Urban areas have an immense requirement for energy so, much of the power produced are supplied to these regions. These areas must be able to produce power that can at least supplement their energy requirement so that grid system losses can be minimized. The technology used for power production must become sustainable so, renewable sources must be deployed. Renewable energy has the reputation of being intermittent and solar power is also characterized as such given its nature. This is one of the challenges in transitioning to clean energy. This challenge can be surmounted by understanding weather patterns which may be monitored in order to determine the potential power production from solar energy. This is necessary for energy resource assessment and for solar power generation forecasting. Thus, a solar profile can be made at any location with careful observation and analysis.

Solar energy is a relatively mature renewable energy source given the advancement in technology such as the photovoltaic cells. However, much work is necessary to determine which locations are suited to solar power. A cost-effective solution is necessary to do solar observations in order to perform energy resource asssessments to find ideal sites for solar energy and forecast potential power production for operations. This is important for long-term investments on solar power and to help in the transition to sustainable energy sources.

This project proposal aims to use the FPGA kit and sensors to measure light intensity and soil moisture so that the availability of sunlight can be determined. The FPGA and the Azure cloud platform will be used to perform statistical analysis on the data to produce solar profiles that will be used for energy resource assessment and for short-term forecasting of solar power generation. Such a platform will be useful for site selection of solar energy within urban areas.

Project Proposal

1. High-level project introduction and performance expectation

2. Block Diagram

3. Expected sustainability results, projected resource savings