Hand Held Data Acquisition Device for Solar PV VI Characteristics Under Flashing Light
Date
2015-09
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kazuo Inamori School of Engineering at Alfred University
Abstract
A device was developed that is specifically designed to acquire data from a solar
panel within this short time frame with the use of a microcontroller. The microcontroller
was used to make a portable device that could capture and transfer this data to a computer
for further analysis. Circuitry was developed to connect between a solar panel and a fixed
load resistance. The voltage across the load resistor, and other internal components would
be captured by two microcontrollers to simultaneously acquire data. This data could be
then used to illustrate the IV curve of a solar panel connected to this apparatus. Two
prototype designs were created for acquisition. The first being larger scale, using an
oscilloscope and function generator. The second design eliminated the need for these
larger pieces of equipment by replacing them with microcontrollers, and a direct digital
synthesizer (DDS) respectively. Experiments were performed on two solar panels under
the ideal solar radiation of 1000 w / m2, using different input signals. One prototype using
two different oscilloscopes, and one hand held prototype were designed and compared.
The results proved favorable as the three experiments gathered similar data to the solar
panel manufacturers data.
Description
Advisory committee members: Wallace Leigh, Joseph Rosiczkowski. Dissertation completed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering at the Kazuo Inamori School of Engineering at Alfred University.
Type
Thesis