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RainWise PVmet 500 Series User Manual

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ALWAYS
ABOUT WEATHER
PVmet™ 500 Series
User's Guide
07/18/2018
Rev. 1.0
Copyright © 2018 by RainWise, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form except by written permission of the publisher. All rights of
translation are reserved.
PVmet™ is a trademark of RainWise, Inc. | www.rainwise.com
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Summary of Contents for RainWise PVmet 500 Series

  • Page 1 Copyright © 2018 by RainWise, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form except by written permission of the publisher. All rights of translation are reserved. PVmet™ is a trademark of RainWise, Inc. | www.rainwise.com - 1 -...

  • Page 2: Table Of Contents

    INTRODUCTION INSTALLING THE WEATHER STATION ITING EQUIREMENTS AND ONSIDERATIONS Relative humidity and Temperature SENSOR Anemometer Solar Irradiance SENSORS Back of module temperature sensors OUNTING ELECTRICAL OWER RS-485 Mini Aervane Ultrasonic RECIPITATION ELATIVE UMIDITY AND EMPERATURE ACK OF ODULE EMPERATURE ENSOR OLAR RRADIANCE OPERATION...
  • Page 3 Irradiance Sensitivity Settings (Registers 202,203,204) Baud Rate (Register 205) Wind Sensor Selection (Register 206) Rainfall Accumulator (Register 215) GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS ENSOR Operating Environment Ambient Air Temperature Sensor Relative Humidity Barometric Pressure LECTRICAL Power RS-485 Solar Irradiance input ATERIAL PECIFICATIONS Sensor Assembly Enclosure APPENDIX -500S...

  • Page 4: Introduction

    INTRODUCTION Thank you for purchasing the PVmet-500weather station. The PVmet-500is a precision, modular, and compact weather station that uses Modbus communication over RS-485 that is SunSpec compliant. The PVmet-500was primarily designed for use in the photovoltaic market for monitoring the following parameters: •...

  • Page 5: Relative Humidity And Temperature Sensor

    RELATIVE HUMIDITY AND TEMPERATURE SENSOR The relative humidity and ambient air temperature (RHT) are measured with a digital integrated circuit. The RHT sensor is protected within white slopped plastic solar reflecting shields. Figure 2: RHT sensor solar shield housing The RHT sensor is susceptible to radiated heat, so it must be located away from heat producing equipment and must be kept away from surfaces that can radiate heat after being exposed to sunlight for extended periods of time.

  • Page 6: Anemometer

    ANEMOMETER An anemometer can be attached to the top of the PVmet-500Series in place of the supplied top cap as seen in Figure 4. Figure 4: PVmet-500Series with a Miniaervane and ultrasonic anemometers Installation instructions are included with each anemometer. The anemometer is typically located 10m above the ground. Buildings, trees, and other obstructions can cause turbulent air which may impact the accuracy of the wind speed/direction measurements.

  • Page 7: Back Of Module Temperature Sensors

    P.O.A. sensors can be mounted to the solar array or separately. If the solar panels are mounted on a tracking system, then the P.O.A. sensor must also be mounted on the tracking system. If the solar panels are not on a tracking system, then the angle of the panels can be measured and the P.O.A.

  • Page 8: Mounting

    MOUNTING MAST The bottom mast is mounted first using bolts or U-bolts which can be provided separately. Typical installation is using U-bolts to attach the bottom mast to horizontal sections of Unistrut® close to the inverter monitoring equipment as shown in Figure 6. Figure 6: Possible mounting solutions Care must be taken to not overtighten the U-bolts or bolts which could damage the PVC mast.

  • Page 9: Electrical

    the small N located on the ultrasonic anemometer. Both the screw for the topmast and the screw for the entire top unit must be tightened to finalize the installation. ELECTRICAL Electrical connections should be verified before applying power to the unit to prevent the possibility of causing permanent damage.

  • Page 10: Power

    POWER REQUIREMENTS The power circuit is electrically isolated providing excellent protection from ground loop faults. The PVmet-500 requires a 10-30VDC, 1.5W power supply. Large wattage supplies can be used. Reverse input and overcurrent protection are provided on board. Figure 99 shows proper termination of the power connections with a single point ground.

  • Page 11: Wind

    Figure 10: RS-485 Connections Additional connections are provided as jumpers for connecting more RS-485 devices. The two A and B terminal pairs are internally connected. The A(-) and B(+) connections are differential providing excellent noise immunity and the third connection is the common input which gives a reference for the other lines.

  • Page 12: Miniaervane

    MINIAERVANE The typical PVmet-500 installation will come with the Miniaervane anemometer which provides the wind speed from 0 to 67m/s as well as the wind vector in 16 cardinal directions. The Miniaervane uses RJ45 connectors on the main board and on the bottom of the sensor as shown in Figure 12.

  • Page 13: Ultrasonic

    The ultrasonic communicates with the PVmet-500 using a serial RS-232 cable. Connect the sensors transmit (TX) to the PVmet-500’s receive (RX) terminal. The sensor RX is connected to the PVmet-500’s TX terminal. The ultrasonic sensor provided by RainWise is part number 500-0913 and is shown below in Figure 16.

  • Page 14: Precipitation

    RAINFALL / PRECIPITATION SENSOR There are two terminals on the main board for an optional rain gauge. The PVmet-500 is compatible with any 0.2mm tipping bucket rain gauge that uses a normally open switch contact. The inputs are not polarity sensitive. RELATIVE HUMIDITY AND TEMPERATURE SENSOR The relative humidity/temperature sensor is pre-installed at the factory.
  • Page 15 The only BOM sensors supported are provided by RainWise and they are 10K PTC thermistors in an aluminum housing. No other temperature sensors are supported at this time. The sensors are purely resistive, so the electrical connections are reversible. The cable for the BOM sensor is shielded for noise reduction and to protect from ESD/EMI.

  • Page 16: Solar Irradiance

    Table 1: Example BOM temp corrections due to longer cables. Extended Cable (m) Temp (C°) Temp reported by station (C°) Correction to Add (C°) 25.041 -0.0041 × -0.041 25.205 -0.0041 × -0.205 25.41 -0.0041 × -0.41 40.41 -0.0041 × -0.41 SOLAR IRRADIANCE Solar irradiance is the primary measurements for the PVmet 500.

  • Page 17: Operation

    OPERATION The PVmet-500is designed to work with an RS-485 SunSpec compliant host. The PVmet-500communicates with a host logger, DCS or SCADA via Modbus RTU interface. The system requirements are listed in Table 2. Table 2: Default Modbus RS-485 Communication settings Baud Rate: 9600 or 19200bps Parity:...
  • Page 18 Table 3: SunSpec model 302, Solar Irradiance Address Block Size Name Label Value Type Units Description Offset Offset Include to support various irradiance Irradiance Model uint16 measurements uint16 Model Length uint16 W/m2 Global Horizontal Irradiance POAI POAI uint16 W/m2 Plane-of-Array Irradiance uint16 W/m2 Diffuse Irradiance...

  • Page 19: Pvmet-500Holding Registers

    Table 5: SunSpec model 307, base meteorological Field Address Block Size Name Label Value Type Unit Description Notes Type Offset Offset This model Header Base Met uint16 Base Meteorological Model supersedes model 301 Header uint16 Model Length Fixed Ambient TmpAmb int16 Block Temperature...

  • Page 20: Device Settings

    UNSUPPORTED FIELDS The register map reserves register for all combinations of sensors supported by the RainWise stations. Not all will be available on any one system. Sensors/fields that are not supported can contain the hexadecimal value of 8000. Some fields require the purchase of additional sensors.

  • Page 21: Baud Rate (Register 205)

    WIND SENSOR SELECTION (REGISTER 206) The PVmet-500supports either the RainWise Miniaervane or ultrasonic wind sensor. The default selection for register 206 is a 0 which is the RainWise Miniaervane. Writing a 1 to register 206 will enable ultrasonic wind sensor support.

  • Page 22: Rainfall Accumulator (Register 215)

    Table 1 lists the requirements for using an ultrasonic sensor. Table 10: Ultrasonic sensor requirements Power: 10 -30VDC Interface: RS-232 Protocol: NMEA0183 Baud Rate: 4800 Data Bits: Parity: None Stop Bits: RAINFALL ACCUMULATOR (REGISTER 215) Due to the restrictions of how rainfall is processed in SunSpec the PVmet-500maintains a secondary rainfall accumulation counter. Name Type Units...

  • Page 23: General Specifications

    GENERAL SPECIFICATIONS All specifications are to be assumed at 25°C unless otherwise specified. SENSORS OPERATING ENVIRONMENT Temperature: -40°C to 60°C (-40 to 140°F) Humidity: 0-100% Condensing AMBIENT AIR TEMPERAT URE SENSOR Range: -40°C to 70°C (-40 to 158°F) Accuracy: +/- 0.4°C (0.5°F) Thermal Time Constant: 30 sec.

  • Page 24: Electrical

    ELECTRICAL POWER Voltage: 10-30VDC Current: 150mA Peak, 50mA nominal RS-485 Operating Voltage: -7 to +12VDC Output voltage low: 0.4VDC Output voltage high: 4.6VDC Input voltage high: 3.5VDC Input voltage low: 0.8VDC Input Hysteresis: 0.22VDC Input pullup/pulldown current: ±10µA SOLAR IRRADIANCE INPUT Voltage Input: ±1.5V Max Input current:...

  • Page 25: Enclosure

    ENCLOSURE Body: Polypropylene with UV inhibitor Hardware: 18-8 Stainless Steel Powder Coated 5052 Aluminum Wire Ingress: Foam Rubber - 25 -...

  • Page 26: Appendix

    APPENDIX FULL PVMET-500SUNSPEC MAP Start Name Type Units Contents Description Well-known value. Uniquely identifies this as a SunSpec 40001 C_SunSpec_ID uint32 "SunS" Modbus Map Well-known value. Uniquely identifies this as a SunSpec 40003 C_SunSpec_DID uint16 0x0001 Common Model block 40004 C_SunSpec_Length uint16 Length of common model block...

  • Page 27: Full Device Settings Register Map

    FULL DEVICE SETTINGS REGISTER MAP Scale Name Type Units Contents Description Factor Modbus Id int16 Modbus device address Irradiance_Global_Sensitivity uint16 0.01 Sensitivity setting of solar irradiance sensor µV/Wm Irradiance_Plane_of_Array_Sensitivity uint16 0.01 Sensitivity setting of solar irradiance sensor µV/Wm Irradiance_Other_Sensitivity uint16 0.01 Sensitivity setting of solar irradiance sensor µV/Wm...

  • Page 28: Bottom Mast Dimensions

    BOTTOM MAST DIMENSIO NS - 28 -...

  • Page 29: Support

    To return a unit under warranty: call 1-800-762-5723 within the continental US or (207) 288-5169. Within 90 days after the date of purchase, RainWise will issue a UPS call tag for pick-up of the equipment at your address. RainWise will also pay for return UPS charges.

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