There was a growing need in the renewable energies market of a remote monitoring system that allows the supervision and control of the work that solar thermal installations make.
The Spanish company detected this need first-hand, so they decided to develop a system that is not only a full remote monitoring system allowing the owner the access to the data produced from the installation in real time from anywhere in the world, but it can also modify the arranged working parameters and actuate over the installation through a very simple web page.
Furthermore, it continuously logs and analyses the variables of the installation (temperature, flow, pump status, etc), adjusting the withdrawal and storage of energy according to the season and the historic and predicted energy needs.
The remote monitoring system emits alerts when it detects any malfunction. These alerts are transformed in a sms or in an e-mail sent to the selected maintenance team. As a consequence, there is a considerable reduction in the time that an installation is forced to be out of line, and permitting the performance of preventing reparations.
The system is based in a proprietary hardware and software solution, being completely open, and able to be adapted to different installation sizes, from small installations of less than 50m2 to industrial installations.
It offers real time monitoring, assuring always updated data making very easy the preparation of monthly reports.
How does it work?
The data acquisition module is the responsible for logging, storing and transmitting the values registered through a myriad of sensors. This module is 100% scalable, so the communication of additional elements is an easy and pain free operation.
The logged data is automatically sent, either via GPRS or Ethernet to a central server, where it is safely stored.
The system allows data retrieval from 1 radiation measuring device, up to 24 temperature sensors, up to 8 pressure gauges and has up to 24 digital entries that can be configured ad-hoc.
Innovative Aspects:
The system allows interacting with the thermal installation without the need of being physically at the installation site.
It has to be also highlighted the simplification of the maintenance tasks, and allows the owner to have the peace of mind that the installation is working at its full capacity.
