2021 International Conference on Converging Technology in Electrical and Information Engineering (ICCTEIE)

Development of an IoT Based Monitoring System

for Solar PV Power Plant Application
2021 International Conference on Converging Technology in Electrical and Information Engineering (ICCTEIE) | 978-1-6654-0081-7/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICCTEIE54047.2021.9650634

Ahmad Saudi Samosir Ade Fachrur Rozie Sri Purwiyanti

Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
Departement of Electrical Engineering
University of Lampung University of Lampung
University of Lampung
Bandar Lampung , Indonesia Bandar Lampung , Indonesia
Bandar Lampung, Indonesia
[email protected] [email protected]
[email protected]
Herri Gusmedi Misfa Susanto
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Lampung University of Lampung
Bandar Lampung, Indonesia Bandar Lampung, Indonesia
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—Internet of Things (IoT) provides opportunities The proposed system was tested through the experiment.
for the internet to expand into the real domain of human life The system is set up comprising of solar panels, voltage
which includes industry and everyday equipment. With IoT, transducers, Hall Effect current sensors, temperature sensors,
people are allowed to sense and to control objects remotely over Arduino Uno microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi modules. The
existing network infrastructure. It creates many opportunities programming code was developed using the Arduino IDE and
for pure integration of the physical world into computer-based the Python programming language as well as data
systems. IoT results in increased efficiency, accuracy and visualization carried out on the designed website.
economic benefits, while reducing human intervention. This
paper presents the development of an IoT-based monitoring This system is able to monitor PV voltage and current,
system for Solar Power Generation Applications. The Internet Battery voltage and current, the voltage of the output, the
of Things Technology can greatly improve performance to current of the output, and the temperature of ambient. The
monitor, and maintain photovoltaic solar power plants. The system sends collected data to the server and displays
proposed system will display the use of current and voltage on graphical data on a designed website that can be retrieved
the Solar Power Generation system online. This monitoring from anywhere through the internet.
system is carried out using Arduino Uno and Raspberry Pi.
The rest of this paper is structured as the following. After
Keywords—PV Power Plant, monitoring system, Internet of this introduction section, state of the arts for solar photovoltaic
Things, raspberry pi in Indonesia is discussed in Section 2. Section 3 presents IoT
based monitoring system and it is followed by discussing IoT
I. INTRODUCTION based solar PV monitoring system in Section 4. Section 5
The internet of things (IoT) has become a revolution for presents the monitoring results and its discussion. Section 6
all aspects of human life in the era of the industrial revolution concludes this paper.
4.0. IoT comes with the idea to connect all sensors and devices
through public networks such as the internet, either through II. SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC IN INDONESIA
cable or wireless. Therefore, users can access data and control Indonesia has great solar energy potential due to its
devices from anywhere in the world through the internet [1- geographical location which consists of islands located in the
2]. With IoT technology, the process of automation using pre- tropics and crossed by the equator. Indonesia has high levels
defined logic is aimed to reduce human intervention as less as of sun radiation that can be utilized. Based on solar radiation
possible. In recent years, it has received a lot of attentions due data collected from 18 locations in Indonesia, solar radiation
to its very rapid and diverse use in the fields of consumer in Indonesia can be classified as follows: irradiation in the
electronics, home automation, health care, smart cars, smart Western Region of Indonesia around 4.5 kWh / m2 / day with
cities and security purposes [3]. a monthly variation of around 10%, and in Eastern Indonesia
around 5.1 kWh / m2 / day with a monthly variation of around
One of clean energies is the energy resulted from solar that
9%. Thus, Indonesia's average solar radiation potential is
is rich in some parts of the globe and easy to harvest it. Solar
around 4.8 kWh / m2 / day with a monthly variation of around
energy is becoming increasingly popular with its
9.5%. So that solar energy is one of the important renewable
technological advancements and decreasing costs. The
energy sources in Indonesia.
electrical power harvested from a Solar PV system is
vulnerable to variations of the weather, such as changes in One method for utilizing solar energy that has been
solar radiation, temperature and many other factors. This widely developed in Indonesia today is Photovoltaic
causes monitoring of Solar PV power plant to be very Technology. Photovoltaics (PV) is a method of producing
important [4]. With modern monitoring and control systems, electric power by converting solar radiation into direct
solar energy has become an increasingly reliable energy current electricity using semiconductors that demonstrate the
source and for near future, it is likely even substitute photovoltaic effect.
completely the traditional sources of energy.
The photovoltaic system is one of the important
An IoT-based monitoring system was chosen to avoid the renewable energy sources that offers many advantages such
dangers caused by cable systems. Meanwhile bearing in mind as the energy produced is not polluting, requires little
that the emerging requirements in the near future are that each maintenance, most promising and inexhaustible. In the
device needs to be smart, automatic, and connected via application of photovoltaic systems, solar panels equipped
internet [5]. with supporting components to form a complete PV system.

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 2021 International Conference on Converging Technology in Electrical and Information Engineering (ICCTEIE)

The supporting components used in a PV system consist of making decisions related to utilization, replacement, and
inverter, battery, charge controller, and other parts as shown system reliability.
in Fig. 1.
III. IOT BASED MONITORING SYSTEM
As a result of the advancements of computers and
telecommunications fields, all aspects of life need the internet
in this modern era. Supported by the development of
applications and usage of mobile communication devices, the
smart livable environment which is called as the internet of
things (IoT) can be built. In principle, the expression of IoT
idea can significantly to promote the information exchanges
via the context-aware applications among anything from any
place in the world at any time [7].
In recent years, the IoT applications spread into many
fields which can be categorized into four categories namely
personal/home uses, enterprise, mobile, and utilities [8]. One
of example for the applications of IoT in the personal/home
uses is IoT in the healthcare. In this case, the monitoring of
patient conditions in the real time manner can be provided by
the IoT supports. Fig. 2 illustrates the IoT application in the
personal/home uses in the monitoring system for healthcare
Fig. 1. Solar photovoltaic system. application with the support of solar PV monitoring system
using IoT.
The main device in solar PV system is Solar Cell that can
capture sunlight and convert it into direct current electricity. The applications of IoT in the enterprise category include
In its use, several solar cells are connected in series and smart home, smart cities, and smart environments. In case of
parallel to form a PV module, and some PV modules can be smart home, it means that all home appliances such as
connected in series or in parallel to increase the output power television, refrigerators, washing machines, lamp, etc. can be
of the PV system. connected, controlled, and monitored by mobile phone from
anywhere. For the purpose of home security, unoccupied
The energy produced by solar panels, will be regulated
home is likely be monitored from far distant using a mobile
through a charge controller to be stored in batteries. The
phone. When an unforeseen coming in to enter the house, the
battery in the PV system serves to store electrical energy
security system will send an alert to the house owner
obtained from the conversion of solar energy and is ready to
automatically.
supply electrical energy to the load at any time.
The IoT is used to enhance the comfortableness of public
The charge controller can prevent battery over-charge and
transportation usages for the mobile category applications,
over-discharge automatically. Due to the cycle times of
such as building the smart traffic control and monitoring.
charge, discharge and the depth of discharging is the main
Wireless sensor network can be used to provide the air quality
factor to determine the usage of battery life, therefore a
conditions, gas emission monitoring, and the controlling of
charge controller is an essential equipment. The charge
traffic light. In addition, the control and monitoring of vehicle
controller can be used to supply power for DC device which
speed on the road can be carried out.
is with solar panels. The charge controller can supply a
regulated DC output and store the excess energy in a battery, Furthermore, the smart energy and smart grid are the
and it can also prevent over or under charging by monitoring examples of IoT applications for the utilities category. In this
the battery voltage. case, IotT is used to build those systems in managing the
distribution and consumptions of energy. One of specific
Inverter is a device that can transform direct current into
example for this category is IoT based solar PV monitoring
alternating current. Since solar cells and batteries are DC
that is described in this paper.
power sources so an inverter is needed when the load is an
AC load. According to the operating mode, the inverter can IV. SOLAR PV MONITORING SYSTEM BASED ON IOT
be divided into stand-alone inverters and grid inverters.
Stand-alone inverters are used in solar power generation In this paper, the considered system has the capabilities to
systems operated independently to supply a separate load. measure the values of voltage, current, and temperature of
Grid inverters are used in solar power generation systems that Solar PV as well as sending them to the users through mobile
are connected to the electricity grid. networks with internet connection for the data logging and
review. In addition, the system can warn the user by sending
The PV monitoring system is aimed to provide the alert signal to the user using the SMS message. Fig. 3
information about some parameters of PV system. The depicts the system schematic diagram.
parameter to be measured for PV system are output voltage,
output power, output current, output energy [6]. It is also The solar PV voltage and the current are sensed by the
noticeable that the most eminent operational and metrological circuit of voltage divider and by using Hall Effect Current
parameters are solar radiation, temperature, PV voltage and Sensor, respectively. In principle, Hall Effect means on the
current, while other parameters are configuration dependent. generation of voltage difference caused by the conductor that
The monitoring system consists of numerous sensors that is carrying a current in a perpendicular mode of magnetic field
provide information of different assets under various [9]. The current sensors of Hall Effect work based on this
conditions. This information can be used by operators in principle. In order to feed the expected output to be measured,

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 2021 International Conference on Converging Technology in Electrical and Information Engineering (ICCTEIE)

Fig. 3. IoT based solar PV monitoring system.

the system uses an installation of eight 125W Solar Panels

from Emeral Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Containing a total of
1 kW system. Fig. 4. Display of the system.
The sensor temperature of LM35 is used to perceive the
temperature. Very accurate readings in terms of degree the user can access the collected data and monitor the
Celsius over the range of 0-100oC could be resulted in by this installation of the solar PV from anywhere suing the internet
setting, meanwhile very low current about 60 micro-Amps can connection. The data is displayed as a graph as shown in Fig.
be drawn. 4. In Fig. 4, Grafik Tegangan Panel Surya, Grafik Tegangan
Baterai, and Grafik Tegangan Output mean Solar Panel
Arduino Uno microcontroller is employed to process the Voltage Graph, Battery Voltage Graph, and Output Voltage
data that is obtained. And then, the resulted data is sent as Graph, respectively, captured from the display of the
serial input to the raspberry pi module. The Arduino board monitoring system. The on/off buttons to turn the solar PV
functions as a micro-processor in this conceptual system in
system on or off are also provided at the website to control
which it processes the incoming information sensed from the
the system and other devices attached to the system.
numerous sensors. Since the Arduino board diminishes the
requirement of various components such as the regulator for Kind of data on the website are PV voltage and current,
constant DC voltage, the hardware of the burner and it does Battery voltage and current, Output voltage and current, also
not entail a software separately to convert the codes into ambient temperature. The data are collected from the sensors
hexadecimal file and it is burnt into the microprocessor, the and the data has been captured every 5 seconds along the day.
Arduino board is chosen for the main board of the system. All Fig. 5 shows the example of the data for 24 hours. It is
tasks are carried out by Arduino IDE and they are burnt into depicted that the PV voltage starts to reach high voltage at
Arduino board through an USB chord. The Arduino uno used about 6.00 am and move to low voltage at 6.00 pm. It is
is the microcontroller board that is based on a processor of reasonable results because PV voltage depends on
ATmega328P. The coding can be done as needed by means of availability of sunlight.
Arduino IDE using C/C++ language and we can upload the
codes straightforward to the board. In the field of embedded VI. CONCLUSION
electronics, the board has broad area of applications. The IOT based solar PV monitoring system has been built
decision whether the values obtained by the various applied successfully. Solar panel has generated electrical energy
sensors are at the pre-determined limits is depending on the which measured by sensor and the data sent on internet. The
code of logics applied to the Arduino board. The data sensed data can be real-time monitored by user from mobile
by the sensors is processed by the board and they are sent to telecommunication devices. Also, user is able to turn on/off
the raspberry pi module through serial communication
protocol. And then, the data is sent by the raspberry pi to the
internet through Local Area Network (LAN) cable; therefore,
the data can be accessed and viewed then anywhere on the
globe by using the internet connection.
V. MONITORING RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The designed system has the main aim in sending the data
through the internet. The Arduino board senses the various
values of data from the sensors and processes it and then send
it to the raspberry pi module through the serial
communication protocol. From this point, the data is sent to
the internet through LAN. The website user interface is built
and can be accessed through a PC and mobile phone at
http://iot.mte.eng.unila.ac.id. Therefore, it is expected that Fig. 2. IoT based healthcare monitoring system.

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 2021 International Conference on Converging Technology in Electrical and Information Engineering (ICCTEIE)

Fig. 5. Example of data measured along 24 hours.

the system and other devices connected to the system through Research, Technology and Higher Education
the website. All of data also save in data logger for (Kemenristekdikti) Republic of Indonesia for the funding
documentation and analysis purpose. This research may supports for this research project.
contribute to realize smart livable environment in the future.
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 2021 International Conference on Converging Technology in Electrical and Information Engineering (ICCTEIE)

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