Solar photovoltaic farm monitoring & control software

Document of the Remote surveillance system for solar farm / solar data acquisition system
<Version: Internal revision><Confidential class: 2><Origin creator: Weber Chu><Date:15.Dec.2021>
Many people have never heard of the solar data acquisition system. They think it is a solar power generation system, but it is not.
Solar power generation system is our common way to install large-area solar panels on the roof or in open areas to generate electricity through solar irradiation. This is not our topic today.

Here's our start for today:
The solar data acquisition system, also known as a Solar photovoltaic farm management control software, is like the brain of a power station. It tracks and monitors the working state of the solar power station in real-time through the collection, summary, and calculation of solar panel data information so that the power station manager can understand the current power generation, power, efficiency of each time period during the day and night, etc, Let the power station make full use of the energy radiated by the sun, operate in an efficient state to the greatest extent, and obtain the maximum economic value.

The solar data acquisition system adopts the latest Internet of things technology, through the integration of various network institutions and high-level transmission encryption technology, forms a complete operation and maintenance system with many functions, such as operation monitoring, data analysis, fault alarm, historical statistics and so on. The system is developed by Dalian Linshu Electronics Co., Ltd. and has completely established a set of efficient and safe visualization system from photovoltaic panel, inverter to the user interface.
In general, the photovoltaic data acquisition system has many advantages compared with the traditional photovoltaic monitoring solutions:

1. Low deployment cost
The photovoltaic data acquisition system developed by Dalian Linshu electronics adopts the self networking technology developed rapidly in recent years to replace the traditional installation method of adding flow cards to each inverter. The investment of 4G chip equipment is reduced from dozens or hundreds to more than a dozen or even a few, greatly saving the hardware cost of installation. The resulting construction cost is also greatly reduced, saving a lot of expenses for the investor.

2. Lower operation and maintenance costs
After a large number of traditional solutions have been applied, people have gradually realized that the larger and complex the hardware system is, the more prone it is to failure and the more difficult it is to repair, so the maintenance cost is also very huge.
Thanks to the ad hoc networking technology of modern Internet of things protocol, after using our photovoltaic acquisition system, the operator no longer needs to invest a lot of money for traffic renewal for each individual data transmission node every year. Instead, only limited maintenance costs are paid for a few key equipments. In addition, due to the application of advanced and concise network structure, the total number of hardware faults is also greatly reduced, and the labor cost of maintenance, repair, and inspection is also considerable.

3. Lower cost of hardware upgrading
According to China's domestic experience, it only took a few years from 3G to 4G. When 4G is widely popularized, 3G is facing the fate of being gradually withdrawn from the network by operators, and a large number of 3G devices will also have no signal and unstable conditions. In the field of photovoltaic information collection, at present, the traditional 4G solution has installed 4G modem equipment and chip card in each inverter. When the network is transitioning to 5g and popularized, the photovoltaic power station will have to invest a lot of hardware upgrade costs to cope with the upgrading of thousands or even tens of thousands of network equipment, otherwise, it will not be able to use. Our ad hoc photovoltaic acquisition system avoids this potential risk technically and structurally. The design and operation life of photovoltaic power station is generally at least several decades. Even if it is upgraded to 6G in the future, the number of hardware upgrades of our system is very limited, and the cost and workload are only a fraction or even a dozen of that of the traditional scheme.

4. High disaster tolerance
Recalling the experience of ice and snow disaster in southern China in 2008, the sudden snow disaster led to the crushing and breaking of transmission lines, and the resulting communication interruption also brought huge losses. We can see that overreliance on the communication network of local operators can not guarantee the system stability, uncontrollable loss and uncontrollable recovery progress in the face of large-scale disasters. Even if the probability of such a large disaster is very low, once it occurs, it will still be an immeasurable loss to the whole photovoltaic power generation system, and managers may not be able to obtain the operation status of the photovoltaic system for dozens of days. The photovoltaic data acquisition system developed by Linshu electronics avoids this risk from the network structure and can store the data of cloud server and local server synchronously. When the 4G network is unstable, it is not limited by the network of local operators, and the ad hoc network still works normally to ensure the stability and efficiency of the whole photovoltaic data acquisition system.

5. high stability 
Our system is the best in data transmission and hardware stability and has been tested and optimized. In terms of network transmission signal strength, ensure that the data packets reported by the terminal equipment really reach the designated node. In terms of transmission channel redundancy design, our Internet of things gateway has a dual-channel backup design. For example, when the WAN link drops, it can be automatically and seamlessly replaced with 4G to ensure the timeliness and continuity of data transmission. At the same time, the equipment automatically attempts to reconnect and restore the WAN, providing a guarantee for long-term stable operation.

6. High data security
A. Transmission, the data packet adopts AES-128 bit encryption and node dual identity authentication mechanism. In addition to the unbreakable technical algorithm, it also uses the insurmountability of physical environments such as time, space, and device chips to prevent interception and tampering in the process of data transmission.
B. Storage, you can choose to store it in cloud space or local server, and adopt different technical schemes according to the information security requirements of different countries and regions to ensure data security.

7. Flexible deployment
Using the advanced nature of the new Internet of things protocol, the maximum wireless transmission theory of the photovoltaic data acquisition system developed by our company is 8KM. Whether distributed or centralized photovoltaic system, no matter we cross hills, fields or rivers, our system can achieve a large number of terminal equipment in each gateway without long-distance trenching and wiring for each PV array. For the assumption of signal base station, as long as it meets the relevant installation conditions.

8. High customization
Our photovoltaic data acquisition system can be customized for each customer. Not only the common electrical signals are collected according to customer needs, such as current, voltage, power, etc., but also the user interface can be customized and the background interface can be made according to the display content of user needs.

By Weber Chu
December 2021
DALIAN LINSHU ELECTRON CO.,LTD