UPDATED : See the bottom of this post for an update and prototype pics

So back in THIS POST i was continuing to get stressed that it seemed amazing to me that there isn’t a device out there that will measure and log the energy generated on a small solar panel so i could do a solar survey without having to pay for a full sized kit. Investigating and installing alternative energy seems to be much harder than it needs to be, so it was time that we made it easier for everyone.

Montpillard.com has teamed up with Nick Farrell to make a solar logger and get it prototyped for testing and ultimately refined for availability to the alternative energy market.

The idea is simple, rather than wondering how much power you could generate, or wonder where the best part of the roof or garden to put your panels you’ll be able to take our logger and simple drop it in your desired location and leave it for 7, 10 or 30 days at a time. At the end of this period, take the memory module and plug it in to your home mac (or PC) and read the data in Excel or some other spreadsheet, it’ll be that simple.

That’s all the news right now, this week we should see some movement on the actual hardware and start to bring you pictures of what the raw “bread board” logger looks like before we start to refine the product.

Update : 9 June 09
Here are some very early pictures of our test hardware. The 1st image shows the readout from the panel over a time of 5 minutes. I’ll post more info as we get it, but I just wanted to share this with you

Base panel showing logged data.

Base panel and USB data drive

If you are interested in helping development, testing or becoming a partner please get in touch with us at HERE and we’ll get back to you ASAP with answers to your questions. At present this really is going to be alpha hardware but we have got to start somewhere.