International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD)

Volume 3 Issue 5, August 2019 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470

Monitoring and Control of

Solar Power System using Reliance SCADA
Khin Pyone Ei Aung, Nyan Phyo Aung, Lwin Lwin Htay
Department of Electronic Engineering, Technological University, Mandalay, Myanmar

How to cite this paper: Khin Pyone Ei ABSTRACT

Aung | Nyan Phyo Aung | Lwin Lwin Htay This system presents the monitoring and control of real time data acquisition
"Monitoring and Control of Solar Power of a solar power system in reliance SCADA. SCADA (supervisory control and
System using Reliance SCADA" Published data acquisition) systems are currently employed in many applications, such
in International as home automation, greenhouse automation, and hybrid power systems.
Journal of Trend in Commercial SCADA systems are costly to set up and maintain; therefore those
Scientific Research are not used for small renewable energy systems. This system demonstrates
and Development applying Reliance SCADA and Arduino Uno on a small photovoltaic (PV) power
(ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456- system to monitor the current, voltage, of the PV and battery and also control
6470, Volume-3 | the load from SCADA. The designed system uses low-cost sensors, an Arduino
Issue-5, August IJTSRD26459 Uno microcontroller, and free Reliance SCADA software. The Arduino Uno
2019, pp.787-790, microcontroller collects data from sensors and communicates with a computer
https://doi.org/10.31142/ijtsrd26459 through a USB cable. Uno has been programmed to transmit data to Reliance
SCADA on PC. In addition, Modbus library has been uploaded on Arduino to
Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and allow communication between the Arduino and our SCADA system by using
International Journal of Trend in Scientific the MODBUS RTU protocol. The results of the experiments demonstrate that
Research and Development Journal. This SCADA works in real time and can be effectively used in monitoring a solar
is an Open Access article distributed energy system.
under the terms of
the Creative KEYWORDS: Current Sensor, Voltage Sensor, Solar PV System, Reliance SCADA
Commons Attribution I. INTRODUCTION
License (CC BY 4.0) For several hundred years, fossil fuels have been consumed as the main source
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by of energy on Earth. As a result, they are now experiencing rapid depletion.
/4.0)
Researchers and scientists who understand the importance machinery in a field. The Industrial SCADA System falls into
of renewable energy have dedicated their efforts to the this category for monitoring. It provides an HMI by
research, expansion, and deployment of new energy sources displaying process variables to the operator and allowing
to replace fossil fuels. Photovoltaic (PV) is an important control of the plan. Functions of the SCADA system A SCADA
renewable energy source. Solar energy is the energy that is system have two basic functions, the first of which is to
available from the sun in abundance. Solar power is the display information about the current operating conditions
conversion of sunlight into electricity. Electricity can be of a plant in an informative and graphical interface/trends
generated in two ways with the help of solar energy or the and the second is to allow supervisory control of the plant by
sun’s energy. It can be generated Firstly, with the help of personnel/data acquisition [2].
photovoltaic electricity and secondly with solar thermal
electricity. Photovoltaic electricity is a method that uses In this paper, designed SCADA system is of lower price
photovoltaic cells to capture direct sunlight. Solar energy compared with a commercial SCADA system, and it delivers
plays an important role as a primary source of energy, the same performance. In order to test this work, the SCADA
especially for a rural area. This paper aims at the system is employed for monitoring the parameters of solar
development of process and Reliance SCADA for real-time energy systems (photovoltaic) in real time, which consist of a
monitoring [1]. solar module and batteries. The parameters are the current
and voltage of the photovoltaic (PV) system and the current
SCADA is a software process control system that enables a and voltage of the battery. The data acquisition system is by
site operator to monitor and control processes that are Arduino controller and sensors. All data are sent to a PC and
distributed among various different sites. SCADA system is are shown on a user interface designed by Reliance SCADA.
often referred to as telemetry importance. Traditionally,
SCADA systems have made use of the Public Switched II. Block Diagram Of The System
Network (PSN) for monitoring purposes to save time. Today Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the overall system. A
many systems are monitored using the infrastructure of the SCADA system is used for automation and controlling of the
corporate Local Area Network (LAN)/Wide Area Network other supporting devices: those are microcontroller and
(WAN) and industrial networking. Another common term many sensors. Actually, this system consists of three
used to describe a SCADA system is just like to Human sections. They are power section, data collecting and sending
Machine Interface (HMI). It is used to describe any system section and monitoring and control section.
that provides an interface between a person and a piece of

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
III. Hardware Configurations
A. Arduino UNO
The Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board based on the
ATmega328P shown in figure 3. It has 14 digital
input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs),
6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB
connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button.
It contains everything needed to support the
microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB
cable or power it with an AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get
started. The Uno differs from all preceding boards in that it
does not use the FUDI USB-to-serial driver chip. Instead, it
features the Atmega16U2 (Atmega8U2 up to version R2)
programmed as a USB-to-serial converter [3].
Figure1. Block Diagram of Proposed System
In the power section, there are four devices. They are solar
panel, charge controller, battery and load. The first device is
a solar panel which converts directly to electricity from
sunlight. This electricity is stored in the battery through the
second device to use the energy at night. The second device
is a charge controller, which is installed between the solar
panel and battery to detect the overload voltage. The device
which included in power section is load.
In the second section, this section which acts on collecting
and sending data. Arduino microcontroller is the main device Figure3. Arduino Uno Microcontroller
in this section. This microcontroller collects the parameter
data such as voltage and current from the solar power B. Current Sensor
system by voltage and current sensors. These sensors are Current sensors for DC currents must be able to measure
connected with analog pins of the Arduino microcontroller. range currents for PV and batteries between 0A and 20A. In
The parameter data of solar and battery such as voltage and this system, the ACS 712 sensor used for sensing the current.
current are sent to the third section by the microcontroller The current sensor is as shown in Figure 4. It is designed to
through the USB cable. This USB cable is MODBUS RTU with be easily used with any microcontroller, such as Arduino.
a speed rate of 9600. The sensors are based on the Allegro AC712ELC chip. The
scale value of ACS 712, which is used in this design, is 20
In monitoring and control section, the computer running amps, which is appropriate for sensing current. Two sensors
Reliance SCADA is including. The user can be seen the values are installed: one is installed before the charge controller to
of voltage and current come from a solar power system on measure the PV current and the other is installed after the
this SCADA screen. In this SCADA system, the user can also charge controller to measure the battery current. Figure 4
be controlled such as ON/OFF function to the load. In this demonstrates how it connects in an electrical circuit with
research, designed SCADA system is lower price compared Arduino Uno.
with a commercial SCADA system, and it delivers the same
performance. System flowchart of this system is shown in
Figure 2.

Figure2. Flowchart of the System Figure4. Current Sensor

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
C. Voltage Sensor B. The communication system between Arduino and
The function of voltage sensors, which are based on just two SCADA
resistors, is to turn a large voltage into a small one. In this Table1: Allocation of MODBUS address for MODBUS RTU
work, the voltage sensor is a 30V-sensor with two resistors Arduino MODBUS RTU
Variable name
of 50KΩ and10 KΩ. The maximum voltage of either PV is 30V Address address
or battery is 13V, so this sensor is appropriate. The voltage of the PV
3001 0
system
The current of the PV
3002 1
system
3003 Voltage of battery 2
3004 Voltage of Current 3
The efficiency of the
3005 4
charge controller

MODBUS library is added to Arduino Uno to allow

communication with Reliance SCADA via a USB cable using
MODBUS RTU protocol. Table 1 shows the allocation of
MODBUS address for MODBUS RTU on Reliance SCADA
software, with the MODBUS address for Arduino Uno
mentioned in the Arduino code.
Figure 5: Voltage sensing circuit V. Test And Result Of The System
The output of the voltage sensor is between 0V and 5V. This
scale is suitable to the Arduino analog inputs. In this
proposed system, two voltage sensors: one is installed
before the charge controller to measure the PV voltage and
the other is installed after the charge controller to measure
the battery voltage. Figure 5 demonstrates how it connects
in an electrical circuit with Arduino Uno.

IV. Software Description

A. Reliance SCADA
Reliance software is employed in numerous technologies for
monitoring and controlling systems. It can also be used for
connecting to a smart phone or the web. Reliance is used in
many colleges and universities around the world for
education or scientific research purposes. Figure.6 shows a
user interface designed by Reliance SCADA software to
monitor the parameters of the photovoltaic system. The user
interface has four real-time trends and four display icons to Figure7. Testing the Overall System
show values as digital numbers. MODBUS library is added to
Arduino Uno to allow communication with Reliance SCADA In Figure 7, the Arduino and sensors were setups on the
via a USB cable using MODBUS RTU protocol. circuit board and when it was successfully worked the LCD
monitor has displayed the solar voltage, solar current,
battery voltage, and battery current. These values are sensed
by Arduino microcontroller to the computer running
reliance SCADA through the USB cable (MODBUS) with the
speed rate of 9600bps. Arduino IDE software is used for the
system. Reliance SCADA software was used for SCADA
server.

The reliance SCADA system was designed and built with

Reliance SCADA software and Arduino Uno. The SCADA
system was applied to a stand-alone photovoltaic system to
monitor the current and voltage of PV and batteries. This
voltage is varying with respect to the atmospheric condition
such as irradiation value of solar light and atmospheric
temperature. The results show the voltage variation and
behavior of the solar panel recorded during different
duration of time and days. Due to the low and high intensity
of the sunrays, the voltage of the solar panel varies. The total
simulation has been successfully simulated in Reliance
Figure6. The user interface of the SCADA system SCADA using Arduino.

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 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
voltage of the photovoltaic (PV) system and the current and
voltage of the battery. The data acquisition system is by
Arduino controller and sensors. All data are sent to a PC and
are shown on a user interface designed by Reliance SCADA
via MODBUS. This proposed system not only monitors the
sensor data, like the voltage, current but also actuates a
process according to the user command, for example
switching on the light when it gets dark. As the Reliance
SCADA software is free, numbers of sensors are limited (at
most four sensors).

Acknowledgment
The author thanks Dr. Nyan Phyo Aung, Associate Professor,
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
for kind permission to prepare for this paper, for his close
Figure8. User Interface of SCADA System while Running supervision, helpful advice, encouragement, and numerous
with Load (OFF) invaluable guidance. The author would also thank all
teachers and friends who willingly helped the author
In this research, relay and load are used to detect controlling throughout the preparation of the paper.
from a computer running Reliance SCADA. The load
(ON/OFF) can be controlled from SCADA. This condition is as References
shown in Figure 8 and 9. [1] Shubhankar Mandal1 and Dilbag Singh2 1M.Tech.
Scholar and 2Associate Professor Department of
Control & Instrumentation, National Institute of
Technology, Jalandhar, India, real time data acquisition
of solar panel using Arduino and further recording
voltage of the solar panel, Vol.7, No.3, July 2017
[2] Narayan Lal Purohit#1, Anshika#2 #1M. Tech(Power
System), Jaipur Institute of Technology, Jaipur
#2B.Tech (EE), Institute of Engineering and
Technology, Alwar Rajasthan Technical University,
Kota, data acquisition of solar power plant using
SCADA system, Volume23 Number 4- May 2015
[3] Abhishek Parikh, Farah Pathan, Bhavdipsin Rathod,
Sandeep Shah, Solar Panel Condition Monitoring
System based on Wireless Sensor Network,
Figure9. User Interface of SCADA System while Running Engineering and Technology research (IJSETR),
with Load (ON) Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2015
[4] Ranon Satitpanyapan, SCADA and Monitoring for Solar
VI. Conclusions
Energy Plant
In this system, the Reliance SCADA system is used to monitor
the values of current and voltage where PV and battery and [5] Oran Chieochan, Ph.D, Email:
control the load. A Reliance SCADA system was designed [email protected], Anukit Saokaew , Email:
with Reliance SCADA software and Arduino Uno. The SCADA [email protected], School of Information Technology,
system was applied to a stand-alone photovoltaic system to Faculty of Science, Lampang Rajabhat University,
monitor the current and voltage of PV and batteries. Arduino Lampang ,52100, Thailand , Ekkarat Boonchieng, Ph.D.
collects data from many sensors and these data are sending Center of Excellence in Community , Health
to the computer running Reliance SCADA through the USB Informatics, Department of Computer Science, Faculty
cable by the microcontroller. For monitoring the values of of Science, Chiang Mai, 50200, Thailand ,Email:
current and voltage, analog pins of the Arduino are used and [email protected], Internet of Thing (IoT) for smart
digital pins used for load control. This voltage is varying with solar energy: A case study of the smart farm at Maejo
respect to the atmospheric condition such as irradiation University
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[6] Ali Al-Dahoud, Mohamed Fezari, Thamer A. Al-
test this work, the SCADA system is employed for monitoring
Rawashdeh, Ismail Jannoud, Improving Monitoring and
the parameters of solar energy systems (photovoltaic) in
Fault Detection of Solar Panels Using Arduino Mega in
real-time, which consists of a solar module, MPPT charge
WSN, London United Kingdom Mar 14-15, 2015, 13 (3)
controller, and batteries. The parameters are the current and
Part VII

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