Design and Implementation of Automatic Solar Tracking and Positioning Using a Novel Sensor for a PV System

Abstract

Energy production has become a challenge for modern day engineers and researchers. The conventional, non-renewable, ways of producing energy are proving to be both insufficient and hazardous to the environment. Hence, a prudent solution is to shift to renewables. The most viable choice is solar energy as it is abundant and environment friendly. Solar energy is produced using silicon wafer based solar panels. Traditionally, solar energy was produced using static solar panels. This is a complication as the sun does not remain in normal to the solar panels all day. A solution, to actuate the panels. A similar approach is taken in this study where a dual axis solar tracking system is designed and implemented on a 2KW solar power system. The study starts off with modelling and controller design of the tracking system. Which is then followed by the design of lab mockups. LDR sensor is used as primary detection sensor in the first lab mockup, but the LDR has its drawbacks. Hence, a novel PV-panel based sensor assembly is designed and implemented in the second lab mockup. This system proved to be sufficient to be implemented on the final 2KW system. The main part of the sensor assembly design was the design of the differential shade. It is responsible for the detection of the sun at any given instance. A complete study regarding this design process was conducted and a final inner angle and dimension of the differential shade was acquired. The design, when implemented on the full-scale system, was fully functional and through a power test it was calculated that the dynamic system was able to produce an efficiency advantage of 5%.