A multifunctional data acquisition system for photovoltaic plants

This paper describes the development of a multifunctional data acquisition system for photovoltaic (PV) plants. The proposed system consists of a set of data collection boxes for measuring electrical parameters (e.g. DC current, DC voltage, AC current, AC voltage, AC power, etc.), a meteorological data collection system for measuring meteorological parameters (e.g. irradiance, ambient air temperature, etc.), a power quality analyzer for measuring power quality and a central data processing system. The multifunctional data acquisition system can be used to measure PV plants with different capacity and configuration. A set of data collection boxes can be selected and combined freely for data acquisition according to capacity and configuration of measured PV plant. The software of the multifunctional data acquisition system based on LabVIEW (Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench) package is used to process, display and store the collected data in the PC disk. The multifunctional data acquisition system was installed in a rooftop building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) plant for an on-site measurement in Gejiang province in China. The obtained results confirm that it has the ability to measure the PV plants with different capacity and configuration and has functions of data collection, data processing and analysis. It meets the requirement of the performance evaluation for PV plants.