Introduction: (Wireless Power Monitoring System)
We are the Electrical Engineering team of UCF from the year 2010/2011.As fresh Engineers, we are looking to provide solutions to the energy supply in a green manner. And a great way of doing that is using natural resources, mainly using PVC also known as Photovoltaic Cell or Solar Cell. The idea is to create a solar farm within the property of the UCF campus so we can cut down the energy cost. For our senior design project we only considered one array of 11 PV panels. This project was done in collaboration with Industrial and Mechanical Engineers.
An array of solar panels is installed on campus. The array consist of 11 solar panels. The installation and connection of the panels were done at the field reserved for the future PVC farm. Mounting was done with the help of mechanical engineers. All the panels are connected in series connection. The most important part of our project is the panel monitoring. Each panel is connected to a voltage, current, and temperature sensor determining the output voltage, current, and temp. from each panel. The sensors then sends the data to a microcontroller. Microcontroller is hooked up to a wireless device which transmits the data wirelessly to a base computer and displays the data. This will allow us to monitor each panel output voltage, current and power individually. For example, if panel X is producing only 100 volts and it is supposed to produce 150 volts, by wireless computer monitoring, we will know it is panel X that is malfunctioning and needs maintenance. We can then approach the problem directly for maintenance or troubleshooting.