Most countries in the world are working hard to make a shift towards the use of renewable energy sources. Renewable energy sources are ideal to narrow the energy gap between demand and availability. Monitoring energy consumption from renewable energy sources will enable effective control of the load. It is important to monitor the energy consumed from the renewable sources in order to balance the demand and the capacity. This paper discusses how embedded Data Acquisition Systems (DAS) can be used to monitor the electrical energy drawn from the renewable source and how to use National Instruments dashboard app to see real-time energy consumption. We will develop a prototype of embedded DAS that monitors energy consumption rate by the domestic appliances and later see it in real-time.Index Terms: embedded DAS, tracking energy consumption from renewables.

Microcontrollers have been largely used in applications that include reducing power consumption. Microcontroller development tools are now readily available. Many countries are faced with energy challenges such as lack of enough power capacity and growth in energy demand. It is therefore important to introduce innovative methods to reduce reliance on national grid energy and to supplement this source of energy with alternative methods. In this study, the microcontroller is used to monitor the energy consumed by household equipment and then decide, based on the power demand and available solar energy, the type of energy source to be used. In this research, a special circuit was also designed to control geyser power and align it to the capacity of the renewable energy source. This geyser control circuit includes a Dallas temperature sensor and a triode for alternating current (TRIAC) circuit that is included to control output current drawn from a low power, renewable energy source. Alternatively, two heating elements may be used instead of the TRIAC circuit. The first heating element is powered by solar to maintain the water temperature and to save energy. The second heating element is powered by national grid power and is used for the initial heating, and therefore saves water heating time. The strategy used was by adding a programmed microcontroller-based control circuit and a low power element or one current controlled element to a geyser whereby Photovoltaic (PV) energy was used to save the energy geysers consume from the domestic electricity source when they are not in use. A microcontroller, current sensor, battery level sensor, and relay board was used to incorporate solar-based renewable energy to the commercial energy supply.

Data Acquisition Systems (DAS) can be used to gather changing energy parameters derived from various energy sources. This paper discusses how Arduino based data acquisition systems (DAS) can be used to gather solar energy samples and battery level information for remote monitoring and storage in the cloud. Arduino code was developed on Arduino IDE. An open source third party application was used to capture the Arduino serial transmitted values onto a Dropbox folder where it can be shared via Internet. Arduino hardware is connected to the four small 5 V, 1 W solar panels that are loaded with properly calculated resistors and a designed battery level sensor circuit. Solar energy values and battery usage pattern values were successfully stored into Dropbox for monitoring via cloud.

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