Investigations of the instantaneous performance of a solar chimney power plant installed in Aswan using IoT

Abstract

Although solar chimney power plant (SCPP) has a promising potential to convert the solar energy to electric power, greater efforts are needed to ensure its successful commercialisation on a large scale. The main obstacles with regard to the large-scale applications of SCPP are its efficiency, bulk size and dependency on solar irradiation. A comprehensive study on the integration of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) as a novel technique to monitor and hence improve its performance is presented. A small-scale SCPP is designed and constructed specifically for this purpose in Aswan, Egypt. The instantaneous performance parameters (temperature, solar intensity, wind speed, open circuit voltage, power etc.) were measured and further processed using IoT. The results show that IoT has a promising potential to enhance the performance of the system by providing a complete picture of the whole measurements. This is considered as a step forward for enhancing the technologies which will ensure the success of large-scale SCPP in the real world.