Development of an Irradiance Meter using Arduino Technology

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of microcontroller development boards like the Arduino UNO for measuring solar irradiance. Solar irradiance is the amount of solar power received per unit area. Measuring solar irradiance is of prime importance as it is essential to determine the feasibility of a site for establishing a solar power plant. However, the measurement poses significant challenges, such as site-specific measurements and climatic dependency. Commercial meters that are used for measurement are quite expensive. In the proposed methodology, various types of equipment such as Arduino UNO, LCD, Solar panel, current sensor, Datalogger Shield, and additional sensors for humidity and temperature are used for the measurement. This proposed device can act as an inexpensive alternative to commercial ones. The Solar cell sets forth a small amount of current that is detected by the current sensor and interfaced with the Arduino UNO. This data is logged into the Secure Digital (SD) memory card using the Datalogger shield module. Similarly, the data from the DHT11 (Humidity and temperature sensor) is also recorded on the SD card. The recorded data can be organized into a Comma Separated Value (CVS) file listed according to the date and time of measurement.

Keywords

• solar photovoltaic panel
• temperature and humidity sensor
• lcd
• datalogger shield
• current sensor
• arduino uno