System for detection of clouds moving toward the Sun in the sky

Abstract

The paper proposes a system for detection of clouds moving toward the Sun. Its aim is to recognize the clouds that will cover the Sun in the next minute and to reduce the output power of the photovoltaic (PV) power plant smoothly and with prescribed dynamics. Since the target cost of the proposed system is in the rage of the cost of a single PV module, it consists of low costs components: a Raspberry PI Model B 3 with a WiFi connection, an OmniVision OV5647 sensor with a wide-angle lens, a circular polarizing (CPL) filter and a natural density (ND) filter. The algorithm for the prediction of cloud movement has been developed for the implementation on the target components and requires low computational effort. Experimental results obtained with the prototype of the proposed system are presented in the paper.