Hands on Experience for students on an Energy Management System

Abstract

As new energy technologies arise, they are being implemented in the Power Grid nationwide services. We believe that it is very important to create an efficient way to manage the energy resources in our facilities.We have designed a system using the Graphical User Interface of LabVIEW to gather Solar Power Data using a Measurement and Computing minilab 1008 interface.This system gathers Solar Power Information from a 5 kW Fixed Photovoltaic Array. It has the capability to retrieve real time prices of electricity for the southern region of Texas according to The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and generate a report on the actual energy production revenue.In this paper we introduce a set of experimental laboratory exercises for undergraduate students to become familiar with these practices of Renewable Solar Energy.