A low-cost, real-time monitoring system for PV plants based on ATmega 328P-PU microcontroller

Abstract

This paper presents a real-time monitoring system for PV power plants based on a microcontroller Atmega328P-PU. The proposed system, whose performances can be relatively close to those achieved with commercial monitoring systems, is simple, low-cost and open source technology-based. In addition, a user interface, capable to communicate through a wireless network by using a standard communication protocol IEEE 802.15.1, is here presented. From the experimental tests described and discussed in this paper it is demonstrated that the proposed monitoring system provides, with adequate accuracy, all the information about the operating status of the PV plant, even during fault conditions.