Development of PV Based Solar Radiation Measuring Device

The demand of electricity in Malaysia increases every year due to rapid economic development. Malaysia has started encouraging the use of renewable energy for electricity generation. For example in 10th Malaysia Plan, government has stated that renewable energy will contribute 5.5% of the total electricity generated. Besides that, government had also introduced a tariff call Feed in Tariff which encourages the users to utilize more renewable energy. Solar energy is one of the renewable energy sources that have a good prospect as we receive approximately 6 hours of sunshine every day and this make solar power generation as a good choice compared to other renewable energy. One of the drawbacks of solar energy is that this energy is not available when there is a demand. This is because the solar radiation receive fluctuates throughout the day. One of the reasons for this fluctuation is path of sun and the local meteorological conditions.
In this PV based solar radiation monitoring system is developed. The design needs a mathematical model to determine the relationship between the incoming solar radiation and output voltage of a photovoltaic module. Besides that, this project also focuses to design a PV based solar measurement system. The relationship between solar radiation and output voltage of PV module was determined by using repeated experiment which required data collection of solar radiation and output voltage PV module. The output voltage and solar radiation measurements is then compared and analysed. To model the linear mathematical equation, MATLAB and linear regression method is used. This mathematical model is then used to develop a monitoring solar radiation in a PV system. Besides that the PV module is also attached with accelerometer to measure the tilt angle that will receive the highest solar radiation. Commercially available solar radiation measuring device is relatively expensive and not affordable for all the user. In order to sustain the dynamic load, solar radiation measuring device is needed to measure solar radiation received by PV module.