From a manually driven stand alone PV plant to a remotely monitored and intelligently managed one

The paper outlines a stand alone (S.A.) PV plant of 3 kWp linked to an agro-refrigeration unit during summer period and to the loads of the solar energy laboratory the rest of the year. It also describes the procedures followed to convert it to a remotely monitored one using the Web services. The signals and data from the different elements of the PV plant are managed through MatLab software loaded in a PC dedicated to the plant. For this purpose, a special data acquisition and management system was developed. In addition, the global solar radiation along with other signals from the Meteo Station, were transferred to the same PC. A solar radiation prediction model, developed in MatLab, was used to provide ex ante the energy to be delivered by the PV generator during a day. The PC is linked to the Web, where PV data are presented on line. It is, then, possible to remotely control and manage the PV plant by distance, on a daily basis. In this mode, the loads are prioritized, so that the daily energy harvested may power the loads according to their priority.