Solar Cell Size Requirement for Powering of Wireless Sensor Network Used in Northern Europe

This paper investigate the possibilities of using solar cell panels for powering Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in Northern Europe. By using a power model of a WSN node and the PVGIS database we have calculated the required size of a solar cell panel for a node. With an active period of 48ms per minute, the size of the solar cell panel to supply sufficient energy must be larger than 1.1cm in Rome, 1.5cm in Berlin and 1.4cm in Oslo in July. In December the size requirements have increased to 5.1cm in Rome, 17.4cm in Berlin and 58cm in Oslo. Further north the size becomes too large to be feasibly to use.