5G Connected and Photovoltaic Powered Next Generation Greenhouse for Food Security
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This project aims to facilitate the sustainable and profitable production of vegetables by applying internet of things (IoT), big data and 5G communication technologies to photovoltaic (solar energy) integrated, next generation smart green houses. The project addresses the Qatar National Research Strategy pillars of â energy and environmentâ and â computer science and ICTâ by addressing current technology gaps in the research priority areas of Additive manufacting: â 6. Laser processing, surface property manipulation;â ICT in manufactering: â 1. Big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence; 2. Industrial Internet of Things; 5. Predictive maintenanceâ with application to the industrial sector of â 5. Food and Agriculture,â â 7. Energy (included renewable energy),â and â 12. IT, Telecom, Electrical and Electronics Industry.â To achive the goals of the project, a team of four institutions has been assembled to address the core areas of IOT, anomaly detection, photovoltaics, and next generation greenhouse design. An IoT architecture will be implemented, at one side, collecting sensor data from smart greenhouse and forward it to cloud based centralized servers to extract semantic results. Network slicing technique introduced with upcoming 5G technology will be applied to ensure reliable, cheap and secure communication between sensor control systems and cloud based IoT servers. On the other side, new and innovative approaches will be implemented at cell and module fabrication level. At the cell level, laser based material processing will be used to make a new type of solar cell with improved optical properties that will lead to higher efficiency. The surface of solar cells will be textured by using a laser system that has already been proven at METU GUNAM facilities. Such a texturing approach will bring an additive and smart approach to the cell manufacturing process and have a potential to be scaled up to large scale manufacturing. At the module level, fabricated solar cells will be assembled into modules according to the needs for green house applications. For this pupose, laser cutting process will be employed to fabricate cells with desired geometry. Integration of these modules into a green house structure will aslo be a major development on the module side. Another aspect of the project is the development of a smart system to monitor and control energy produced on photovoltaic arrays powering greenhouse. Photovoltaic panel data collected from the sensors are sent cloud based IoT system to detect faulty cells and take immediate corrective actions and perform maintenance activities to increase the reliability and effficieny of solar panels. Another work will be conducted on cell surface by texturing the surface of Si solar cell by laser so that we obtain so called â black Siliconâ that reduces the reflection from the surface almost to zero. In this way optical gain will be very high. On the other hand, laser texturing will damage the surface degrading the electrical peroformnce..........
