A Small Scale Photovoltaic Energy System Based on Lab
VIEW Monitoring by Using Data Acquisition System
M.A. Zakaria1, A.F. Ayob2 and W.B. Wan Nik3
1,2,3
Department of Maritime Technology, Faculty of Maritime Studies & Marine Science,
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia
Email: m_afiq84@yahoo.com.my
Abstract - This paper studied the usage of
virtual monitoring system in order to monitor
the performance of the photovoltaic energy
system. It explained the development of
automated monitoring measurement system for
small scale solar PV plant in Universiti Malaysia
Terengganu, Malaysia. This study used the data
acquisition system (DAS) whereby all the data
for the parameters were recorded and shown
through the software. The measurement for all
data e.g. voltage, current, temperature, humidity
and power were gathered using sensor,
microcontroller (Arduino) data acquisition
module, and LabVIEW software. The objective
of this study was to investigate the performance
of photovoltaic energy system in the UMT area
by using the monitoring system. The most
significant advantage of this system was the
performance could be monitored virtually and
remotely where the data could also be retrieved
on-line. Furthermore, this system also allowed
the collection of data for long period of time with
no interruption by human. Lastly, this study
would be advantageous to generate more
environmental friendly energy production
initiatives and offer suggestions in the
prospective of building the solar system in UMT
at the larger scale as well as urging more
researches on solar beam to be carried out in the
future.
Index Terms — acquisition, labview, microcontroller,
real-time, wireless.
I. INTRODUCTION
Renewable sources of energy like solar, wind,
hydro, geothermal and biomass were essential
alternatives to fossil fuels that depleting fast. By
using these sources, it would be helpful not only in
reducing the emission of greenhouse gas gained
from the energy generation and consumption but
also lessened the dependency on imports of fossil
fuels for a country [1]. These types of energy
sources had been contributing to the rapid growth
of Malaysia’s economy [2]. The dependency on this
sources would increase correspondingly as
Malaysia was progressively moving towards an
industrialized country [2][5]. The tropical climate in
Malaysia was favourable for the development of
solar energy. This was because the average of local
sunlight irradiance per year was 1643 kWh/m2 [5].
Photovoltaic cells produced electricity when
sunlight excited electrons in the cell. The sunbeams
in Malaysia was available throughout the year and
this gave advantages for the development of solar
energy. Solar energy was the most prominent source
of clean and renewable energy. Plus, it had the
greatest potential to solve the world energy
problems [6]. Malaysia was one of the countries
that rich with solar force. The annual average of
daily solar irradiations for Malaysia had a
magnitude of 4.21–5.56 kW h m-2 and the sunshine
duration was more than 2200 h per year [3].
Meanwhile, the annual average daily solar
irradiation for Malaysia was from 4.21 kWh m -2 to
5.56 kWh m-2 [5]. The highest solar radiation was
estimated at 6.8 kWh m-2 in August and November
while the lowest was 0.61 kWh m -2 in December
[3]. Fig. 1 showed the annual average of solar
radiation in Malaysia.
Fig. 1: Annual average solar radiation
(MJ/m2/day)
Photovoltaic conversion was the direct
conversion of the sunlight into electricity with no
inverting heat engine. Photovoltaic devices were
solid state; therefore, they were rugged and simple
in design and required very little preservation [7].
Perhaps, the biggest advantage of solar photovoltaic
devices was they could be constructed as stand-
alone system in order to give outputs from
microwatts to megawatts. That was the reason of
why they had been used as the main power sources
for calculators, watches, water pump, remote
building, communications, satellites and space
vehicles, and even megawatt scale power plants [8]
[9]. Photovoltaic panels could be used to form
components of building features such as roof
shingles and wall panels. (Goswami, 1999)
The development of photovoltaic systems was
accompanied by a rapid adaptation of measurement
and control systems to the latest trends in digital
techniques and computer-aided measurement [11].
The specialized photovoltaic (PV) data acquisition
systems (DAS) had been recognized as an
inevitable tool in the PV monitoring systems and
the data collecting for the optimizing the
performance of energy conversion [12]. Since years
ago, diverse DAS had been used in different
equipments to evaluate:
 the performance of solar cells and
modules in outdoor conditions,
 long term stability and reliability of PV
systems components (PV modules and
arrays, charge controllers, inverters etc.),
 performance of different PV devices in
strongly chargeable conditions,
 theoretical assumptions and analyses.
This PV monitoring system did not have a
fixed pattern. It depended solely on the objectives
and technologies used for that project. Normally,
the PV system tested and evaluated the capacity of
the system by using sensors along with the proper
software [10]. Nowadays, the monitoring systems
measured and collected data in a digital form [13].
Thus, hardware that could perform the data
acquisition with capability to do the remote
monitoring was needed. A good design for this
monitoring system should have minimum impact on
the performance of the generating system and the
monitoring system should not consume more than 5
percent of the total output of that PV Generating
System [12].This monitoring system was used to
observe whether the generating system was in
normal circumstance or not.
Generally, this monitoring system ought to
monitor the system every day and was able to
report the result daily, monthly or yearly. Thus, the
computer measurement and monitoring system
played an important role because it was a highly
flexible system for installing new sensors,
measuring instruments and different types of
hardware. Moreover, the software should also be
flexible, could be used with many types of
hardware, easily developed or be the software that
had a capability to program with modular graphical
programming language.
Lab VIEW, a program by National Instruments
fitted all these requirements and was widely used
among researchers and engineers [13]. It was a
good option to use the mentioned software to
develop this monitoring system for PV-Wind
energy. The development could be done parallel
with the generating process. Plus, the software
could also be easily edited. Besides that, the system
might be implemented on Microsoft Windows,
which able to work through internal and external
network. Above and beyond, the data would be
easily downloaded and in the mean time, it would
lesser the upgrading time in the future. The good
thing gained from this was the improvement shall
be done without changing any of the hardware [15].
In order to create a highly reliable monitoring
system, the researchers were needed to select
proper hardware to be used with selected software.
Currently, this PV energy system did not have a
full monitoring system. It still could be measured
and displayed on the average value of the output
and some parameters. The system was unable to
check other compulsory values that affected the
process of the generating system. Therefore, this
type of monitoring system was designed and
created to fulfill the objectives to monitor and
report the data from PV energy system effectively.
II. PV SYSTEM DESIGN
The solar PV system was constructed on a
prototype fisheries-house in University Malaysia
Terengganu (UMT) Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia to
generate electricity. It operated by obtaining the
measurement of the solar panel performance.
Measurements were taken for 8 hours starting from
9.00 am until 5.00 pm daily through observation on
the production of power by solar panel. The system
came with battery bank and charger controller to
regulate deficiencies in unreliable solar energy. The
data was collected by using data acquisition system
that implanted in PV system to monitor and record
the raw data. A solar cell was usually represented
by an equivalent one-diode model. The model
contained a current source Iph and series resistance
Rs, which represented the resistance inside each cell
and in the connection between the cells as shown in
Fig. 2. The net current was the difference between
the photocurrent Iph and the normal diode current
ID:-
I =I ph−I D (1)
(
¿ I ph−I 0 exp
e ( V + IR S )
m KT ab
−1)
Where:
m is the idealizing factor,
K is the Boltzmann’s constant,
Tab is the absolute temperature of the cell,
e electronic charge,
V is the cell voltage,
I0 is the saturation current, which depends strongly
on the cell temperature.
Fig. 2. PV model
2.1 System architecture
The architecture of the PV system on Fig. 3
showed the connection of Solar PV system which
connected directly to battery by using charger
controller. The PV array was installed on a
mounting structure of the PV system in which
consisted of 1 PV modules by facing through with
the optimum designed slope angle of latitude. The
technical characteristics of the PV module based on
standard testing conditions were listed in Table 1.
Fig. 3: System architecture of Solar PV system
Table 1: Specification of Solar PV
Maximun power(Pmax) 20WP
Power tolerance -1% to +3%
Open circuit voltage (Voc) 21.96V
Short circuit current (Isc) 1.27A
Rated voltage (Vmpp) 17.82V
Rated current (Impp) 1.14A
Maximun system voltage DC100V
2.2 Data Acqusition System (DAS)
Data acquisition systems measured and stored
the data collected from hundreds of channels
simultaneously. The majority of systems contained
the data from eight to 32 channels, typically in
multiples of eight. An ideal data acquisition system
used a single ADC for each measurement channel.
In this way, all data was parallel captured and
events in each channel could be compared in real
time. Nevertheless, by using a multiplexer that
switched among the inputs of multiple channels and
drove a single ADC could substantially reduce the
cost of a system [16]. Specialized data acquisition
systems for PV installations required a study of
sample rates and optimal configuration of the
measuring chain.
This chapter provided the information
regarding the structure of data acquisition systems
used in the monitoring of photovoltaic installations.
It showed that the operating principles of building
blocks were performed by simulations using
LabVIEW™ - Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation
Engineering Workbench. This monitoring system
was designed to acquire two parts. The first was the
weather condition at the research area consisted of
ambient temperature, relative humidity and PV
module surface temperature. The second was the
data from the generating process which was
connected to an existed distribution system. The
digital data was connected through inverter and
saved on the database. Next, it would be able to
analyze and generate research information report
easily.
2.2.1 Hardware design
The designed virtual instrument represented a
relationship between the hardware equipment
(Arduino board using microcontroller Atmega 328)
and the software application (processing) which
implemented the required functions, played the
function of interface between the human operator
and measurement system. The usage of this
hardware equipment ensured the flexibility (other
virtual instruments could be designed) to measure
other physical measurement by using
sensors/transducers which were specific to the
measurement process [10]. Figure 3 showed the
flow chart of the hardware part which allowed
Arduino board programming to read and write the
data.
By using microcontroller that we had created
and developed, it functioned as monitoring system,
data acquisitions and controller interfaces. It
acquired data from the entire sensor in an analog
signal. Then it would be converted into a digital
signal which able to control the data
communication through a specific computer
network via connecting module used in the
industry. The detail for this distributed I/O was
shown below:-
Sensor
a) Current sensor the ACS758 outputs was an
analog voltage output signal that varies
linearly with sensed current.
 b) DHT11 Temperature and Humidity Sensor
featured a calibrated digital signal output
with the temperature and humidity sensor
complex. The measurement was 1% RH /
±20%, its stability was better than ±1%
RH / year and the humidity range is 0-
100%RH.

2.2.2 Software Interfacing

These systems were communicated through
software interface by PC which was called
LabVIEW. LabVIEW was a graphical programming
language that allowed for the instrument control,
data acquisition and pre/post processing of acquired
data. LabVIEW was designed to take input data
directly from the user through its virtual-instrument
interface or from measurements of real-world
phenomenon (Data Acquisition). Data inputted
from real-world phenomena generally required
Data Acquisition (DAQ) hardware. Interfacing was
done by developed algorithm and some
programming.
Fig. 4 showed the flow chart for LabVIEW
part, where the inputs from hardware were recorded
and displayed through the screen computer. The
measured data was presented in the front panel of
LabVIEW program in two forms: i) numbers of
measured points, voltage, current, temperature and
ii) power. The front panel of the developed
LabVIEW Program was shown in Fig. 5. The
LabVIEW Acquisition system structure in the block
diagram was presented in Fig. 5(a). The front panel
of virtual instrument was presented in Fig. 5(b).

Fig. 4: Flow chart of collected data

III. RESULTS

3.1 Experimental result

Fig. 5(a): Block Diagram
Fig. 5(b): Front Panel
The proposed system operation was shown in
Fig. 6. The system comprised of the following
components: solar cell under test, conditioning
circuit, power supply, microcontroller board and the
measuring tools multi meter and supervisory
control (Computer) with the developed LabVIEW
software program. The solar cell tests were
executed in two stages. On the first stage, the
system was used to measure the voltage, current
and temperature to figure out the characteristics of
the solar cell under test. The system measured the
performance of solar in recharging the battery
storage on the second stage. All of the
measurements used on-line monitoring system
developed with LabView GUI as showed in Fig. 7.
 except on the 5th, 9th and 14th day. The changes in
voltage measured were influenced by the cloudy
weather and reduction of the sun radiation rate.
However, solar panels still generated good reading
because of the solar panel efficiency.
Power measurement in every solar panel was
considerably influenced by the efficiency of the
current velocity produced. If the current produced
was high, then the generated power was also high.
The result of the experiment showed similar
average daily current rate. It showed that maximum
current that able to be generated by solar panel was
2A. The power generated by solar could be
calculated using the formula below:-

P ( power )=Voltage ( V ) ×Current ( I )

(2)

Fig. 6: PV system proposed Power generated by solar panel depended on

Data were collected for 14 days of observation
on the solar panel performances. Table 1 showed
the measurement analyzed in form of an average
data per day. Parameters such as voltage, current
and temperature were recorded using system and
powers were calculated using formula. The raw
data gathered displayed a trend of daily regular
occurrence with the identical amount of voltages
the efficiency of the current strength. The result on
the 14th day showed that the solar panel managed to
generate 80 % of its maximum power capacity.
From this monitoring system, all the data obtained
were recorded and saved in a data base for further
analysis. Through the usage of LabVIEW software,
the data were automatically calculated by applying
the formula and directly displayed on the monitor.

Fig. 7: Graphical output from LabView using DAS system proposed.

Table 2: Data collection for 14 days

Average data per Day
Day voltage (volt) Current (ampere) Power (watt) Temperature ( oC)
1 19.52 1.65 32.20 32
2 19.21 1.56 29.96 31
3 19.36 1.59 30.78 32
4 19.74 1.76 34.74 32
5 18.95 1.43 27.09 30
6 19.23 1.57 30.19 31
7 19.65 1.59 31.24 32
8 19.45 1.57 30.53 32
9 18.32 1.41 25.83 31
10 19.03 1.46 27.78 31
11 19.11 1.49 28.47 31
12 19.14 1.51 28.90 32
13 19.03 1.5 28.54 31
14 18.92 1.42 26.86 30
3.2 Observation Results
 Data collected through the monitoring system Fig. 9: The output power and surface temperature by
would be analyzed to identify the features of the PV
effective solar system. Data gathered in the forms of
voltage and current velocity measurement were Fig. 10 demonstrated the total average for
shown in Fig. 8. The daily measurement of data voltage, current and power outputs for PV system in
showed no significant difference from day 1 until day fourteen days. All the data recorded were using DAS
14th due to experiment. By looking at the voltage system proposed. Data collected proved the behavior
pattern taken, it showed a reduction with less amount of solar radiation in UMT surrounding areas. It could
of radiation. Values of voltage intakes for each day be deduced that if the same experiment was to be
were compared to identify the reason of the power carried out in the whole areas of UMT, it possibly
decline. It seemed that cloudy weather condition would be able to produce enough energy to start solar
prohibited direct absorption by the solar panel which system either in small or large scale. The obtained
subsequently resulted in the declining of the power. data for the fourteen days had shown sufficient
Fig. 9 showed output power and surface energy to prove that solar rays could be recorded and
temperature of the PV system. The data illustrated the studied for more benefits in the future.
temperature changed directly proportional with the
power produced. The resulted power were recorded
by calculating the voltage and the current velocities
that generated by PV system. Meanwhile, the reading
on temperature sensor that was placed on the surface
area of the PV was also collected. The value of the
power generated was influenced by the temperature
whereby when the temperature was hot, it then will
affect the value of the power generated as shown in
Fig. 10.
The data also showed high radiation rate was
measured when the panel produced high power.
Whilst the temperature rose up to 32 oC, the solar
power also reached up to 35 watts. Whereas, when Fig. 10: Output total average voltage, current and
the temperature was below 30oC, the solar power power by PV
went below 30oC as well.

25 IV. CONCLUSIONS
vol tage current
vol ta ge (v) & current (a )

20 The PV monitoring system developed by the

research could be used to measure and correct the
15 data according to the researchers’ goals. It would be
able to generate report in order to create research
10
information from PC data-based Microsoft office. The
5
research information could give details on the
performance of the PV energy system operation. This
0 monitor might well showed the unusual operational
1 2 condition of the system. This system possibly became
day a remote monitoring system via the Internet network.
Even though the experiment was not so complicated
and easy to be conducted, a research assistant was
Fig. 8: Output voltage and current by PV
still needed to assist main researcher in monitoring
and analyzing the data. Plus, an assistant was
important to ensure the system was properly
Temperature (oC), Power(watt)

34 maintained and be able to work well throughout the

32 experiment. The operating cost might cover the
30 system maintenance when it was necessary and
28 needed. The requirement for more assistants and
26 larger operating costs were essential in order to run
24 the system in larger scale. The system was
22 administered to inform and signal a warning for
20 researchers when system errors occurred such as
1 2 3 4 5 6 7temp power
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
inverter malfunction or wind generator broke down.
Day The warning signal could be transmitted through
mobile phone network as well as email. The fast
warning and prompt responds would be able to
prevent the system from total failure and helped in
increasing the energy production.
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