Correlation Study between Photovoltaic Power Output and Environmental Variables Using an Embedded IoT System

The sunlight is one of the most important renewable sources. However, the systems designed for its usage are not a continuous power delivering option. A photovoltaic panel is the most common collecting device for solar energy, regardless of having low efficiency at high temperatures. The present paper shows the pre-processing stage for data analysis to study the relationship between the sunlight and weather variables, with the power output of a photovoltaic panel for further estimation models. In order to obtain representative and enough data, an embedded IoT system was proposed to collect and store measurements. Then, data were analyzed by using scatterplots matrix and a non-parametric correlation calculation. The correlation factors probe that data can be classified as fuzzy data with a high confidence level to be used for model developing.