This paper presents a low-cost solution of virtual instrumentation to provide a new technique for real-time instrumentation of the PV panel characteristics such as voltage, current and power. The system design is based on a low-cost Arduino acquisition board. The acquisition is made through a low-cost current and voltage sensors, and data are presented in Excel by using the PLX-DAQ data acquisition Excel Macro, which allows communication between the ATMega328 microcontroller of an Arduino UNO board and the computer by UART bus. Hence, the I-V and P-V characteristics, which processed under real-time conditions, can be obtained directly and plotted on an Excel spreadsheet without needing to reprogram the microcontroller. A comparison between this low-cost virtual instrumentation and the traditional instrumentation is drawn in this work. It is found that our solution presents several benefits compared to the traditional solution such as the data can be presented in graphical form in real time. Thus, several experimental tests to confirm the effectiveness of the developed virtual instrumentation system are presented in this study.

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This paper focuses on a Proteus Spice model of the photovoltaic Panel. This model is based on a mathematical equation which is got from the equivalent circuit of the photovoltaic Panel; it includes a photocurrent source, a diode, a series resistor and a shunt resistor. Next, this model is validated by comparing its data with the experimental data. In addition, since Proteus provides in its library different microcontrollers and electronic boards , this model is connected to the Arduino UNO Board through the voltage and current sensors, that in order to acquire and supervise the photovoltaic voltage, current and power. And for experimental validation, a prototype using real components has been developed.

This paper presents the design and practical implementation of a simple active dual‐axis solar tracker (DAST) to track the sun's movement by using fewer components and low‐cost as well. A dual‐axis mechanism is developed in order to tilt the PV panel by two servo motors facing the highest intensity of sunlight captured by LDR sensors, which are placed in the four corners of PV panel. The DAST prototype was constructed practically and tested using a real‐time virtual instrument based on Excel to determine its efficiency. Moreover, a comparison based on experimental results between the energy produced by the proposed smart DAST and a fixed panel shows that the smart DAST produces 36.26% more energy compared to the fixed panel. The proposed active DAST can be easily implemented without possessing deep knowledge about solar tracking technologies and electronic engineering.