Design, development and performance test of an automatic two-Axis solar tracker system

The energy extracted from solar photovoltaic (PV) or solar thermal depends on solar insolation. For the extraction of maximum energy from the sun, the plane of the solar collector should always be normal to the incident radiation. The diurnal and seasonal movement of the earth affects the radiation intensity received on the solar collector. Sun trackers move the solar collector to follow the sun trajectories and keep the orientation of the solar collector at an optimal tilt angle. Energy efficiency of solar PV or solar thermal can be substantially improved using solar tracking system. In this work, an automatic solar tracking system has been designed and developed using LDR sensors and DC motors on a mechanical structure with gear arrangement. Two-axis solar tracking (azimuth angle as well as altitude angle) has been implemented through microcontroller based sophisticated control logic. Performance of the proposed system over the important parameters like solar radiation received on the collector, maximum hourly electrical power, efficiency gain, short circuit current, open circuit voltage and fill factor has been evaluated and compared with those for fixed tilt angle solar collector.