Introduction.

The use of renewable sources of energy, and especially photovoltaics, has become a key tool in the field of cleaner production, helping to promote sustainable development in many sectors, including agriculture, becoming an opportunity for momentum for the sector.

Objective.

This study evaluated the performance of a photovoltaic panel installation with two different technologies through the design and construction of an electronic data acquisition device comparing power curves.

Materials and methods.

Two types of panel technologies were considered (polycrystalline and amorphous) as the supply of electrical energy in the coffee processing process of the Parque Tecnológico del Café-TECNICAFÉ- SUPRACAFÉ, Cauca, Colombia. A hardware prototype with free software was designed on an Arduino board with a microcontroller capable of measuring the irradiance, power, and thermal response of each solar panel, and the energy generated with both types of installations (parallel and serial) was calculated. Voltage, electric current and temperature data were stored in the micro SD module of the card and then plotted as power delivery characteristic curves.

The Results suggest the existence of a direct relationship between the power delivered by the panels and the irradiance variable. The polycrystalline panels delivered higher power than the amorphous ones, reporting a practical efficiency of 11% and 4.8% respectively.

Conclusion.

The design achieved in this research represents an opportunity to improve the energy performance of the coffee sector.