Monitoring and Configuration of Energy Harvesting System Using WSN

Abstract

Energy harvesting (EH) system is a new concept introduced for capturing or reusing energy from natural resources like solar energy and wind energy. The EH system consists of two key components i.e. an EH unit and an energy storage device. Monitoring and control of EH system is essential for its efficient and effective functioning, and reduces the cost required for replacement of damaged storage devices caused due to overcharging. This research article propose an architecture for monitoring voltage / state of the charge of EH system during charging and discharging process i.e. essential to protect the storage device from overcharging / deep discharging using Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology. A prototype of voltage monitoring slave sensor unit is designed to monitor overcharging / deep discharging of EH system. The monitored voltage is communicated to the sink at periodic intervals. Master slave wireless communication is set up using Zigbee wireless module to enhance communication between the monitoring slave sensor unit and master. The system is also scaled using remote configuration capability to extend the monitoring of EH system by setting up threshold limit to protect the storage device from over charging. By setting up the threshold limit an alert is generated by the monitoring unit and communicated to master over Wireless Network (WN), the remote configuration also provides to put the monitoring unit in low power mode to extend the monitoring unit life.