Direct and Indirect Sensing two-axis Solar Tracking System

Abstract

The main goal of this project is to design a very precise solar tracker. The project is divided into two parts; hardware and software. Hardware part generally composed of solar panel, two-DC motors with gearbox, LDR sensor module and electronic circuit. Software part represents the thinking behavior of the system, that is how the system acting under several weather conditions. In this work sensing of the sun position carried out in two stages primary and secondary. Primary stage or indirect sensing performed via sun-earth relationship as a coarse adjustment and second stage or direct sensing performed via set of LDR sensors as output tuning to trims the azimuth and altitude angles. If the weather is cloudy or dusty, the tracking system uses primary stage or sun-earth geometrical relationships only to identify the location of the sun; so the system tracks the position of the sun regardless the weather condition. The energy extracted from photovoltaic (PV) or any solar collector depends on solar irradiance. For maximum extraction of energy from the sun, the solar collector panel should always be normal to the incident radiation Solar trackers moves the solar collector to follow the sun path and keeps the orientation of the solar collector at an optimal tilt angle. Solar tracking system improves substantially the energy efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) panel. In this paper, an automatic dual axis solar tracking system is designed and developed using Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) and DC motors on a mechanical structure with gear arrangement. Twoaxis solar tracking (azimuth angle as well as altitude angle) is implemented through Arduino UNO controller based on SunEarth Geometry. The results indicated that the automatic solar tracking system is more reliable and efficient than fixed one.

Existing System

High-efficiency dual-axis solar tracking development using Arduino.

Proposed System

Solar tracking mechanisms improve the energy gain of solar power plants. A dual-axis tracking system is generally the one that reaches the highest energy gain in every region. It is therefore the most versatile system, since it can be installed anywhere, guaranteeing a high energy gain. Solar trackers are recommended everywhere from an energetic point of view, since they always increase the amount of collected energy. Two degrees of freedom orientation is feasible. Arduino Uno controller is used to control the position of DC motors which ensures point to point intermittent motion resulting from the DC geared motors. The main goal of this project is to design a very precise solar tracker. The project is divided into two parts; hardware and software. Hardware part generally composed of solar panel, two-DC motors with gearbox, LDR sensor module and electronic circuit. Software part represents the thinking behavior of the system, that is how the system acting under several weather conditions.

Architecture

Tracking System