Smart component monitoring system increases the efficiency of photovoltaic plants

Abstract

Abstract Due to the increasing expansion of renewable energy, especially the widespread installation of solar power plants worldwide, to better exploit and increase the efficiency and quality of power generation, we need to closely monitor the performance of important components of the plant. In this study, using an innovative smart monitoring system and electronic sensors, we monitored components such as power in photovoltaic (PV) arrays in real time, including the phenomenon of hot spots as an example of power loss in PV panels. Detection of hot spots is very difficult to deal with in a large power plant. The results also demonstrated smart monitoring that increased detection speed and increased the efficiency rate per supervisory technician by ≤36% compared with the previous efficiency rate, which was 10% per technical staff, and increased the quality of the operation of each solar power plant. In this paper, meteorological data were coordinated with research data to validate the research. Furthermore, to compare the results of using the smart monitoring method with the conventional observation method, a complete diagram of a 5-kW solar system in MATLAB® 2018 was simulated and output diagrams were presented. Finally, to provide a comprehensive validation, our research results were compared with technical data obtained from a local 5-kW solar power plant located in Sari, Iran (36°33ʹ48″N, 53°03ʹ36″E) with an average annual irradiation of 1490 kWh/m2. When the simulation results and research are analysed, it is clear that the smart and real-time monitoring approach brings various benefits to solar power plants.