Project Details

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Smart Solar Farm Monitoring

Company: TE CONNECTIVITY CORPORATION, a TE Connectivity Ltd. company

Major(s):
Primary: EE
Secondary: CMPEN
Optional: CMPSC, EGEE, ESC, ME

Non-Disclosure Agreement: YES

Intellectual Property: YES

Can powerline communications provide a reliable data backbone for utility-scale solar farms? In this capstone project, students will design and build a battery-powered research platform that communicates over solar-farm DC cabling while logging environmental and electrical conditions. The system will use a Raspberry Pi or similar host with a PLC modem to measure channel behaviour, including signal attenuation versus frequency, and correlate performance with changing solar-farm conditions. Deliverables will include working hardware, embedded and analysis software, datasets and a technical report, with the potential for a small-scale trial on a university-operated solar farm.