An efficient system to monitor and control the energy production and consumption

Solar and wind energy are non-depletable, site- dependent, non-polluting, and potential sources of alternative energy. However, common drawback with solar and wind energy is their unpredictable nature. The development of supervisory systems that control and monitor the energy production from renewable sources and the evaluation of the consumption from the users is of main importance to balance production and consumption needs. The developed strategy is composed by a network of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) controlling locally each power plant. These local controllers are connected through a Master-Slave network, making accessible the operational data from each remote production plant. Above the operational network, a SCADA system (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) is installed to allow a user-friendly decentralized global management. The developed monitoring and control strategy is simulated, based on the requirements of the new renewable energy experimental park (PETER) that is being implemented at University of Evora - Portugal.