A simple and low‐cost active dual‐axis solar tracker

Abstract

This paper presents the design and practical implementation of a simple active dual‐axis solar tracker (DAST) to track the sun's movement by using fewer components and low‐cost as well. A dual‐axis mechanism is developed in order to tilt the PV panel by two servo motors facing the highest intensity of sunlight captured by LDR sensors, which are placed in the four corners of PV panel. The DAST prototype was constructed practically and tested using a real‐time virtual instrument based on Excel to determine its efficiency. Moreover, a comparison based on experimental results between the energy produced by the proposed smart DAST and a fixed panel shows that the smart DAST produces 36.26% more energy compared to the fixed panel. The proposed active DAST can be easily implemented without possessing deep knowledge about solar tracking technologies and electronic engineering.

Effect of Industrial Dust Deposition on Photovoltaic Module Performance: Experimental Measurements in the Tropical Region

“…Climate change contributes to sunlight availability variation causing rises in air temperature, which may always affect performance efficiency of the PV module. Solar tracking technology has emerged to assist PV systems in capturing maximum solar irradiance thus an increase of power output [17]. Dust is among the factors that affect the performance efficiency of PV module worldwide output [18][19][20].…”

Optimization of light-dependent resistor sensor for the application of solar energy tracking system

“…In addition to that improvements of current work with other existing works are described in Table 9. Present work implemented with intensity of the sunlight as control parameter in DAST system using optimized CdS-LDR sensor include MDISL method performed better than the recently existing works which are designed based on Arduino microcontroller with control parameters like analog signal5 [13] or voltage signal [19].…”

“…Tracking control parameters are designed to capture maximum irradiance in solar tracking applications such as analog signal of three LDRs arranged in tetrahedron [11], voltage difference of LDR sensors for single direction tracking systems [12], analog voltage of LDR with optimized series connected load resistance ( R L ) [13], digital value of LDR sensor along with real-time virtual instrumentation test bench tool [14], and photo-resistance ( R ph ) of LDR sensor in terms of voltage [15].…”

“…30-40% power is gained using voltage as control parameter with LDR sensor interfaced to ATmega (Arduino based) [19]. 36.25% power is gained using analog signal as control parameter with LDR sensor interfaced to ATmega (Arduino based) [13].…”

Penentuan Posisi Sudut Matahari Menggunakan ANFIS dalam Aplikasi Tracker Panel Surya

“…Sistem konstruksi juga memiliki kompleksitas yang lebih rendah dan biaya yang lebih rendah, sehingga sistem ini sangat baik untuk diterapkan pada berbagai aplikasi. Di sisi lain, dengan mengabaikan kompleksitas konstruksi dan pembiayaannya [4], sistem pelacakan surya poros ganda memiliki efisiensi yang lebih tinggi hingga 40% dibandingkan dengan konstruksi panel surya tetap. Proses pelacakan posisi matahari membutuhkan metode yang dapat memperkirakan dan mendeteksi posisi matahari bersama dengan panel surya.…”