DUAL AXIS SOLAR TRACKER

MUHAMMAD IMAM, 9723WAQAR NAWAZ, 9703ABDUL WAHEED, 9438

Supervised ByEngr. Muhammad Farrukh Qureshi

Lecturer FEASRIPHAH International University

Sector I-14, Islamabad

Overview

• Solar tracker chasing the sun • To provide a maximum efficiency• To get striking angle perpendicular to sun as possible• Detection by sensors(Ldr’s)• The use of microcontroller • To Run the stepper motor • It can be installed every where with less

modifications

Introduction

• Solar tracker is a system which chase the Sun during day time as it rotate from east to west.

• This tracker will provide two or three degree accuracy.

• Using a solar tracker will increase the solar energy input to the panel and helps in producing more electricity generation.

• The overall performance can be increased from 25-35%.

Need for Solar Tracker

Need for Solar Tracker(continued)

• As the sun during a day(24 hours) travel 360 degree, in which 180 degree during morning-evening is visible

• Due to some reasons , the Intensity is limited to just 150 degree approximately

• When a solar panel is fixed, now it has to bear the rise and fall extremes of 75 degree, and there must be a loss of approximately 75%.

• Rotating panel well help us to recover those losses• This is the working of single axis tracker.

Need for Solar Tracker(continued)

• Now during the entire year the Sun moves 46 degrees north-south.

• The panel placed at mid moving east-west will find the sun moves 23 degree on each side north-south.

• Now when this is able to track on daily and also depending on other axis north-south is a dual axis solar tracker.

Need for Solar Tracker(continued)

Block diagram

Flow chart

Working Principle

• Sensors are used in circuit to trace the exact location of sun.

• A potential divider circuit is used to get the output from the sensors(LDR’s).

• In potential divider circuit we get output voltage corresponding to resistance of LDR’s which in turn is a function of light falling on LDR,

Working Principle(Continued)

Working Principle(Continued)

• The higher intensity of light lower the LDR resistance and due to this the output voltage lowers and when the light intensity is low, higher will be LDR resistance and higher output voltage.

• Now this will feedback to the microcontroller .• The microcontroller will process the input and give

the output to a stepper motor derived IC.• This will act as a control system.

• This will rotate the motor and we will get our desired result.

References

• 1. Wettergreen D., Benjamin Shamah, Paul Tompkins, William Whittaker, “Robotic Planetary Exploration by Sun-Synchronous Navigation”, 6th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics & Automation in Space,i-SAIRAS 2001, Canadian Space Agency, St-Hubert, Quebec, Canada, June 18-22, 2001.

• 2. Hasan A Yousaf, “Design And Implementation of a Fuzzy Logic Computer- Controlled Sun Tracking System”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics, Volume 3, 12-16 July 1999, page 1029-1035

Thanks