Photovoltaic system is widely installed to increase the share of renewable energy as well as to reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuel based energy. Photovoltaic (PV) is one of the most potential renewable energy based power generation systems. Monitoring of PV system is very important to send information that allows owners to maintain, operate and control these systems to reduce maintenance costs and to avoid unwanted electric power disruptions. Different monitoring systems have been introduced with the time following different requirements. Circuit complexity, availability of friendly graphical user interface, easy to understand system architecture, maintenance facility and customization ability for end user differ from system to system along with cost issues. This paper provides an overview of architectures and features of various PV monitoring systems based on different methods. There are various technologies for PV monitoring and control, developed as for commercial use or research tasks. It has been seen that a large portion of the work is done on classifications, for example, Internet based Monitoring using Servers, TCP/IP, GPRS and so forth. There are various methodologies for data acquisition, for example, PLC (Power Line Communication), PIC, Reference cell, National Instruments etc. Various requirements are considered while selecting a proper monitoring system for an application. Review of various monitoring technologies with system attributes and working structures have been discussed to get a clear view of merits and demerits of existing PV monitoring systems. All the systems discussed in this paper have pros and cons, and these systems were developed following different requirements. In the end, a particular cost effective monitoring system using Arduino microcontroller has been proposed considering both research and user level requirements from perspectives of cost, availability of parts/modules and features, compatibility with sensors and end-devices etc.

广泛安装了光伏系统，以增加可再生能源的份额，并减少基于化石燃料的能源对环境的影响。光伏（PV）是最有潜力的可再生能源发电系统之一。监视光伏系统对于发送信息非常重要，该信息允许所有者维护，操作和控制这些系统，以降低维护成本并避免不必要的电力中断。引入了不同的监视系统，其时间遵循不同的要求。电路的复杂性，友好的图形用户界面的可用性，易于理解的系统架构，维护工具和针对最终用户的定制能力因系统而异，并伴随着成本问题。本文概述了基于不同方法的各种光伏监控系统的体系结构和功能。有许多用于商业用途或研究任务的光伏监控技术。已经看到，大部分工作是在分类上完成的，例如，使用服务器，TCP / IP，GPRS等的基于Internet的监视。有多种数据采集方法，例如PLC（电力线通信），PIC，参考单元，National Instruments等。在为应用选择适当的监视系统时，会考虑各种要求。讨论了具有系统属性和工作结构的各种监视技术的回顾，以清楚地了解现有PV监视系统的优缺点。本文讨论的所有系统都有其优缺点，并且这些系统是根据不同的要求开发的。最后，从成本，零件/模块和功能的可用性，与传感器和终端设备的兼容性等方面考虑研究和用户层面的要求，提出了使用Arduino微控制器的特定成本有效的监控系统。