Chapter 58 Autonomous Dual Axis Solar Tracking System Using Optical Sensor and Sun Trajectory

摘要

In our daily life, the need of energy increases each and every day. However, the amount of natural resources on the earth is limited so this makes renewable energy rapidly gaining importance as an energy resource. Solar power is one of the most popular energy sources that available and can be converted into electricity by using solar panels. For solar panels to produce maximum output power, the incidence angle of the sunlight needs to be constantly perpendicular to the solar panel. However, most of the solar panels that used by the users in nowadays are in static direction. As the sun's position changes, low output power will be generated. In this paper, a two axis solar tracking system was proposed to keeps the solar panel perpendicular to sunlight by using sunflower tracking and path calculation modes. Additionally, a friendly graphic user interface (GUI) system also has been built for monitoring the performance of the system. In order to validate the design, a scaled down dual axis solar tracker was designed, built and tested. As results, the built system had been calculated to have an energy gain of 58.59 and 59.24 % compared to a stationary solar panel during sunny and random weather condition respectively.