Solar Insolometer [RE-wrenches]

[Gary Higbee]

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Mo and Wrenches,

We've been fairly pleased with the Davis Instruments Vantage Pro Plus
weather system. You can see an example of our on-line monitoring at
www.oceansolar.com.

In this case a Campbell Scientific datalogger is taking the PV and house
power data, while the Vantage Pro Plus weather station takes weather data.
We're running the Ambient Virtual Weather Station Internet Broadcast edition
software--an inexpensive and very flexible platform. I've bought a couple
systems now (for Oceansolar and an ongoing high school project), with the
weather station, datalogger, and software as a package from
www.ambientweather.com.

The Vantage Pro PLUS provides a couple important features over the next
model down--those being insolation and UV radiation. In this case the
insolation is horizontal, but I don't see why you couldn't put on a little
adapter plate to set it for your PV array angle. We did have several
anemometers go out early in the installation, but it they were promptly
replaced, and it appears that Davis has worked out the flaw in the early
units.

At around a thousand bucks for the package I think it is a powerful system.
We even use the (very flexible) ftp scheduler in the Ambient software to
upload the house power graphs, and you could piggyback about any stuff you
wanted. It's easy to set up, too. And if you're into it you can set up
alarms in the weather software to email you if certain parameters are
exceeded--like that 80 m.p.h. wind, or high rain rate.

I'm not very familiar with the Sunny Control Plus software, but if it has
the ability to send out a jpg or gif image file you could mix the PV system
and weather data on one page--or set up a routine to toggle between two
pages. It would be sooo nice to put the graphs online, too. Let the public
see what's going on--photos and a description of the installation and
system, real-time power data, and catchy weather stuff to go with it.

My 2 cents. Drop a note offline if you'd like any other info.

Take care,

Gary

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mo Rousso" <mrousso at heliopower.com>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 1:09 PM
Subject: Solar Insolometer [RE-wrenches]

Hi All,

Wanted to pick the collective's brain.

We are completing a 60kW project for a local water utility.  We are using
SB2500 inverters and a Sunny Control.

The customer has just asked us to provide him with a kiosk in the lobby for
public education purposes.  I can handle getting the inverter data, but we
were also thinking about adding meteorological data, specifically insolation
and temperature.  I believe these are analog outputs and would require the
use of a Sunny Control Plus.  I have an e-mail to SMA requesting
clarification.

To point:  does anyone have a recommendation for good, reliable
instrumentation that would work in this set-up and not cost a small fortune?
First one for me.

Thanks,
Mo

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