Perspectives of PV Microgeneration in Brazil: A Proposition of Regulation Enhancement Methodology

The solar photovoltaic (PV) generation is disseminating on multiple kinds of sites due to the energy market liberalization, the renewable energy sources subsidies policy, the decreasing of acquisition costs and the adaptability to different installation conditions. These factors allowed the growth of PV generation, especially in the distributed generation (DG) segment. Meanwhile, the development of a legal and regulatory apparatus became mandatory to assure benefits to DG-adopters, without causing damages to the utility grid, preventing technical failures and eventual excessive pricing to non-adopters. As the technology innovations impose new possibilities and the number of adopters grows exponentially, the challenges become more visible and a regulation update, urgent. In this context, this paper aims to review the current pricing model for DG in Brazil, focusing on PV microgeneration, and to propose a methodology based on the Delphi Method to enhance the most critical topics of the on-going regulation

Design and construction of a didactic standalone photovoltaic plant

This paper proposes the design and construction of a standalone didactic photovoltaic (PV) plant. The system components are available as a didactic kit to the students of the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Ceará (IFCE), Brazil. Thus, contributing to the teaching-learning process and providing a system to be used in future researches. In addition, the system was designed for supplying electricity to the lighting circuit of the Energy Processing Laboratory, located at IFCE Fortaleza Campus. The PV system developed during the work has an autonomy of 900 Ah and the total installed power of 840 Wp. Using a data capture system, a generation generated by the PV microgeneration was registered in operation up to 647 W

Embedded System for Real Color Composition in Experimental Physics

Software can be considered educational when properly contextualized in a relationship of teaching and learning. This paper describes an embedded system and an educational software developed and applied in experimental physics to real and virtual colors composition. The educational system developed allows student interaction by voice commands, which makes the assimilation process of red/green/blue (RGB) color formation concepts more didactic and playful. The application of educational software in experiments also allows to verify, in real time, the influence of programs change on the physical phenomena and stimulates the logical reasoning development and consequently the autonomy of the students, to the measure that can raise hypothesis, make modifications in the programming and take off conclusions from the practical results obtained

A Low Cost Concept for Data Acquisition Systems Applied to Decentralized Renewable Energy Plants

The present paper describes experiences of the use of monitoring and data acquisition systems (DAS) and proposes a new concept of a low cost DAS applied to decentralized renewable energy (RE) plants with an USB interface. The use of such systems contributes to disseminate these plants, recognizing in real time local energy resources, monitoring energy conversion efficiency and sending information concerning failures. These aspects are important, mainly for developing countries, where decentralized power plants based on renewable sources are in some cases the best option for supplying electricity to rural areas. Nevertheless, the cost of commercial DAS is still a barrier for a greater dissemination of such systems in developing countries. The proposed USB based DAS presents a new dual clock operation philosophy, in which the acquisition system contains two clock sources for parallel information processing from different communication protocols. To ensure the low cost of the DAS and to promote the dissemination of this technology in developing countries, the proposed data acquisition firmware and the software for USB microcontrollers programming is a free and open source software, executable in the Linux and Windows® operating systems