Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Adaptive power consumption improves the reliability of solar-powered T

devices for internet of things☆
⁎
Nasim Sahraeia, , Erin E. Looneyb, Sterling M. Watsonb, Ian Marius Petersb, Tonio Buonassisia,b
a
Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES), Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), 1 CREATE Way, #10-01 CREATE Tower, Singapore 138602,
Singapore
b
MIT Photovoltaic Research Laboratory (PV-Lab), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

H I GH L IG H T S

• Adaptive power management scheme results in more reliable PV-powered IoT devices.
• The scheme can be based on either the available energy storage or solar irradiance.
• ItIt ensures persistence of data transmission despite unpredictability of sunlight.
• Thereduces the optimum cost by > 10% and battery volume by 30%, for < 3% less data.
• scheme is suitable for IoT applications with flexible data transmission rate.

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Photovoltaics (PV) can provide power autonomy to sensors and communication devices comprising the Internet
Solar powered sensors of Things (IoT). An outstanding challenge is to create design rules that transform intermittent and non-dis-
Photovoltaics (PV) patchable solar energy into persistent, stable, and low-cost power for sensors. These design rules govern optimal
Power autonomous system architecture design and optimal power consumption patterns. In previous work, we considered (i) the
Internet of Things (IoT)
variability of solar insolation across different time scales (hourly, daily, and seasonal); (ii) the solar cell device
System design
characteristics; and (iii) the power consumption of the sensing and communication modules. From these con-
Power system sizing
Smart sensor straints, we described a methodology to calculate the necessary energy storage capacity to reliably power the
device over several years. The system size can then be optimized to minimize cost or volume. In this paper, we
describe a methodology to improve the reliability of solar-powered IoT devices in the event of outlier conditions
(i.e., periods of anomalously low insolation that reduce battery state-of-charge). This theoretical study, based on
actual sensor and insolation data, describes how an adaptive power consumption scheme decreases the di-
mensions of solar cell and battery as well as system cost, assuming flexible operating scheme is allowed. The
adaptive power consumption scheme means the data acquisition and transmission rate — which governs the
power consumption profile — changes based on availability of stored energy in the battery and recent solar
insolation. The results show for 3% reduction in average data transmission, the cost of the power components
(i.e. battery and solar panel) can be reduced by 10% and the volume of the battery by 30%. The design is
constrained by the available power as well as the minimum expected system performance, using the rate of
acquired data from the sensor. We find that implementing an adaptive power consumption scheme based on
available battery capacity for solar powered sensor can reduce battery capacity by 90%, while ensuring that data
transmission rate occasionally varies but never extinguishes completely.

1. Introduction wired or wireless. Especially for wireless devices, power consumption

heavily depends on the communication protocol. For the sensors cap-
Internet of Things (IoT) is a broad term referring to electronic de- able of wireless communication, most of the energy is consumed in the
vices and sensors capable of collecting information and communication, RF communication [1]. To power remote sensors, using a battery is a

☆
The short version of the paper was presented at WES-CUE2017, Jul 19–21, Singapore. This paper is a substantial extension of the short version of the conference paper.
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: nasim.sahraei@smart.mit.edu (N. Sahraei).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.04.091
Received 31 October 2017; Received in revised form 3 April 2018; Accepted 28 April 2018
Available online 11 May 2018
0306-2619/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
N. Sahraei et al. Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329

viable power solution. However, batteries can only store a limited

amount of energy, and hence the device has a limited operational time
window. Combination of energy harvesting technologies with re-
chargeable batteries is the practical solution for batteries’ limited ca-
pacity. There are extensive reviews on various storage and energy
harvesting systems for sensor networks [2–4]. Among the ambient en-
ergy harvesting technologies (Fig. 1), light harvesting with photovoltaic
devices is the most promising option because of the light energy density
available for conversion outdoor [5–7]. Solar cells have been used for
various purposes including agriculture [8], aquatic monitoring [9], and
biometric monitoring [10].
The intermittent and non-distpatchable nature of solar energy
(Fig. 2) dictates some type of energy storage (battery [11] or super-
capacitor [12,13]), as well as a power management system. The main
purpose of the power management system is to efficiently regulate the
generated power for the storage and consumption. However, this
system can also serves as a control circuit to manage the following Fig. 1. Comparison of energy harvesting technologies for IoT sensors.
tasks: (1) the data transmission policy to reduce the power consumption
by transmission, (2) balancing the energy sources, and (3) duty-cycling
of the sensor functions [14]. In this paper the powered management
system balances the energy sources and adjust data acquisition/trans-
mission rate to the harvested energy or available storage in the battery.
Adjusting the data acquisition/transmission rate is done by adjusting
the duty-cycle between a maximum and a minimum value in order to
minimize the power consumption and maximize throughput. Adjusting
the duty cycling based on the energy balance of the system prevents an
energy negative mode [15]. Adjustable duty-cycle depends on the use
case of the sensor. For a GPS tracker for example, data acquisition/
transmission rate can be a function of speed since the slower the tracker
moves, less data is required for an estimated location. While more data
results in more accurate path estimation, a minimum data rate can be
defined based on the use case. An adaptive power consumption scheme,
adjusts the duty cycle based on the available energy to avoid net ne-
gative energy balance. Here we show using and adaptive scheme also
significantly reduce the minimum required size and cost of the solar cell
and battery.
Designing such a system for power autonomy, requires under-
standing of the energy yield of the solar panel as well as the power
consumption characteristics of the IoT device. There are many tools
developed for sizing PV-battery systems for specific power consump- Fig. 2. Intermittent and non-dispatchable characteristics of solar energy ne-
tions [16], however they are mostly not designed for small loads in the cessitate coupling with energy storage mediums for IoT applications. The or-
order of less than a watt, as it is the case for most of the IoT devices (see ange line shows an example of solar irradiance available outdoor, and green
part shows the amount energy that can be harvested using a solar panel with
Fig. 1). Also, these tools are usually not flexible to implement re-
18% efficiency. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure
sponsive loads as we define them in this paper. There many methods to
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
approach the system sizing for an off-grid hybrid energy systems, ran-
ging from probabilistic and iterative to analytical optimizations [17].
These hybrid systems can comprise energy harvesting devices like PV down in high quantities. Hence cost optimization might not be seen as
panels, hydro and wind turbines, as well as storage media like energy the main motivation this study, although it is still important. However,
storage in rechargeable batteries or storage of the final product of the loss of functionality due to loss of power for these systems is so detri-
system. These methods often use various energy balance metrics like mental as to forfeit the implementation of the solution for some ap-
loss of power supply (LPSP) [18], battery state of charge (SOC) [18,19], plications. Hence, designing the system for power autonomy becomes
and level of autonomy1 (LA) [20], as well as various system cost goals critically important.
as their optimization targets. These system sizing studies usually focus In our previous works, we have presented an iterative approach for
on larger systems with tens of watts or kilowatts output. Also, the loads sizing the PV-powered system for power autonomy, using SOC and level
often vary over a time period in the order of hours or days in those of power autonomy as the optimization target [21,22]. A design ap-
systems. So the time constant of system design is matched to that range. proach for a PV-powered GPS tracker was implemented for outdoor
For a PV-powered IoT device, or any small electronic device for that applications. It was shown that the system size reduced if the expected
matter, the power consumptions and time constant of the variation of level of autonomy or up-time is reduced. Also, the average power
power is at least one to two orders of magnitude lower. In addition, for consumption was shown to greatly impact the system size. A major
these small systems, the cost implications of the system sizing scale energy saving method for such systems is to activate the data acquisi-
tion/transmission in intervals and leave the device in hibernation/sleep
mode for the rest of the time. In such a device, the communicating
sensors often collect and transmit data in a pre-defined fixed data rate
1
Level of autonomy (LA) is used in the literature as a merit to represent the percentage or frequency.
of time the device have enough power available and is power autonomous. We use the
In our more recent work [23], we have presented the idea of flexible
term up-time for power autonomous devices in our work to avoid confusion with au-
tonomously controlled devices. working schedule for a PV-powered desalination system and the effect

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of such flexible scheme on the total implementation cost. Such a system
would adjust its operation time based on the available solar energy.
This system was equipped with a relatively low cost storage in the form
of the final product of the system (which is water in this case), in ad-
dition to energy storage in the form of batteries. This additional low
cost storage allows the flexible operation time which have major cost
reduction implications. In other words, for this device, the total power
consumption of the system is allowed to be adjusted by turning the
system on and off based on available solar irradiance.
For many IoT sensors today, data is often required to be sent con-
tinuously at regular intervals. This is because the smart systems need to
make decisions based on this received data and act on it in real time.
Prolonged inactivity is not allowed, however some flexibility in the
strict rules for data communication can nonlinearly impact the savings
in battery size, PV area, and fundamentally the cost of the system. We
have shown [21] that flexibility in the up-time (i.e. percentage of time
the device have enough power to run) can reduce the system require-
ments. Decreasing the up-time by 5% reduces the system size to less
than half. In this contribution, we discuss the flexibility in the data rate
can have similar effects on the system size requirements.
In this paper, we discuss the idea that designing a more intelligent
system that adapts to its environment reduces the system size and
power consumption of the device. Power consumption of a device is a
major constraints when it comes to designing power autonomous
electrical system powered by an energy harvesting system. The reason
being the amount of harvestable energy and the efficiency of the energy
harvesting systems are very limited and unpredictable in many cases.
Hence if the electronic system have a constant power consumption
throughout its life and does not adapt its consumption to the available
energy in its environment, it is either non-reliable or need to be ex-
tremely over designed to overcome the unpredictable changes of the
available energy. Here we show how the adaptive power scheme affects
the design criteria for a sensor system designed in house.
2. Methodology
2.1. Sizing the power system
The search algorithm for the optimal design for the power autono-
mous IoT system was explained in our previous work [21]. Here, the
same approach is adopted to find the minimum battery capacity re-
quired for the system with an average power consumption of 100 mW
and a periodic power consumption pattern. The smart sensor records
and transmits the sensor data in the active mode with higher power
consumption and stays in hibernation or sleep mode which is a low
power state for the rest of the time. In this work, the up-time is consider
to be 100%, and the data rate is allowed to be flexible in low power
availability.
Here we have used the same method for system sizing as explained
in our previous work [21]. As insolation input, we have used Global
Horizontal Irradiance time series (GHI), I (t ) , data from Mahbubnagar,
India [24]. The dataset has a time resolution of five minutes per data
point over five years (2010–2014), and also contains the ambient
temperature, T . The solar panel is assumed to be horizontal, immobile,
and facing the sky. The dataset presented in this study is suitable to
demonstrate the main features of design approach for a device with an
adaptive power consumption. The power output of the solar panel is
calculated as a product of the irradiance and efficiency. The efficiency
of the solar module is calculated considering temperature losses. We
calculate the temperature-dependent efficiency of the solar module, ηT ,
in Eq. (1) with initial efficiency of ηinitial , taking into consideration the
Ross coefficient which relates irradiance to module temperature,
m2
k = 0.025 ⎡°C W ⎤ [25] for a typical mounting system:
⎣ ⎦
ηT (t ) = ηinitial {(1 + αP [(T (t ) + k ∗I (t ))−Tstd]} (1)
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Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329
The temperature coefficient of module power is αP = −4.2 × 10−3
[26], efficiency in the standards testing condition ηinitial = 18%, and
standard testing temperature Tstd = 25°.
The minimum solar cell area, Amin , necessary to fulfil the power
consumption of the device in a specific period of time, t , can be cal-
culated from the total power consumption of the device and the total
power generation over that period of time (Eq. (2)).
t
∑0 Pavg
Amin = t
∑0 I (t ) × ηT (t ) (2)
The state of charge (SOC) of the battery over time is calculated using
the extra power generation of the solar cell (total power generation
minus power consumption at each time step) [21]. The power storage
efficiency of the Lithium ion battery is considered according to Eq. (3)
[27]:
(Esolar−Econsumption )
SOC (ti ) = SOC (ti − 1) × (1−σ ) + ηce ×
Vbat Cbat (3)
In this equation, σ = 1% is hourly self-discharge rate and ηce = 90%
is the charge efficiency factor. Esolar , Econsumption , Vbat , and Cbat are energy
generated by the solar module, energy consumed by the device, battery
voltage and battery capacity, respectively. The effect of cycling on the
battery capacity is not considered in this paper. However, the system is
designed to avoid deep cycling by setting the minimum allowed battery
state of charge to be 10%. We will see in the result section that the in
the adaptive power scheme, the battery state stays around 20% at
minimum. Avoiding deep cycling help improve the battery health de-
gradation over time.
Calculating the SOC value of the entire simulation period (5 years)
for a specific solar panel and battery capacity, we can analyse the power
deficiency in the system. The minimum battery capacity necessary to
achieve power autonomy is calculated by increasing the battery capa-
city for each given solar cell area until the system is power autonomous
(never runs out of power). The battery capacity versus solar cell area
calculated using this method shows the minimum requirement for
power autonomy in the design space.
The cost values presented in this paper are the sum of the cost of the
solar panel and the battery of the system. The cost of the solar panel is
considered to be 0.335 $/cm2 and the cost of the battery is 7.4 × 10−4
$/mWh, which is directly obtained from the commercial vendors
during the fabrication process of the device. The cost value in this paper
is calculated by adding the cost of these two components. Considering
the fact that the minimum battery capacity required to power the
system can be calculated for any solar panel area [21], and increasing
the solar cell area result in smaller battery capacity, it can be easily seen
that there is a minimum cost value for a single combination of the solar
cell and battery (this is visually explained in our previous work [21]).
2.2. Power consumption based on duty-cycle
Our IoT sensor used Global System for Mobile communication
(GSM). The time constant of power consumption patterns of the com-
munication systems are in the order of milliseconds or less. The time-
averaged, integrated energy of the peak power of the communications
module is in the order of mW·sec. Since the resolution the solar irra-
diance time series are more than minutes, the generated energy steps
are orders of magnitude larger than the energy consumed in the spikes.
Accordingly, we consider an average power consumption for different
modes of operations of the device. We have measured the power con-
sumption of the two modes of operation for the device: (i) a hibernation
mode, with a power consumption of 5 mW in which the device does not
acquire or transmit any data, and (ii) an active mode with average
power consumption of 385 mW in which the device acquires and
transmits data. The assumptions are based on an actual in-house fab-
ricated system. In a default state the device operates in these two modes
N. Sahraei et al. Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329

Fig. 3. Duty cycle of the device in (a) the default mode of 25%, (b) power-conserving mode with duty cycle of 10%.

in a fixed duty cycle of 25% shown in Fig. 3(a). This duty-cycle is

achieved by 15 min hibernation and 5 min active in each cycle. The 5-
min active time is the minimum active time our device needs to turn on
and acquire the data and send it to the server using a GSM module. The
data rate achieved by this duty-cycle is 3 data per hour. This was chosen
as an appropriate data rate for the specific application. The appropriate
duty-cycle and data rates may vary by the application.
In addition to the hibernation that appears during the duty-cycle,
the device stays in hibernation when the battery SOC is below 10% (i.e.
no data transmission until the SOC is above 10%). This is to avoid total
shutdown of the device in operation. The objective of the system sizing
optimization is to reduce this later mode of hibernation to zero.

2.3. Definition of adaptive power consumption

In this paper we evaluate SOC and minimum system requirement of

smart sensors that can adapt their power consumption to the available
power condition. The available power is evaluated based on two cri-
teria:
(1) The battery SOC falls below 30%. This condition has shown to keep
the battery SOC around 20% for most of the time, which avoids
deep discharge. Deep discharge is known to decrease the Lithium
ion battery life.
(2) The integrated average solar irradiance in the last day lower than
threshold of 15 mW/cm2. From the solar irradiance time series used
in this study, the average last day irradiance is less than 15 mW/
cm2 in ∼5% of times. Fig. 4 shows increasing this threshold sig-
nificantly affects the duration of the reduced duty cycle.
If these criteria are met, the device is considered to be in power
scarcity. The smart sensor is assumed to reduce its power consumption
pattern by decreasing its duty-cycle (e.g. Fig. 3(b)) when the above
criteria is met. In this method, instead of turning the device off com-
pletely, the data transmission rate is decreased to reduce the average
power consumption. We call this an adaptive power consumption
scheme. The reduced duty-cycle is either of the following values:
21.7%, 18.1%, 14.3%, and 10%. In other words, by reducing the
number of data transmitted per unit time the system adapts its power
consumption to its condition and the device saves power when it is
power deprived.
The flowchart in Fig. 5(a) which is borrowed from Fig. 2 in Ref. [21]
shows the algorithm for calculating the minimum required battery ca-
pacity for various solar cell area. The algorithm basically sweeps over
various solar cell area starting from minimum solar cell area required
Fig. 4. The effect of changing the threshold of last day irradiance on the
duration of reduced duty-cycle in the adaptive power scheme to the low in-
solation period.
(Eq. (2)), and calculates the minimum battery capacity for which the
device never shut down (100% persistency). In order to do so, the al-
gorithm starts from a maximum required battery capacity for autono-
mous operation during the full period of investigation. Then a time
series of battery state of charge (SOC) is calculated by iterating the SOC
step by step using the energy balance of consumed energy and gener-
ated energy based on the solar insulation time series. The battery ca-
pacity is reduced step by step until further reduction compromises the
persistency. That is the minimum battery capacity required for that
specific solar cell area. In this paper the step by step SOC iteration is
performed while considering the power consumption changes as a feed
back to low insolation or low battery SOC. The algorithm for calculating
battery SOC vs. time is shown in Fig. 5(b and c). The two modes of
power consumption leads to two energy consumption in a time step
represented by E1 and E2, E2 referring to the reduced power con-
sumption by adjusting duty cycle.
This adaptive power consumption scheme can be applied to any
other bimodal or multimodal operation with variable power con-
sumption states. In the system under investigation in this paper, the
data transmission is the most power consuming stage and hence the
bimodal power consumption can be achieved by adjusting the data
transmission rate. Hence it should be noted that this scheme can only be
applied to the systems that have a certain level of flexibility in terms of

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Fig. 5. Flowchart shows the algorithm for (a) calculating the minimum system size curves [21], (b) the battery SOC vs time adaptive to low SOC, (c) the battery SOC
vs time adaptive to low solar insolation in the past 24 hrs.
data transmission. This means the system have a minimum acceptable
threshold of data communication and a regular expected rate of data
communication which is higher than the minimum threshold. In such a
system occasional data transmission at the minimum threshold rate is
allowed, hence the power consumption of the device can be adjusted by
changing the data transmission rate.
For simplicity, we assume reducing the data transmission rate does
not significantly affect the value of data, meaning the lower duty cycles
still provide acceptable amount of data that serves the purpose of data
collection while helps avoiding complete shutdown of the device when
energy source is not available.
Table 1 shows the average power consumption and the minimum
solar cell requirement for the system with the above duty cycles. We
define the data rate to be the number of data points communicated per
hour. The following two sections describes the effect of adaptive power
consumption to the power scarcity in such a smart sensor.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Adaptive power in low battery state of charge (SOC)
In this scenario, the device considers power scarcity based on its
battery SOC readings, and makes decisions to decrease its power con-
sumption by decreasing the duty cycle as explained. The data rate
baseline (i.e., in non-adaptive power consumption scenario) is con-
sidered to be 3 data points per hour. It is important to note that lower
duty-cycle in power deprived state also decrease the total average data
acquisition and communication rate, meaning there will be less sensor
data per unit time.
As explained above, the minimum solar cell area necessary for a
certain power consumption can be calculated. However, the minimum
Table 1
Average power consumption and minimum required solar cell various fixed
duty cycles.
Duty-cycle Average power consumption Equivalent minimum solar cell
(mW) area (cm2)
25% (default) 100 26.6
21.7% 87.6 24.8
14.3% 59.3 15.7
10% 43 11.4
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Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329
solar cell requires an extremely large battery. Fig. 6 shows the battery
SOC for various power adaptive schemes presented in this paper. The
minimum solar cell area of 26.6 cm2 provides enough power for the
average data rate of 3 per hour, however a battery capacity of more
than 14 Ah is required to compensate for the seasonal changes of the
solar irradiance (Fig. 6(a)). In adaptive power system for the battery
SOC less than 30%, the battery requirement dramatically decreases in
expense of data rate. Fig. 6(b)–(d) show increasing the hibernation time
in low SOC decreases the battery requirement dramatically for the
minimum solar cell area (see also Table 2). Comparison of the battery
capacity and data rate of Fig. 6(a) with (b)–(d) shows that it is possible
to reduce the battery capacity by 90% by compensating on the data rate
by 3.4% for a limited period of time. Hence, it is unnecessary to use a
large battery for a smart device, even for the minimum solar cell area.
To get a complete picture, we have used the same method explained
in our previous work [21], to find the minimum battery and solar cell
combinations for power autonomy (Fig. 7). The figure shows the
minimum battery capacity and solar cell area needed to power auton-
omous devices with adaptive power schemes based on battery state of
charge (SOC) less than 30%. The dashed line in Fig. 7 shows the
minimum solar cell area requirement for a data rate of 3 data per hour.
For the minimum solar cell area, the adaptive power scheme results in
smaller required battery capacity, compromising with a lower average
data rate, as shown in Table 2. This trade-off between battery size and
data transmission rate would need to be evaluated based on the sensor
application.
The lower average power consumption, even when imposed on
specific periods, ensures the smart sensor can survive the low power
condition for a longer time by staying in the low power state during
power scarcity. Hence, the smart sensor has lower minimum solar cell
requirement. The minimum solar cell requirement of such system in
Fig. 7 is defined by its power consumption in low power mode
(Table 1). It is important to note that in the presented optimization
method, the minimum data transmission rate should be set as boundary
condition when searching for the optimum power system size. Since the
minimum solar cell requirement for the lower duty-cycles is smaller,
when the optimization algorithm looks for minimum solar cell area for
a given battery capacity, it finds a smaller solar cell area than the ori-
ginal minimum solar cell area (i.e. dashed line in Fig. 7). This condition,
especially for large battery capacities, results in power generation from
the solar panel that does not compensate for the power consumption of
the default data rate. As a result, system stays in the lower power
N. Sahraei et al. Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329

Fig. 6. Battery state of charge (SOC) of optimum power system size at solar cell area of 26.6 cm2 for various power adaptive schemes. The hibernation time increases
by (a) 0%, (b) 20%, (c) 100%, (d) 200% when the battery SOC is less than 30%. The battery SOC less than 30% is striped in the figure.

consumption region with lower data rate for extended time periods.
This time period, which is determined by the solar cell area, determined
the final average data rate in that condition. As a results the minimum
system size curves shown in Fig. 7 do not represent a constant data rate.
In Table 2, the optimum cost point for each condition does not refer
to the highest average data rate in that condition. This cost optimiza-
tion is not bound by its performance, and rather by the minimum cost
condition at which it can survive with power autonomy. As said, this
results in a smaller solar cell area. If the optimization boundaries are
restricted to the minimum solar cell area of 26.6 cm2 which covers the
average power consumption of the duty-cycle of 25%, the system re-
covers to higher SOC on sunny days and the data rate increases to 3 per
hour. As a result the average data rate is much less affected, although
the battery storage requirement has decreased by 90%.
In addition to the reduction battery and solar cell size, the adaptive
power scheme ensures the system never fails due to the low light
condition. As a result the predictability of the solar irradiation is less
significant when system reliability is considered.
3.2. Adaptive power after low insolation period
Another approach to adaptive power is to decrease the average
power consumption when there is a shortage of solar irradiance in the
past days. In order to consider the effect of available solar irradiance,

Table 2
Minimum requirement for various adaptive power conditions in low SOC.
When SOC < 30% (power deprived) For solar cell area = 26.6 cm2 At minimum cost point
Duty-cycle
Cost ($) Battery capacity Average data rate Cost ($) Solar cell area Battery capacity Average data rate
(mAh) (#/hr) (cm2) (mAh) (#/hr)

25% (default) 15.1 14,150 3.00 11.7 30.7 2000 3.0

21.7% 12.1 4300 2.92 11.1 29.3 1800 2.98
14.3% 10.6 2200 2.90 9.8 18.9 4690 2.1
10% 9.8 1200 2.87 7.2 13.7 3600 1.5

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Fig. 7. Minimum power system sizing for adaptive power schemes to battery
state of charge (SOC) less than 30%. The dashed line in the figure point to the
minimum solar cell area required for powering the device (non-adaptive
scheme) during the 5 year investigation period according to Eq. (2).
we have calculated the average insolation in the 24 h at each point of
time for the available irradiance time series (Fig. 8(a)). In the event that
the last day average power available from the sun is less than 15 mW/
cm2, the device has decreased its power consumption by reducing the
duty-cycle to the following values: 21.7%, 18.1%, 14.3%, and 10%. The
effect of this adaptive power scheme on the minimum power system
size is presented in Fig. 8(b). Since the frequency of such low power
events is not very high, the average data rate is affected less in this
scenario.
Here it is important to mention that the minimum system size lines
in Fig. 8(b) are iso-performance (i.e. constant data rate), meaning the
data rate along the line stays constant. This was not the case with the
minimum system size presented in Fig. 7. The reason is the system size
is bound to the solar irradiation instead of the battery capacity. Because
the system is responsive to the occasional low irradiance instances and
these occasions are sparse along the time, the data rate needs to recover
to the default state whenever sun is out. Hence the minimum solar cell
area is determined by the irradiance time series used for the study. As
mentioned before, in this case the average last day irradiance is lower
than 15 mW/cm2 in X = 5% of times. Therefore, the average data rate
is determined by the following equation:
average data rate = (1−X ) × default data rate + X × reduced data rate
This average data rate determines the average power consumption
of the device and thereafter the minimum solar cell area.
Fig. 8. (a) Adaptive power schemes when the last day average power available from the sun is less than 15 mW/cm2, (b) minimum system size condition for the
adaptive power.
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Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329
Table 3 summarizes the system size and cost of each adaptive power
scheme at solar cell area of 26.6 cm2, as well as the minimum cost point
on each curve in Fig. 8(b). In comparison with the adaptive power to
the SOC in the previous section, here the battery requirements at the
optimum cost point has decreased. The optimization for the minimum
cost has also resulted in lower costs for same average data rates.
As mentioned before, the cost reduction of the adaptive power
scheme is not major. Also, the design approach presented here is based
on historical data and hence does not guarantee the exact calculated
average data rate in the future. However, the major benefit of an
adaptive power scheme is avoiding complete blackout of the device
during unexpected conditions by tapering the communication fre-
quency.
4. Conclusion
In this contribution, we present our design approach for a persistent
solar powered smart sensor. Using experimental insights, the design
criteria for battery capacity and solar cell area were determined for five
years of continuous operation. The device can adapt its power con-
sumption to the power availability. The available power is gauged by
the battery state of charge and the average solar insolation available to
the device in the last 24 h. The battery capacity of the device is lowered
by 90% by compromising 4.3% of data transmitted per hour. The
adaptive power can help decrease the power system sizing in both
cases. The adaptive power to SOC condition decreases the battery re-
quirement for smaller solar cell area to greater extent. However it af-
fects the average data rate to a great extent. As a result, minimum re-
quired average data transmission should be considered as one of the
optimization criteria to avoid such a compromise in performance.
Meanwhile, adapting power consumption to the solar insolation affects
the required battery capacity more, while keeping the average data
transmission rate constant. In a practical sense, adaptive power scheme
implementation requires considerations in circuit design and com-
puting power. Insight into the effect of different power system sizing
approaches can help finding better solutions for specific smart sensor
devices. Hence, designing a persistent and adaptive solar-powered
system requires visibility into the application of the system and its
performance constraining aspects.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by funding from Singapore’s National
Research Foundation through the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research
and Technology’s “Low energy electronic systems (LEES) IRG” and
Ignition Grant from SMART Innovation Centre, grant reference number
ING1611124-ENG (IGN). E.E.L. acknowledges support by the NSF
N. Sahraei et al. Applied Energy 224 (2018) 322–329

Table 3
Minimum requirement for various adaptive power conditions in low solar insolation (when average last day solar insolation is less than 15 mW/cm2).
Duty-cycle when SOC < 30% (power For minimum solar cell area = 26.6 cm2 At minimum cost point
deprived)
Cost ($) Battery capacity Data rate (#/hr) Cost ($) Solar cell area Battery capacity Data rate (#/hr)
(mA·h) (cm2) (mA·h)

25% (default) 19.4 14,150 3.00 11.7 30.7 2000 3

21.7% 17.2 11,255 2.97 11.1 29.7 1500 2.97
14.3% 14.8 7920 2.93 10.7 28.5 1500 2.93
10% 12.9 5460 2.91 10.5 28.2 1400 2.91

Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1122374.
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