Challenge
To help combat global climate change and meet goals set by the international community to reduce emissions, countries are turning more and more to renewable energy, including solar farms. Like any source of energy, ensuring the most efficient production of electricity requires constant monitoring and preventative maintenance. With solar panels, this includes things like controlling panel temperatures and keeping panels clean.
Unlike fuel burning plants which contain a few easily monitored generators (the largest coal-fired plant in the world only has a dozen generators), solar farms typically have hundreds or even thousands of individual panels. One solar farm in Southern Taiwan decided to leverage the benefits of IoT technology to deploy a monitoring system that could provide accurate, real-time data and notifications. They turned to AAEON and the SRG-3352 to power their project.
Solution
AAEON worked closely with the solar farm to identify key challenges and deliver a product which met their specific requirements. The SRG-3352 offers the capabilities to overcome these challenges, and AAEON service provided the support necessary to bring the project to life.
The key requirement for the project was long-range transmission. Thanks to built-in support for LTE and 4G cellular communication, the SRG-3352 can connect to the solar farm operator’s central management system easily and reliably.
Additionally, the SRG-3352 needed to be able to connect with sensors vital to the solar farm operation, including temperature sensors, lux meters and power meters, allowing the operator to analyze the efficiency of each panel and determine if system coolant is operating or if the panel needs cleaning. The SRG-3352 offers a flexible assortment of I/O ports, allowing it to easily interface with the solar panel and its sensors.
Finally, the SRG-3352 utilizes a wide-voltage input, allowing it to tap into the energy being produced by the panels themselves, creating a self-sufficient system not reliant on outside energy sources, or complicated connections.
AAEON services assisted in setting up the SRG-3352 deployment, helping to easily integrate the system into the solar farm operator’s own cloud and UI system. This helped reduce deployment cost and time, as well as ensure reliable operation.
