A Novel Design of Efficient Tracking System and String Level Monitoring System for PV Power Plant

Abstract

These days photovoltaic (PV) power generation is the most important part of renewable energy. Solar tracker are also rising in popularity. Solar tracking system increases the amount of energy produced from a fixed amount of installed power generating capacity, but system cost is also increased. This cost is bottleneck of increasing demand of solar tracker.In this thesis, A novel design of cost efficient tracking system using photovoltaic cell and centralized control is proposed. A single PV sensor unit is used for detecting azimuth of solar and control all individual tracker with wireless sensor network in entire PV generating system. So we called a new system as centralized tracking system using a single PV cell (CTSUP). CTSUP provides a competitive performance compared with a conventional dual axis tracking system and reduce the cost of tracking system. Moreover, string level power monitoring system(SLPMS) is also proposed to decrease labor cost of operation and management of PV power generating system. SLPMS not only provide a measurement result of power amount of a single string but also diagnostic of PV panel problems in PV power generating systems. Combinations of proposed CTSUP and SLPMS can reduce both CAPEX and OPEX of PV power generation system.