Conferenec paper
The Tanzania’s power system master plan of 2012 targeted to increase
per capita electricity consumption from 81kWh in 2011/12 to 200kWh by
2017/18, through increased generation capacity alongside renewable energy
sources. To accelerate the plan solar power is the most viable solution to the 80%
of Tanzanians with no access to grid power. Pilot project has been implemented
at Kisiju village at the Pwani region. Photovoltaic (PV) based mini-grid has been
constructed to supply electricity to village hospital, school, office, streetlights and
selected residents. Telemonitoring of these PV cells is vital for better energy
management, quality assurance and situation awareness. This paper proposes a
system for real-time telemonitoring of PV cells for remote villages in Tanzania.
The system senses, measure, process and share the power performance of the
cells. The system uses Arduino and Raspberry PI for sensing, processing and
networking for remote server access and for display. In this work, the Arduino
board is used to monitor PV parameters such as voltage, current and temperature
and to profile power generation. The Raspberry PI forms the core of the system
that processes the sensed parameters and sends them through wireless network or
Internet to the remote server. The information is displayed by the web application
through which administrators can monitor the PV power generation status in real
time. The system is configured such that data is sent only when there is a change
to avoid network congestion and saving buffer space from accumulating
redundant data in the server.
Sida of Sweden