Wireless monitoring system for storage cells

• Main Author: Yang, Xiao
• Other Authors: Choo Fook Hoong
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Control and instrumentation::Control engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/40800
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Solar energy is one of the fastest growing technologies world-wide because it is a type of renewable and clean energy, which is a major advantage compared to traditional fossil fuels. As noted by Glavin, Chan and Armstrong (2008), every stand alone solar power system requires an energy storage system to bridge the mismatch between available and required energy. Among all the energy storage technologies, battery technology is the most widely used because of its reliability and stable performance. However, the high dependency on weather conditions makes solar panel an non-ideal source for rechargeable batteries. Therefore, to gain useful information for better control and to optimize the performance of the batteries, a monitoring system for the charging and discharging conditions for the batteries is required. For the on-going research projects running in Water and Renewable Energy Lab (WERL) on smart solar chargers, the core component for the chargers is buck-boost converter; and to make the correct settings for the converter, parameters like battery voltage and charging current need to be monitored and stored for future study. However, in practical situation like solar power plants, there is usually a considerable distance between the control centers and the charging equipments; thus cabling for the communication between the two ends always create huge costs and trouble. Thus, in this project, a wireless solution for data acquisition is introduced to replace the cables. In this report, the details on hardware configuration and software programming of the components and circuits used for the wireless monitoring system will be covered.