Design of electronic programmable board with user-friendly touch screen interface for management and control of thermosolar plant parameters

This paper describes a programmable electronic unit for controlling the environmental parameters and managing the electrical functions of a civil/industrial thermo-solar plant. The control unit acquires data from five analog temperature sensors, processes this information and, on the basis of them, commands a series of external equipments (pumps, electric valves and power supplies) with dedicated relay outputs. In addition to, the designed electronic system has a display for graphical interface with users in order to ensure simple programming and managing and lastly it´s manageable even remotely. The electronic board, integrated with the display embedded system, allows the optimization of plant performances in order to maximize efficiency and energy saving; obviously, the system is designed in general purpose concept and, being widely programmable, its functionalities can be simply and quickly modified by user through the touch screen display.