IoT-based Energy Monitoring and Controlling of an Optimum Inclination Angle of the Solar Panels.

Copious and accessible sun radiation creates an attractive system for converting solar energy into electrical energy. The solar power plants are installed in remote locations and hence needs monitoring and controlling system from remotely. A computerized remote solar plant monitoring system with an enormous range of solar Photovoltaic (PV) exploitation needs well-developed systems with Web-based interfaces. This research work focuses an inter-disciplinary field of renewable solar power plants located in the southern region of India, integrating with recent digital technology of Internet of Things (IoT) which supports to monitor real-time data of solar irradiation (G), temperature (T), clearness index (Kt), panel voltage (Vpv), current (Ipv), peak power (Pmp), and tilt angle of solar panel (β°) and also to control the optimum inclination angle (β°opt) of the solar panel for maximizing of PV power using Genetic Algorithm (GA). An integrated solar power plant with IoT is developed with hardware setup and virtually tested for enhancing the tracking behavior of the proposed system. The IoT-based control of solar power plant significantly improves the performance of monitoring and maintenance of the power plant parameters with cost-effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]