System to Measure Solar Power Using AVR Microcontroller
Abstract
The designed project measures different solar cell parameters like light intensity, voltage, current and temperature by using multiple sensor data acquisition. The project uses a solar panel to monitor sunlight and a AVR microcontroller. The project requires an LDR sensor for measuring light intensity, a voltage divider to measure voltage and a temperature sensor to measure the temperature. These measurements are then displayed by the microcontroller to a LCD screen.
The light intensity is monitored using an LDR sensor, voltage by voltage divider principle, current by current sensor and temperature by temperature sensor. All these data are displayed on a 16X2 LCD interfaced to AVR family microcontroller.
The power supply consists of a step down transformer 230/12V, which steps down the voltage to 12V AC. This is converted to DC using a bridge rectifier. The ripples are removed using a capacitive filter and it is then regulated to +5V using a voltage regulator 7805 which is required for the operation of microcontroller and other circuits.
