device can be used for monitoring and research of electric power solar cell panel which is very useful for monitoring electrical power systems solar power plants.The making of this software uses Borland Delphi 7. Acquisition of data from the microcontroller to a computer based on the principle of 16-bit serial data communications uses Comport component, with the alignment of several important parameters in data communication, such as: the level of voltage (RS232), baudrate (speed of data transmission), format (data length), and synchronization (simultaneity). Data acquired in the form of electrical power, electrical current, voltage and power are generated by solar cell panels. The data is stored and processed using the MySQL database 5.1. The software has been created consisting of client and server. Transmission of data from the server to the client uses Wi-Fi network through the zeos connection component. From this research was obtained software that can measure voltage, electric current and electric power from solar cell panels are monitored from the server station and client stations.Data from read by the application server from the microcontroller can be stored in a MySQL database. This software include with a warning system in the form of alarm when the input data is too low. This software also equipped with facilities to export data in excel file, searching through the four parameters and print the record data directly from the application

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition system applied to a researching purpose microgrid based on Renewable Energy

[EN] Control and data acquisition systems are required in researching facilities to analyze the behaviour of any process. In this paper, the results of the design and implementation of an automation and control system applied to a microgrid based on renewables energy are shown. The microgrid is located in the Laboratory for Distributed energy resources – LabDER at the Institute for Energy Engineering at UPV. The brain of the system is a PLC, programmed to carry out several tasks to guarantee the correct operation of the system. The measuring devices used are power meters, anemometer, temperature sensors and a solar cell to measure irradiance. The communication protocol used is Modbus TCP IP, Modbus RS-485 and Xanbus. All the information is centralized using a SCADA as an HMI. As a result, a robust control, and data acquisition system, able to manage a microgrid for researching purpose was obtained.The authors gratefully acknowledge to the Universitat Politècnica de València and the Instituto Universitario de Ingeniería Energética for their support to accomplish this work.Vargas Salgado, CA.; Águila León, J.; Chiñas Palacios, CD.; Alfonso Solar, D. (2021). Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition system applied to a researching purpose microgrid based on Renewable Energy. En Proceedings INNODOCT/20. International Conference on Innovation, Documentation and Education. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 233-239. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2020.2020.11898OCS23323

Design and Development of a Solar Module Health Monitoring Device

Solar power has emerged as a promising renewable clean energy source and installations of solar panels are increasing sharply year after year. Monitoring the power output and health of solar panels is critically important to ensure safe and reliable operation of a solar power plant throughout its operational lifetime. In this project, we have designed and built a low-cost electronic device that is capable of measuring the electrical parameters of a solar cell or module. The device consists of a microprocessor with integrated analog-to-digital converter, a supercapacitor bank, current sense amplifier, and electromechanical relays. The microprocessor performs data acquisition through fast sampling of voltage and current, and intelligently controls the charging and discharging of the supercapacitors to trace the current-voltage characteristics of a solar cell in less than 10 seconds. Performance of our device is validated with standard laboratory measurement instruments. Our developed device has integrated Wi-Fi communication capability which allows it to directly connect to the internet and send the data to a remote computer. We developed a python program that runs on the remote computer enabling further data processing, analysis, and continuous remote online health monitoring of solar panels. Device design, fabrication, programming, and experimental data acquired on a polycrystalline silicon solar cell will be presented. Our device will facilitate remote and autonomous detection of anomalous characteristics of a solar panel operating in the field and alert the users or maintenance crews of utility companies to replace a faulty panel on time, thus improving system reliability and safety

Light Induced Degradation Quantification by Monitoring the VOC Output of Silicon Solar Cell Using Low-Cost Real-Time Virtual Instrumentation

Silicon-based solar cells suffer from different types of light-induced efficiency losses (can cause up to 10% loss), known as light-induced degradation (LID). Impurities, such as boron, iron, and oxygen, are common at different concentrations in these solar cells. They form active recombination defects in boron-doped mono-crystalline (Cz-Si) and multi-crystalline (mc-Si) solar cells during illumination. For the solar industry, this will lead to serious financial loss, hence the importance of inspecting and controlling the LID level accurately. Seeking to minimize the human factor and the inaccuracy that comes with it, we have proposed in this research a low-cost virtual instrumentation solution to provide a new real-time instrumentation technique for solar cell characteristics such as open circuit voltage (VOC). The virtual data acquisition system (VDAS) design is based on a low-cost Arduino board associated with MATLAB/Simulink software. Moreover, this system can collect in real time the values of solar cell outputs under prolonged illumination and under different temperatures of the LID test. Further, kinetic modeling of the solar cell output VOC variation as a function of light soak duration; shows the predominance of one type metastable defect over the LID test of c-Si solar cells. Additionally, degradation mechanism in mc-Si solar cells involve more than one metastable defect and are more complexes due to the mc-Si substrate elaboration technique compared to c-Si substrate. Furthermore, the temperature dependence of the concentrations (NVoc) and the thermal activation energies of the defects have been extracted from the experimental VOC measurements obtained using the VDAS. Finally, the system minimizes the test period and errors for solar cell characterization compared to traditional approaches

Spectroscopic Behavior of Composite, Black Thermal Paint, Solar Cell, and Multi-layered Insulation Materials in a GEO Simulated Environment

Materials currently populating Earth orbital regimes can be distinguished by comparing remote observational data to that of optical material measurements obtained in the laboratory. Experimentation for this research primarily involved the acquisition of spectroscopic measurements on materials of interest to the telescopic observational community for enhanced space situational awareness. Common spacecraft materials worthy of preeminent analysis for this investigation include a carbon-carbon (c-c) matrix composite, various black thermal paints, a GPS solar cell and three different cover glass components. These materials were subjected to a simulated geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) space environment with the intent of observing material optical property behavior over quantitative exposure time. The aforementioned materials have been measured in their pristine and GEO simulated exposed conditions. A reflectance spectrometer and a bi-directional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) optical system have been operated to perform material characterization, optical property analysis, and to further compare such data to telescopic observational data acquired on equal materials

Preliminary Findings of the Photovoltaic Cell Calibration Experiment on Pathfinder Flight 95-3

The objective of the photovoltaic (PV) cell calibration experiment for Pathfinder was to develop an experiment compatible with an ultralight UAV to predict the performance of PV cells at AM0, the solar spectrum in space, using the Langley plot technique. The Langley plot is a valuable technique for this purpose and requires accurate measurements of air mass (pressure), cell temperature, solar irradiance, and current-voltage(IV) characteristics with the cells directed normal to the direct ray of the sun. Pathfinder's mission objective (95-3) of 65,000 ft. maximum altitude, is ideal for performing the Langley plot measurements. Miniaturization of electronic data acquisition equipment enabled the design and construction of an accurate and light weight measurement system that meets Pathfinder's low payload weight requirements

Experimental Design for the LATOR Mission

This paper discusses experimental design for the Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity (LATOR) mission. LATOR is designed to reach unprecedented accuracy of 1 part in 10^8 in measuring the curvature of the solar gravitational field as given by the value of the key Eddington post-Newtonian parameter \gamma. This mission will demonstrate the accuracy needed to measure effects of the next post-Newtonian order (~G^2) of light deflection resulting from gravity's intrinsic non-linearity. LATOR will provide the first precise measurement of the solar quadrupole moment parameter, J2, and will improve determination of a variety of relativistic effects including Lense-Thirring precession. The mission will benefit from the recent progress in the optical communication technologies -- the immediate and natural step above the standard radio-metric techniques. The key element of LATOR is a geometric redundancy provided by the laser ranging and long-baseline optical interferometry. We discuss the mission and optical designs, as well as the expected performance of this proposed mission. LATOR will lead to very robust advances in the tests of Fundamental physics: this mission could discover a violation or extension of general relativity, or reveal the presence of an additional long range interaction in the physical law. There are no analogs to the LATOR experiment; it is unique and is a natural culmination of solar system gravity experiments.Comment: 16 pages, 17 figures, invited talk given at ``The 2004 NASA/JPL Workshop on Physics for Planetary Exploration.'' April 20-22, 2004, Solvang, C