Software tool for weather parameters acquisition during photovoltaic systems monitoring

PV systems periodic monitoring is one of the tools with the greatest potential to maximize energy production, avoid failures and extend the life span of the different elements composing the PV system. PV modules energy production depends on weather conditions, mainly temperature and solar irradiation. Therefore, when the electrical parameters of the PV modules are monitored, thus, the I-V curve, it is also necessary to obtain the temperature and irradiance values at which the electrical measurement is performed. This will enable to determine whether the electrical measurements are consistent with the current operating conditions or are associated to anomalous behaviors, due to defects in the PV system. This work provides an open source code that will enable to obtain the weather parameters, without the need of additional sensors, for a certain location and timestamp, in order to link this weather data to the measurements of the in-situ monitoring solution. Temperature, global, direct and diffuse irradiances, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure or wind speed are obtained, among others. The accuracy of the proposed solution is evaluated against surface weather measurements for different locations.