DEVELOPMENT OF AN EMBEDDED WIRELESS PYRANOMETER USING NODEMCU

Abstract

Solar radiation monitoring is a crucial step in estimating the size of solar modules, as well as their best position and inclination angle for maximum power generation. Standard large-scale solar radiation measurement tools are prohibitively expensive, need specialist skills to operate, and are unavailable in emerging economies. As a result, this inquiry recommends the use of a NodeMCU development board as the processing unit for a low-cost wireless pyranometer. A solar module and an ACS712-05B current sensor as the sensory unit and a 16x2 LCD screen as the display unit make up the proposed instrument. By closely monitoring the short circuit current of the module and deducing the output voltage of the current sensor, the proposed meter determines the instantaneous solar radiation. In this study, the measurements are communicated to the ThingSpeak (an Internet of Things analytics platform that sends sensor data privately to the cloud) so that the measured data could be accessed remotely. Two daystar DC-05 pyranometers geo-located for solar irradiation measurements were used to compare the proposed meter's field performance. The pyranometers' performances were found to be equivalent, each exhibiting a Root Mean Squared Error of 0.0946705 and 0.064885 respectively.