Development of DC Energy Meter for Renewable Energy Application

Abstract

The world we live in, is becoming more and more dependent on electrical energy, which, sadly, still heavily relies on outdated techniques involving the burning of fossil fuels. Fortunately, more and more people are accepting the fact that this system simply isn’t sustainable in the longer-run. Even if air pollution wasn’t a huge factor, the shortage of these resources is something that is bound to happen in the nearest future, and it would pose an impassable obstacle towards the future growth of mankind. Hence, importance of renewable energy is such an important trend for the future of mankind. At present, net AC meters are available for measurement of four quadrant energy, which is used at output of both on grid and off grid solar inverter. This meter can measure both, energy fed into the grid and energy utilize from the grid. However Energy generated by solar panel cannot be measured directly. Even in off grid inverter the present net meter cannot measure energy generated by solar panel. In case of DC micro grid, where DC energy is used/ consumed directly by the load, the present net meter cannot be used as they can be used in AC energy measurement only. With the launch and implementation of national energy saving and emission reduction policies in relation to distributed power supply by renewable power generation, the DC energy metering technology will become an inevitable trend, breaking the landscape dominated by AC in the field of electric energy metering. This paper describes introduction, block diagram [1], Hardware and software description for development of dc energy meter.