A new monitoring system is capable of measuring a solar panel’s voltage-intensity curve to estimate in real-time, in situ and without disconnecting the panel itself. Applied to each of the modules of a solar farm, it can detect possible faults in them and carry out preventive maintenance of the solar farm.

Applications

• Photovoltaic solar energy: The new monitoring system can be applied to large solar farm installations to optimise maintenance.

Technology Overview

The invention allows the voltage-current curves of photovoltaic solar modules to be obtained in the field, without the need to disconnect the solar modules and without on-site technical support.

The new system uses voltage-intensity curve estimation processes in which convergence and computational cost problems have been eliminated so that the equipment requirements to carry out the procedure are much lower and the execution times are entirely negligible.

It is possible to install it in each of the solar modules in an autonomous and programmable way by deploying wireless nodes, which operate in the form of a wireless network of sensors that allow real-time monitoring of the installation’s behaviour.

It measures no-load voltage, short-circuits current and voltage and current at three points, estimates the voltage-current curve and concludes the status, performance, operation and/or troubleshooting of the photovoltaic modules.

The device comprises a microcontroller system, including a radio frequency stage, which measures the parameters during regular module operation. The aim is to integrate this device into the module junction box during module manufacture, thus obtaining an intelligent solar panel.