International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Vol 16, No 5: October 2026

Low-cost educational prototype for IoT-based PV energy monitoring and MPPT control

Abdelmalek Mimouni (Moulay Ismail University of Meknes)
Youssef Chahet (Moulay Ismail University of Meknes)
Aumeur El Amrani (Moulay Ismail University of Meknes)
Mohamed Azeroual (Moulay Ismail University of Meknes)
Mohamed El Amraoui (Moulay Ismail University of Meknes)
Lahcen Bejjit (Moulay Ismail University of Meknes)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Oct 2026

Abstract

This paper presents a low-cost embedded platform integrating photovoltaic (PV) energy monitoring, maximum power point tracking (MPPT), and Internet of Things (IoT) communication for real-time control and performance evaluation. The proposed system is built around an ESP32 microcontroller with dual INA219 sensors and a custom-designed DC–DC boost converter operating at 20 kHz. Two MPPT strategies, perturb and observe (P&O) and fuzzy logic control (FLC), are implemented and experimentally compared under identical outdoor conditions. Experimental results obtained under natural irradiance demonstrate that the FLC approach achieves faster convergence and reduced steady-state oscillations compared to P&O. Specifically, FLC improves tracking efficiency from 82.5% to 84%, reduces duty cycle ripple, and increases average extracted power by approximately 1.5%. The system also enables real-time acquisition of I–V and P–V characteristics through duty-cycle sweeping. The proposed architecture integrates sensing, control, and IoT telemetry using MQTT and a ThingsBoard dashboard, enabling continuous monitoring with negligible communication latency relative to the MPPT update period. This work contributes a reproducible, low-cost testbed that bridges embedded control, power electronics, and IoT-based monitoring, with potential applications in both education and rapid prototyping of smart PV systems.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

IJECE

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Electrical & Electronics Engineering

Description

International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE, ISSN: 2088-8708, a SCOPUS indexed Journal, SNIP: 1.001; SJR: 0.296; CiteScore: 0.99; SJR & CiteScore Q2 on both of the Electrical & Electronics Engineering, and Computer Science) is the official publication of the Institute of ...