Dynamic power management for long-term energy neutral operation of solar energy harvesting systems

Abstract

In this work we consider a real-world environmental monitoring scenario that requires uninterrupted system operation over time periods on the order of multiple years. To achieve this goal, we propose a novel approach to dynamically adjust the system's performance level such that energy neutral operation, and thus long-term uninterrupted operation can be achieved. We first consider the annual dynamics of the energy source to design an appropriate power subsystem (i.e., solar panel size and energy store capacity), and then dynamically compute the long-term sustainable performance level at runtime. We show through trace-driven simulations using eleven years of real-world data that our approach outperforms existing predictive, e.g., EWMA, WCMA, and reactive, e.g., ENO-MAX, approaches in terms of average performance level by up to 177%, while reducing duty-cycle variance by up to three orders of magnitude. We further demonstrate the benefits of the dynamic power management scheme using a wireless sensor system deployed for environmental monitoring in a remote, high-alpine environment as a case study. A performance evaluation over two years reveals that the dynamic power management scheme achieves a two-fold improvement in system utility when compared to only applying appropriate capacity planning.