International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing (ICECDS-2017)

IoT based Solar Energy Monitoring System

Suprita M. Patil Vijayalashmi M.

School of Computer Science & Engineering School of Computer Science & Engineering
KLE Technological University KLE Technological University
Hubballi, Karnataka Hubballi, Karnataka
[email protected] [email protected]

Rakesh Tapaskar
Energy Cluster
KLE Technological University
Hubballi, Karnataka
[email protected]

Abstract— The Internet of Things has a vision in which the Agency (IEA), Renewable energy will be the fastest-growing
internet extends into the real world, which incorporates everyday source of electricity, in which wind and solar PV are
objects. The IoT allows objects to be sensed or controlled technologically mature and economically affordable. But still
remotely over existing network infrastructure, creating there is increase in world’s demand for energy. Adopting
opportunities for pure integration of the physical world into
Renewable Energy technologies is one of the advance ways of
computer-based systems, and resulting in improved efficiency,
accuracy and economic benefit in addition to reduced human reducing the environmental impact.
intervention. This technology has many applications like Solar The latest edition of the IEA’s Medium-Term Renewable
cities, Smart villages, Micro grids and Solar Street lights and so Market Report specifies the renewable energy growth about
on. As Renewable energy grew at a rate faster than any other 13% more between 2015 and 2021 than it was in last year’s.
time in history during this period. The proposed system refers to The share of renewable energy in overall electricity generation
the online display of the power usage of solar energy as a will rise from over 23% in 2015 to almost 28% in 2021.
renewable energy. This monitoring is done through raspberry pi Solar energy is universally available all over the world and
using flask framework. Smart Monitoring displays daily usage of can contribute to minimize the dependence of energy imports.
renewable energy. This helps the user to analysis of energy usage.
In 90 minutes, enough sunlight strikes the earth to provide the
Analysis impacts on the renewable energy usage and electricity
issues. entire planet's energy needs for one year. Solar PV leads to no
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other pollutants during
Keywords— Renewable energy; IoT; flask; Cloud; operation. Solar has many benefits like system-friendly
deployment, improved operating strategies, advanced
I. INTRODUCTION renewable energy forecasting and enhanced scheduling of
power plants and also investment in additional flexible
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of related
resources, comprising demand-side resources, electricity
computing devices, digital and mechanical machines, objects,
storage, grid infrastructure and flexible generation.
people with unique identifiers and potential transfer of data The traditional method focuses on the levelized cost of
over a network without human-to-human or human-to- electricity (LCOE) which is a measure of cost for a particular
computer interaction. Physical objects those are no longer generating technology at the level of a power plant that is no
disconnected from the virtual world, but can be controlled longer sufficient. About a million solar panels were installed
remotely through Internet services.
every day around the world last year. Solar PV leads providing
A smart world is nothing but Smart devices, Smartphones,
almost 40% of global renewable electricity capacity growth
Smart cars, Smart homes and Smart cities. “Smart” objects over the medium-term.
play a key role in the vision of IoT, since embedded Finally, in analyzing the evolution of electricity and energy-
communication and information technology would have the consuming sectors, it explores the prime role solar energy
potential to revolutionize [12]. With the growing presence of could play in the long-term future of our energy system.
WiFi and 4G-LTE wireless Internet access, the evolution
Applications of the monitoring system are the Rooftop
towards omnipresent information and communication networks
Solar, Ground mounted Solar, Solar cities, Smart villages,
is already evident [13]. According to the International Energy Micro grids and Solar Street lights. Consumer Products like

978-1-5386-1887-5/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

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 International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing (ICECDS-2017)

solar water heating systems, Solar home lighting systems, solar Suzdalenko, Alexander, and Ilya Galkin [5] identify the
lanterns, solar pumps, solar mobile chargers, solar cookers, problem of the non-intrusive load monitoring method of load
LED solar torch, solar RO plant, solar fan, solar Inverters, etc. disaggregation into separate appliances. When some local
can be monitored through this project. Commercial Products generators based on renewable energy sources are connected
like Solar traffic signals, solar road studs/blinkers can also be to the same grid, as they may be mismatched with loads
monitored through the proposed system. variable in time.
In India, frequent power cut is very common. Due to this Nkoloma, Mayamiko, Marco Zennaro, and Antoine Bagula.
issue, it is important to use renewable energy and monitoring it. [6] describes recent work on the development of a wireless
By monitoring the energy forecast, households and based remote monitoring system for renewable energy plants
communities who are using solar power can utilize their energy in Malawi. The main goal was to develop a cost effective data
production and consumption during good weather. acquisition system, which continuously presents remote
This paper is organized into five main sections: In Section I energy yields and performance measures. The project output
we have briefly introduced about the domain. Section II gives direct access, to generated electric power at the rural site
discusses the literature survey in this area. Section III discusses through the use of wireless sensor boards and text message
the proposed work done. Section IV discusses the Results and (SMS) transmission over cellular network. Preliminary
Discussions. Section V summarizes the conclusion and lastly, experimental results reveal that the performance of renewable
the references used in writing this paper. energy systems in remote rural sites can be evaluated
efficiently at low cost.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY Nkoloma, Mayamiko, Marco Zennaro, and Antoine Bagula.
Purusothaman, SRR Dhiwaakar, et al. [1] explain about [7] are proposes a novel monitoring, control system for
the focus is on the DG agents, grid agent and Mu agents. DG achieving real time monitoring and control of a hybrid ‘wind
agents like the distributed energy resources (DERs), load, PV battery’ for renewable energy system. The proposed
storage and the grid agents. The Mu agent acts as the system constitutes a supervisory control and data acquisition
communication channel between the DG agents to the higher (SCADA) system, which employs campus network of
level agents such as the control agent. The implementation of National Cheng Kung University integrated with a
the system has been done using an Arduino microcontroller. programmable logic controller (PLC) and digital power
Author Kabalci, Ersan, Alper Gorgun, and Yasin meters. The proposed system is capable of performing real
Kabalci[2], introduces an instant monitoring infrastructure of time measurement of electrical data that can be effectively
a renewable energy generation system that is constituted with transferred to remote monitoring center using intranet. It can
a wind turbine and solar panel arrays. The monitoring be concluded from the simulated and experimental results that
platform is based on current and voltage measurements of the proposed monitoring and control system can achieve real
each renewable source. The related values are measured with time supervisory control and data acquisition of remote
the developed sensing circuits and processed by an 18F4450 various forms of renewable energy system.
microcontroller of Microchip. The processed parameters are
then transmitted to a personal computer (PC) over universal III. PROPOSED WORK
serial bus (USB) to be saved in a database and to observe the The main objective of this proposed work is to Power of
system instantly. The coded visual interface of monitoring the system can be monitor using the current and voltage value
software can manage the saved data to analyze daily, weekly sensed by the arduino. The monitor of the solar energy system
and monthly values of each measurement separately. shows the power and energy usage. This system helps to
Jiju, K., et al.[3] describes the development of an online implement in smart grid for efficient usage.
monitoring and control system for distributed Renewable A. Methodology
Energy Sources (RES) based on Android platform. This In In this section we present the system design of the
method utilizes the Bluetooth interface of Android Tablet or Solar Energy Monitoring System.
Mobile phone, as a communication link for data exchange 1) System Design
with digital hardware of Power Conditioning Unit (PCU). The proposed system is for monitoring of solar
Goto, Yoshihiro, et al [4] explained about an integrated energy using IoT. Solar panel helps to store the energy in the
system that manages and remotely monitors battery. Battery has the energy which is useful for the
telecommunications power plants has been developed and has electrical appliances. Battery is connected to the Arduino.
started operations. The system is used to operate and maintain Arduino is a micro controller which is used to read the sensor
more than 200,000 telecommunication power plants, which values. Current sensor and voltage divider are connecting to
including devices such as rectifiers, inverters, and UPSs, and the Arduino.
air-conditioning plants installed in about 8,000 Arduino is connected to Raspberry pi through USB
telecommunication buildings. Features of the system are the cable. Raspberry pi(RPi) is working as a server. The data from
integrate the management and remote monitoring functions, the arduino is display on the web page through RPi. The
into one system and improved user interfaces, which use monitoring data upload to the cloud through RPi as shown in
information and communication technology such as web the Fig 1.
technology.

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 International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing (ICECDS-2017)

Fig 1. System Design Fig 2. Voltage Divider

a) Arduino
Keeping in mind the economic constraints and the simplicity
of the system, Arduino Uno has been used which abates the
programming complexity. Arduino sense the current and
voltage value through Analog pins. With the help of these
values, Arduino programing calculates the power and energy.
b) Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi is used in the project as a central monitoring
system. As Raspberry pi board is a portable and low cost, it
reduces the system cost. As python is most used high level,
general purpose, and interpreted, dynamic programming
language. This project use python as the programming
language in the Raspberry Pi. Python web applications have
one central callable object that implements the actual
Fig 3. Current Sensor circuit
application. In Flask this is an instance of the Flask class.
With the help of python program monitoring data is upload to
the cloud. If the divider for the Arduino voltmeter is functioning
Flask is a lightweight web application framework, which correctly, then Vout will be a maximum of 5V. So we can
is written in Python and based on the WSGI toolkit and Jinja2 calculate the maximum input voltage to the circuit:
template engine. Flask using the flexible Python programming Vmax = 5.0 / [R2 / (R1 + R2)]
language and provides a simple template for web For the measurement of current we will use a Hall Effect
development. current sensor ACS 712 (30 A). ACS 712 measure positive
Rpi has the inbuilt wifi. With the internet RPi displays the and negative 30Amps, corresponding to the analog output
data on the web page and stores the data on the cloud. The 66mV/A. This current sensor gives the readings of the current.
cloud has public access so the user can access the monitoring. Those values are used in the proposed system for calculating
The user can estimate the usage and available of the battery. power. In this setup DC bulb is consider as a load. Battery is
C) Current and Voltage Acquisition Circuit considered as the power supply. Other pins of sensor is
The analog inputs of an Arduino can measure up to 5V. connects to the Arduino. Once the connection is done as
To protect the Arduino from short-circuits or unexpected shown in the Fig 3 , Arduino display the values of current
voltage surges, we use resistor while connect to the 5V circuit. flow.
The circuit of voltage divider is shown in the Fig 2. d) Temperature sensor
Two resistors form a potential divider that helps to Temperature sensor is used in this project to predict and
lower the voltage being measured to a level that the Arduino monitor the solar energy storage. According to the
can read. Fig shows the voltage divider circuit. 10kohm and temperature value, the energy storage modulates. Display the
100kohm register are used to reduce the voltage circuit to 5V. temperature values on the web page in the form of gauge.
Analog pin of arduino gives the voltage value. Breadboard is
used to build this circuit which actually extends the range that e) Cloud Setup
can be used. ThingSpeak is an open source IoT application and API to store
The formula for calculating values in a potential divider is: and retrieve data from things using the HTTP protocol over
Vout = [R2 / (R1 + R2)] * Vin the Internet or via a Local Area Network. ThingSpeak enables
the creation of sensor logging applications, location tracking

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 International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing (ICECDS-2017)

applications, and a social network of things with status

updates.
The user should create the account first. The account
contains channels which are separate for different projects.
Channel has the fields which are different for different
parameter in the monitoring system. After assigning the
parameter the system upload the values to it. The cloud has
built-in functions in it which represent the values in the form
of graphs.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION
A. Work Flow
Fig 5. Hardware configuration setup
Fig. 4 represents the process of proposed system from
Arduino sense the current and voltage value through Analog
load to the monitoring system. The work flow of the
pins. With the help of these values, Arduino programing
solar energy monitoring system is presented in the
calculates the power and energy. Output is send to the
form of step below.
Raspberry through USB cable. Raspberry pi is considered as
Step 1: Arduino display the power usage using sensed
the server. The monitor displays the web page and cloud
values through current sensor and voltage divider.
data. The components with specification used in proposed
Step 2: Raspberry pi fetch the arduino output data
system are listed in Table I below
through serial port and display on the web page through
python script. Table I. Hardware requirements
Step 3: Raspberry sends the monitoring data on to the SI Components Specifications
cloud. .No
Step 4: Cloud display the data in the form of graph, 1 Operating system Raspbian OS.
which is visible to the entire user. 2 External Hard disk 500GB
3 Microcontroller Arduino UNO 3
B. Hardware Setup 4 Processor Raspberry Pi 3
Fig 5 shows the Hardware setup of the proposed system. 5 Current sensor ACS712(30Amp)
The solar energy stored in battery by solar panel is DC
6 Temperature sensor DHT11
current. So we use DC bulb as the source of power usage.
One terminal of the bulb is connected to the battery for 7 Registers 10kohm , 100kohm
power supply. Other terminal is connecting to the current
sensor for current reading. Breadboard is used for the C. Software Setup
complex circuit to build. It also helps to build voltage The open-source Arduino Integrated Development
divider. Environment - or Arduino Software (IDE) – is used in
system for upload the code on to board. The sensor and
circuit are connect to the Arduino for communicate with
them to sense current and voltage. We write the code in c for
the sensing and calculating the power and energy.
Python is a most used high level, general purpose,
interpreted and dynamic programming language. Python2 is
used for fetching Arduino data. Python web applications
have one central callable object that implements the actual
application. In Flask this is an instance of the Flask class.
Using python and Flask, we create web page of
monitoring system as shown in Fig 6. The monitoring page
displays the table contains voltage, current, power and
energy values as shown in Table II. Below the table date and
time is displaying.
One link is there to direct to the weather monitoring page
which displays the temperature and humidity in the form of
gauge shown in the Fig 7. The page is refreshing for every
10 seconds.
Fig. 4. Work flow of the system

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 International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing (ICECDS-2017)

B. Snapshot of monitoring page in Intranet

Using python and Flask, we create web page of monitoring
system. Flask framework code is used to create web page that
can be seen in Intranet using IP address of the Raspberry Pi
system. Fig shows the monitoring page displayed on the laptop
connected to the intranet as shown in Fig 9.
The result of the system is displayed on the web page in the
form of the table contains current in amperes, voltage in volts,
power in watts and energy in watt-hours with respect to date
and time.

Fig 6. Monitoring Page Table II. Power Monitoring Table

SI.NO Data Unit
1 Current Amperes
2 Voltage Volts
3 Power Watt
4 Energy Watt hour

C. Graphs
The monitoring data sent to the cloud is store in separate
fields. Each fields display the individual graphs as shown in the
Fig 10.The graph of the temperature is shown in Fig. 11.

Fig.7. Weather Monitoring Page

With the help of python program monitoring data is

upload to the cloud. ThingSpeak cloud is used in this
project. It is an open source Internet of Things (IoT)
application and API to store and retrieve data. In this cloud
we creation the social network of things with status updates.

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The proposed work illustrates results for the Solar Energy
Monitoring System.
A. Snapshot of Solar Energy Monitoring System Setup Fig 9 Monitoring Page in Intranet
Fig 8 represent the entire hardware setup of the proposed
system.

Fig. 8. Hardware configuration setup

Fig 10. Current, Voltage, power Energy Graphs

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 International Conference on Energy, Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing (ICECDS-2017)

microgrids." 2013 IEEE Innovative Smart Grid

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT generation computer systems 29.7 (2013): 1645-1660.

We would like to thank our faculty advisor Dr.

Vishwanath.P.Baligar for helping us throughout the project
with his constant guidance. We would also like to extend our
gratitude to Mr. Gunde Shavarsidha Malasidha and Miss.
Madhu Asundi for their help in the Project.
References
[1]. Purusothaman, SRR Dhiwaakar, et al. "Implementation of
Anrduino-based multi-agent system for rural Indian

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