Solar Powered Weather Station

Abstract

Increasing concerns surrounding the influence of urban climate on the livability of cities and the health of citizens lead to a need for environmental data on a more localized scale. Self-powered weather stations that use the many WiFi networks spanning the city to transmit their data are a promising solution to increase the amount of data on localized urban climate. Conventional weather stations often measure wind, rain and sun radiance, phenomena that are heavily influenced by the many objects present in an urban environment, which is why they are usually placed outside of the city or on top of buildings. Self-powered weather stations placed on street level can be used to gather data on temperature, humidity, air pollution and noise pollution. If a good trade-off is made between the sensing capacities, the battery capacity and the solar panel size, a weather station like this can do frequent measurements throughout the year, surviving the winter months of low solar panel power generation due to reduced irradiation. In the simulations done for this project, it was found that a simple algorithm that linearly varies the relative measuring frequency of the most power-hungry sensors with the available battery charge greatly improved the average measuring frequency and lifetime of the weather station. Thanks to the increased power budget, additional sensors can be added, such as gas sensors. Furthermore, the weather station can be made more compact and affordable by reducing the size of the solar panel and/or the battery capacity of the weather station.