Monitoring of BIPV by Means of a Low Cost Wireless Sensor Network

Decarbonisation and Nearly Zero Energy Buildings are interlinked concepts that are fundamental to addressing the goal of reducing carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. In this scenario, Building Integrated Photovoltaic systems represents a key strategy. On the other hand, PV devices in this way are dislocated in different parts of the building and this makes difficult the monitoring and set-up of energy conversion chains. In order to overcome this limitations, we propose an efficient and reliable sensor networks, which can be achieved by exploiting IoT approach. In particular, a low-cost wireless sensor, based on the microcontroller ESP32, was developed with the aim to measure voltage, current and temperature of photovoltaic integrated system and, from these measurements, irradiation or shading can be calculated, in order to evaluate energetic performance. Thanks to this simple sensor any PV device can become an irradiance sensor, but also the basic component of a system for the evaluation of environmental and energetic parameters of the building.