Design and development of a wireless sensor network time synchronization system for photovoltaic module monitoring

Abstract

Since the working situation of photovoltaic modules cannot be tracked in the real time and defective components cannot be located and controlled specifically, a remote monitoring system of photovoltaic modules based on wireless sensor networks is designed to improve the management efficiency of photovoltaic power plants. The monitoring data (current, voltage, and illumination, etc.) of photovoltaic modules are collected by the wireless sensor network nodes in real time, and then, there are orderly transmitted to the coordinator and server by the ZigBee communication protocol with the time synchronization algorithm. Time synchronization algorithm based on Gaussian delay model performs best in synchronization accuracy and energy-efficient reference broadcast synchronization algorithm is the most advantageous in synchronization energy consumption. Adaptive energy–efficient reference broadcasting synchronization algorithm is proposed with a balance between energy consumption and accuracy, which is applicable to large networks and thus conducive to the application of wireless sensor network in large-scale photovoltaic module monitoring. With the analysis and processing of the received data, the situation of the photovoltaic modules can be accordingly judged and thus the information management of photovoltaic power plant can be realized. For a photovoltaic power plant with a total power output of 100 kW and with 400 photovoltaic modules, experimental results show that the overall efficiency of the photovoltaic power plant can be increased by a wide margin.