Low Cost Remote Monitoring of Solar Plant through RS485 Communication

Abstract

Solar energy has already grown to be the go-to form of renewable energy in the modern power grid. Monitoring the generation and consumption is imperative in order to properly plan the operation as well as the installation of additional capacity. Low-cost remote monitoring of a standalone solar farm through a Raspberry Pi is proposed in this paper. RS485 is used for data transfer between the inverter and the Raspberry Pi. Remote data monitoring is then achieved by pushing the data into the cloud from the Raspberry Pi. Real-time information is made accessible which will help in preventive maintenance, fault detection and also generate a database to aid in forecasting. This IoT based solution is suitable for solar installations in remote and inaccessible areas where regular access is inconvenient. The total number of units of power generated in a day can be calculated from which an estimate can be made about the number of units generated. From this, the financial savings that can be made by implementing a photovoltaic system for energy generation.