Sensors 2011, 11(1), 743-756; https://doi.org/10.3390/s110100743
A Low Cost Concept for Data Acquisition Systems Applied to Decentralized Renewable Energy Plants
1
Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Ceará—IFCE/Av. Contorno Norte, 10, Maracanaú, CE 61925-315, Brazil
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Campus do Pici, Federal University of Ceará—UFC, Fortaleza, CE 60455-760, Brazil
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 1 December 2010 / Revised: 28 December 2010 / Accepted: 10 January 2011 / Published: 12 January 2011
(This article belongs to the Section Physical Sensors)
Abstract
The present paper describes experiences of the use of monitoring and data acquisition systems (DAS) and proposes a new concept of a low cost DAS applied to decentralized renewable energy (RE) plants with an USB interface. The use of such systems contributes to disseminate these plants, recognizing in real time local energy resources, monitoring energy conversion efficiency and sending information concerning failures. These aspects are important, mainly for developing countries, where decentralized power plants based on renewable sources are in some cases the best option for supplying electricity to rural areas. Nevertheless, the cost of commercial DAS is still a barrier for a greater dissemination of such systems in developing countries. The proposed USB based DAS presents a new dual clock operation philosophy, in which the acquisition system contains two clock sources for parallel information processing from different communication protocols. To ensure the low cost of the DAS and to promote the dissemination of this technology in developing countries, the proposed data acquisition firmware and the software for USB microcontrollers programming is a free and open source software, executable in the Linux and Windows® operating systems. View Full-TextKeywords:
monitoring; data acquisition systems; renewable energy
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Jucá, S.C.S.; Carvalho, P.C.M.; Brito, F.T. A Low Cost Concept for Data Acquisition Systems Applied to Decentralized Renewable Energy Plants. Sensors 2011, 11, 743-756.