A Power-Line Communication System Governed by Loop Resonance for Photovoltaic Plant Monitoring
José Ignacio Morales-Aragones,
Matthew St. Michael Williams,
Halleluyah Kupolati,
Víctor Alonso-Gómez,
Sara Gallardo-Saavedra,
Alberto Redondo-Plaza,
Miguel Ángel Muñoz-García,
Francisco José Sánchez-Pacheco,
Luis Hernández-Callejo
Affiliations
José Ignacio Morales-Aragones
Departamento de Física, Universidad de Valladolid, 42004 Soria, Spain
Matthew St. Michael Williams
Physics Department, University of the West Indies, Kingston 11000, Jamaica
Halleluyah Kupolati
Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Engineering Department (EECE Department), University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road, Hatfield, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Víctor Alonso-Gómez
Departamento de Física, Universidad de Valladolid, 42004 Soria, Spain
Sara Gallardo-Saavedra
Departamento Ingeniería Agrícola y Forestal, Universidad de Valladolid, 42004 Soria, Spain
Alberto Redondo-Plaza
Departamento Ingeniería Agrícola y Forestal, Universidad de Valladolid, 42004 Soria, Spain
Miguel Ángel Muñoz-García
Departamento Ingeniería Agroforestal, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Av. Puerta de Hierro 2, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Francisco José Sánchez-Pacheco
Departamento Tecnología Electrónica, Universidad de Málaga, Avda. Cervantes 2, 29071 Málaga, Spain
Luis Hernández-Callejo
ADIRE-ITAP, Departamento Ingeniería Agrícola y Forestal, Universidad de Valladolid, 42004 Soria, Spain
Within this paper, a PLC system that takes advantage of the loop resonance of an entire DC-PV string configured as a circular signal path is developed and implemented. Low cost and extremely simple transceivers intended to be installed within each PV module of a string have been designed and successfully tested. In addition, an anti-saturation coil has been conceived to avoid saturation of the core when the entire DC current of the string flows through it. Bi-directional half-duplex communication was successfully executed with up to a 1 MHz carrier frequency (150 kbps bitrate), using a simple ASK modulation scheme. The transmission and reception performance are presented, along with the overall system cost in comparison to the previous literature.
