Follow the Sun
A successful solar power project requires data analysis and the ability to modify the system to take advantage of prevailing weather conditions.
Managing solar power systems with SunAir boards
Lead Image © Kristaps Eberlins, 123RF.com
Unplugging computers from the power grid has been one of my goals for years. In 2013, I started building Project Curaçao, a solar-powered Raspberry Pi/Arduino system designed to gather information and pictures from the tropical island of Curaçao [1] in the Caribbean (Figure 1).
While designing and building Project Curaçao [2] [3], I learned a lot about solar cells, solar power controllers, and especially the kind of data I wanted to gather to understand the behavior and performance of the system. Reliability issues with connections and sensors in the power systems led me to design a new board to manage power. The SunAir and SunAirPlus boards were the result.
The key to making a solar power project work for a long time in a variety of environments (e.g., clouds, rain, wind, and varying power consumption) is to gather data and then write software to modify the behavior of the project based on that data. Of course, the data is useful for designing other projects, too. Behavior matters! For example, running the Raspberry Pi camera to make a video makes current consumption climb.
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