Campbell Scientific Africa installs five Solar Prospecting Stations in Botswana and Lesotho
Published: Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Our SOLYS 2 sun tracker is the basis of many solar radiation monitoring stations around the world. These are related to solar energy generating projects. Campbell Scientific Africa (CS Africa) recently installed two SOLYS 2 Solar Prospecting Stations in Botswana and three in Lesotho. All 5 sun trackers are equipped with a CHP 1 pyrheliometer and two CMP 11 Pyranometers, one of which is shaded, to monitor direct, global and diffuse solar radiation.
The Botswana stations are part of a development project of two large solar plants. The Lesotho stations are for the Lesotho Meteorological Services (LMS) and were completed under a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) contract.
Additional sensors installed at the stations were RM Young 05103 Wind Speed and Direction sensor as well as Vaisala HMP 50 Temperature and Humidity Probes. The stations are solar powered using 250W solar panels and four 100Ah deep cycle batteries. All the stations use a Campbell Scientific CR1000 data logger which is programmed to scan all the sensors once a second and to store 10 minute averages.
With the three measurement stations LMS will characterise Lesotho’s Solar Resource with the aim to attract solar plants developers to Lesotho. The project also included a training component on solar radiation measurement. For the training, as well as the installation, CS Africa partnered with the University of Stellenbosch’s Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies (CRSES) – www.sun.ac.za/crses.
The Lesotho stations use an innovative communications setup. The stations are equipped with Raven 3G cellular routers, which are programmed to automatically open a VPN connection to a service provider. At the service provider two fixed url’s are mapped to the serial and LAN ports of the router.
This allows TCPIP data downloads using Campbell’s LoggerNet software, as well as the ability to remotely connect to the web server on the SOLYS 2 sun trackers for maintenance actions.
Because of the fixed url, Campbell’s LoggerLink software for iPhone and Android devices can also be used to connect the Lesotho Stations.
http://www.csafrica.co.za/
