Bench notes · LoRa · Solar

Solar farms are cutting the cables and going LoRa

Big solar farms have a monitoring problem: thousands of tracker motors, inverters and cleaning robots spread across hundreds of hectares, often with patchy mobile coverage. More and more, the answer is LoRa.

Why LoRa wins on a solar farm

• No trenching. Radio skips running cable and conduit across the whole site.
• No SIM fees. A private LoRa network has no per-device charges and needs no mobile tower.
• One gateway can cover a whole site, where Wi-Fi would need dozens of access points.

One tracker maker alone runs several hundred thousand LoRaWAN trackers across more than 650 projects. Its wind sensors tell the panels to stow when gusts get too strong. That matters here, because South Australia got over 32% of its electricity from solar in 2024/25 and is aiming for 100% net renewables by 2027.

Build the backyard version

You don't need a 250 MW farm to try it. Two Raspberry Pi Picos, two RYLR998 915 MHz LoRa modules and an INA219 current sensor make a small panel monitor that radios voltage, current and power into the house every minute. It's written in MicroPython for Thonny and costs roughly $60–$100.

Small hobby panels only. Never connect anything like this to a rooftop solar system. Those run at hundreds of volts DC.