Conclusions:
A low-cost online remote laboratory system was designed and developed. The remote lab can serve
as an excellent tool to perform various complex experiments on photovoltaic modules remotely.
The system is available 24x7 and can support multi-user real-time parallel experiments. The
system makes effective use of Google API and does not require any complicated server setup. An
easy to use software interface was developed to communicate to
the online lab remotely, perform
experiments, and acquire experimental data. A set of six comprehensive experiments have been
designed for the remote lab. The developed technology provides a cost-effective way to perform
PV experiments under various conditions and is a powerful teaching tool to aid student learning,
specifically for distant students and can significantly impact fully online courses/programs. It is
proposed that the technology can be easily tailored to develop such online lab
platforms to
implement in other fields of science and engineering education.
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