Team members:
- Rob Chadil
- Eric Dickey
- James Love
- Daniel Seltzer
The photovoltaic energy predictor is a project to develop a device that will determine the amount of energy that a photovoltaic (PV) solar panel would be expected to produce at a specific site, for example, a rooftop. The need for this device results from rapid growth in the commercial and home solar PV industry. The problem is that solar panel placement often occurs in locations where the sun's direct rays are blocked by trees, mountains, poles, etc... The device would use a camera along with an attitude sensor and signal processing software to enable determination of solar blockage. It will provide as an output an estimate of how much total solar energy would be converted by the panel on a daily basis.
Project Objectives:
- Design, build, and test a portable device to capture hemispherical photographs with the corresponding latitude, longitude, and the orientation of the camera(Geographic orientation, pitch, roll) and store the data on a portable medium for later analysis.
- Design, write and test a software application including a user interface and algorithms to take the data gathered from the portable device and estimate the solar radiation on any day for that location.