Project: Monitoring and controlling solar energy systems

The Desert Knowledge Australia Solar Centre (DKASC), a demonstration site for solar panels, was set up to help promote understanding and confidence in solar technologies. The site is an initiative of Desert Knowledge Australia and CAT Projects and is located about 9 km south of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.

Operating since 2008, the centre currently accommodates 33 solar panel installations and a custom-made weather station, each of which is monitored by Schneider Electric PowerLogic ION meters with the PowerLogic ION Enterprise software. The technology was integrated by AZZO Automation, Schneider Electric’s energy solutions integrator in South Australia and the Northern Territory.

“The client required a monitoring and reporting system which was expandable and would accurately and reliably measure the performance characteristics of each solar installation,” James DiLiberto, Business Development Manager at AZZO Automation said.

“The integrity of the data was paramount. Because the upper range of the PowerLogic ION meters can monitor and log downstream devices, record analogue and digital inputs, as well as send alerts on exception, the meters were the obvious choice to provide a single data concentration with local display for all conditioned device inputs.”

The ION meters monitor the solar panel outputs at one-second intervals, average that output over a five minute period and then transmit the data to the displays and the database.

To provide backup in the event of a data transmission fault, the master PowerLogic ION meter has been configured to store up to one complete week of the entire data set in its memory. To complement these technologies, AZZO Automation customised an advanced data logger to control the collected information. In order to meet the project funder’s objectives of making solar technologies more accessible, CAT Projects required the collected data to be uploaded in real time to a website, where members of the general public could access it. The flash-based website displays the information, as uploaded from the meters and stored in the non-enterprise SQL database, from each of the solar array installations, as well as displaying details of the current weather conditions, as uploaded from the weather station sensors.

“Monitoring the technology and disseminating the information is a key part of the DKASC project,” Lyndon Frearson, Manager CAT Projects, said.

“We specified the Schneider Electric ION Meters and the particular instruments for the weather station quite early in the design. We had quite specific electrical designs in mind, and had also called for tender for a custom designed SQL database to pull the data out of the meters - we were extremely excited when we found that ION Enterprise could do all that work for us.

“Any ability which the meters have, we have utilised in this project - everything from signal conditioning and alarming input to device mastering and dashboards. We used the complete capabilities of the product and have been able to record good, reliable, data with high precision and no holes or gaps.”

The dataset collected at the DKASC is one of the most comprehensive longitudinal solar PV performance datasets available freely anywhere in the world. As well as providing this information, the site is connected to the local grid and generates 346 MWh of electricity a year for the Desert Knowledge Precinct. The project was completed with funding from the Australian Federal Government through the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (administered by the NT Government’s Renewable Remote Power Generation Programme). It won the 2009 Northern Division Engineering Excellence Award for Design and Innovation.

“We have been rapt with how simple the Schneider Electric system is to use. This is certainly one of the key strengths of the system. We have recently upgraded to ION Enterprise Version 6, and that has made it even easier to generate reports and extract the information we need,” Frearson said.