Solar energy has been gaining ground in recent years when compared with fossil energies, due to a rapid technological development in Photovoltaic (PV) panels and batteries. PV arrangements for rural areas brought new challenges, particularly in what concerns to online monitoring and control of equipment and production in remote areas (such as in Africa).

Eneida has developed an innovative and robust solution to remotely monitor both performance and condition of Rural PV Parks, providing online information of power production and power consumption, as well as preventing security threats. This information allows a better energy balance management, prevents power outages and leads to an optimization of maintenance actions, thus significantly reducing investment and operational costs.

The EWS solution comprises a smart, efficient and robust device EWS GIP-rg capable of measuring the current to and from the batteries, as well as the batteries voltage. Beyond the communication peripherals associated, such as RS232, RS485, GSM and GPRS, this data logger unit is able to deal with a WSN over the ISM 433 MHz or 900 MHz band. EWS GIP-rg, as a Wireless Intelligent Device, has the flexibility to increase the number of monitored parameters (such as humidity, temperature, sunlight) with very low implementation costs. Theft and damage can be monitored as well, using tiny wireless sensors, designed to be installed in a disguised way, supplied with internal small battery lasting for at least for 10 years and conceived to automatically send an alarm through the public mobile network, as well as turn on buzzers and/or alarm lights. EWS GIP-rg holds an internal memory micro SD card, permitting it to save a history of data in absence of public mobile communication. This data logger is also capable of controlling external equipment through programmable I/Os (automatically or through remote operation). The EWS devices are able to be remotely programmed, diagnosed and updated.