An Industry 4.0 Approach for Photovoltaic Plants Monitoring

Abstract

The exploitation of photovoltaic energy has experienced a great growth worldwide in recent years. Photovoltaic installations are characterized by the presence of a large number of devices and elements. This situation makes the operation and performance of a photovoltaic installation dependent of a large number of parameters and variables. Moreover, due to the size of some photovoltaic installations, a high volume of heterogeneous data is produced. Traditional approaches cannot tackle with such a huge amount of generated data. Through the adoption of a software architecture based on Industry 4.0. Key Enabling Technologies (such as Internet of Things and Big Data, among others), it is possible to improve the monitoring and operation procedures of photovoltaic plants.

Keywords

• photovoltaic
• Industry 4.0
• internet of things
• Big Data