Solar Farm PV System Monitoring

Choosing a Monitoring Unit for Your Solar Farm

The right base unit depends on the size of the site and how it connects back to your team:

• AKCP sensorProbe2+: a compact unit with 2 to 4 sensor ports, suited to smaller rooftop or commercial PV systems where an inverter room or comms cabinet needs watching.
• AKCP sensorProbeX+ SPX4 and SPX8: 4 or 8 sensor ports, with expansion for many more dry contact inputs, for larger inverter stations and substations with several alarms to collect.
• HW group Perseus 145 and 155 with LTE modem: built-in mobile modems for remote sites with no fixed line, sending SMS and email alerts directly, with Modbus for reading inverters and meters.
• HW group Perseus Industrial 315 IO controller with LTE modem: an industrial input and output controller for sites that need to collect many volt-free alarm contacts and switch outputs, such as sirens, from protection relays and fire panels.

Not sure which is right for your site? Our Projects Team can recommend a configuration as part of a site survey.

Reading Your Inverters, Export Meter and Site Plant

Most solar plant already knows when something is wrong. Inverters, export meters, weather stations and UPS systems usually have a Modbus or SNMP interface. Our monitoring units use virtual sensors to read this information, so you can see inverter status and fault codes, output power, export and irradiance alongside your physical sensors. Comparing export with irradiance shows up gradual losses from soiling or failing equipment long before the monthly report. For equipment without a Modbus or SNMP interface, such as grid protection relays, fire panels and transformer temperature relays, volt-free (dry) contacts provide a simple way to pick up alarms and trips.

Wireless Sensors Across the Whole Site

Running sensor cables across a solar farm means trenching, which is expensive and disruptive. The AKCP sensorProbe Wireless Tunnel connector and AKCP Wireless Tunnel server form a private LoRa network with a range of up to 3km in open space. Up to 4 sensors plug into each connector, placed at combiner boxes, inverter stations, substations, weather stations and gates, and up to 30 connectors report back to a single server.

Remote Solar Sites Over 4G/5G

Many solar farms have no fixed network connection, or rely on a single link that can fail. Monitoring units with a built-in LTE modem give an independent route for alerts. The modem can be used for:

• SMS text messages with live data
• Email alerts with specific live readings
• Scheduled heartbeat messages, so silence from a site is itself a warning
• Remote access for diagnostics and maintenance

Mobile signal quality depends on the site and its location. Aerials may need careful positioning, and metal enclosures and inverter stations can block the signal, so aerials are often mounted outside.

Physical Sensors for Solar Farms

• Wind speed and irradiance sensors for a site weather station
• Temperature and humidity sensors for inverter stations and comms cabins
• Smoke detectors and fire panel status contacts
• Spot water sensors and water leakage detection ropes for stations and cable entries
• AC voltage sensors for auxiliary supplies and grid status
• Isolated DC voltage sensors
• Door contact sensors for inverter stations, substations and cabins
• PIR motion detectors and sirens and strobes for perimeter security

Solar Farm Monitoring and Maintenance Contracts

As well as supplying and installing monitoring systems, we can provide remote monitoring as part of a maintenance contract, with 24/7 monitoring and remote diagnostics for your solar sites.

Please contact our Projects Team to discuss how we can monitor your solar PV farm system and improve the overall reliability and operational performance.