Implementation of Solar Energy Tracking System

Abstract

Solar energy is one of the best option for electrical energy generation as it is available everywhere and it is renewable. To generate electrical energy from solar energy the solar photovoltaic panels are used. The solar photovoltaic panels are low-efficiency devices, they convert small amount of solar energy. In order to extract more of solar energy and hence increasing the efficiency of the solar photovoltaic panels, a tracking systems are used to track the sun position and let the solar photovoltaic panels facing the sun as long as possible. In our work the simulation design and control of a single axis tracking system is presented, practical implementation of the single axis tracking system has been presented. The single axis tracking system has the ability to rotate the solar photovoltaic panels in horizontal axis and in both clockwise and anticlockwise directions. The amount of the horizontal rotation is directly obtained from the voltage difference between two photosensors fixed on the positive and negative sides of the x-axis of the solar photovoltaic panel. The rotation of DC motor has been controlled by the 89C51 microcontroller.