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Sun Tracker Final

This document describes a student project to design and build an automatic solar tracking system using a microcontroller and stepper motor. It includes the following key points: 1) The system aims to increase solar panel efficiency by keeping it oriented towards the sun throughout the day as it moves across the sky. 2) It consists of a PIC microcontroller, solar panel, stepper motor, driver circuit, LCD display and other components to track the sun in two axes. 3) Test results showed the system was able to maintain a higher solar panel output voltage compared to a static panel by continuously adjusting its orientation towards the maximum sunlight.

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76 views27 pages

Sun Tracker Final

This document describes a student project to design and build an automatic solar tracking system using a microcontroller and stepper motor. It includes the following key points: 1) The system aims to increase solar panel efficiency by keeping it oriented towards the sun throughout the day as it moves across the sky. 2) It consists of a PIC microcontroller, solar panel, stepper motor, driver circuit, LCD display and other components to track the sun in two axes. 3) Test results showed the system was able to maintain a higher solar panel output voltage compared to a static panel by continuously adjusting its orientation towards the maximum sunlight.

Uploaded by

abcd_xyzxyz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PES’s Modern College of Engineering

Shivajinagar Pune
Department of Electrical Engineering

Year: 2015-2016

Topic: Sun Tracking Solar Panel

Name of Students: Name of Guide:


1)Rajas Belsare Prof. Mrs. S.N.Chaphekar
2)Vaibhav Bhirud
3)Sushant Tathwadkar
CONTENTS:-
•Introduction
•Literature survey
•Why solar energy?
•Tracking
•Components
•Block diagram
•Working
•Results
•Conclusion
INTRODUCTION
 Solar energy is one of the most promising
energy source characterized by huge potential
of conversion into electrical power
 The earth receives 16×10^18 units of energy
from sun annually which is 20000 times the
requirement of mankind on earth.
 Solar panels are generally statically aligned
towards particular direction, thus allowing the
panel to face the sun only once a day, making
the system inefficient.
 Project focuses on design and construction of
automatic solar tracking system, using
microcontroller and stepper motor.
Literature Survey:

The two of the biggest challenges that the


planet is facing are climate change and need to
manage diminishing fossil fuel reserves.
Different types of renewable energy sources
include wind, solar, biomass, hydro, tidal.
Renewable energy sources can be used to
produce electricity with fewer environmental
impacts.
• The figure shows various renewable energy
installations in india in MW.

2013 2014
Why solar energy?
Abundance: The amount of solar energy incident on
Earth is about 10 000 time larger than the total energy
consumption of mankind.
Location independent: It can be used everywhere unlike
wind and hydro.
Decentralized generation:-PV systems can be installed
on every roof, for domestic use
Cost effective: Very less investment required compared to
construction of dams or windmills. Costs of solar panels is
reducing significantly.
 The fig. shows the increase in pv installations per year.
Modern amenities such as MPPT,Solar tracking,CPV are
the driving force for increase in solar energy installations.
What is tracking?
Orienting a payload like solar panel, parabolic reflector
etc. towards the sun.
More energy is collected by the end of the day if the PV
module is installed on a tracker, as sun radiation is always
perpendicular to panel.
Electrical power generation in an Electrical power generation in a
overcast day. sunny day.
Block diagram:
Components:
PIC16F877A microcontroller:-

High-performance RISC CPU


Only 35 single word instructions to learn
All single cycle instructions except for program branches
which are two cycle
Operating speed: DC - 20 MHz clock input DC - 200 ns
instruction cycle
Solar Panel:
Solar panel is indispensable component of the system
Solar panel is responsible to collect solar radiations and
transform it into electrical energy
Solar panel is an array of solar cells .The array can be
formed by connecting solar cells in series or parallel.
Solar panels are typically constructed with cystalline
silicon, which is used in other industries (such as the
microprocessor industry), and the more expensive gallium
arsenide, which is produced exclusively for use in
photovoltaic (solar) cells.
Stepper Motor:
Stepper motor of 2kg-cm torque.
Brushless motors,hence longer
lifetime
Speed control is accurate and
repeatable
No backlash error as in DC motors
Less expensive driver circuit
Driver circuit:
Output of PIC microcontroller
is not enough to drive the
stepper motor
Hence we need a driver circuit .
TIP122 transistors in
Darlington pair configuration
It provides high
gain,approximately 1000
LCD:
16x2 LCD which indicates 16
columns and 2 rows
Can display 32 characters
project to visualize the output
of the application
to check the output of
different modules interfaced
with the microcontroller
Mechanical structure
Vertical axis rotates by using
CAM movement.
horizontal axis rotates directly.
No need ofextra electronic circuit
for forward and
reverse rotation.
RTC
used for second axis of solar
tracker
Rotation of sun to +23.50 or
-23.50 in 12 months is
considerd
interfaced using I2C logic.
RTC used is DS1307 in this
project.
Working of tracking system
Tracks the sun from east to west as well as north to
south
Parking of solar panel at 0˚(rest position)
Continuous rotation through 180˚ after 40 minutes
each
Checking for maximum ADC count
Orientation of panel in the direction of maximum
ADC count.i.e maximum output
Results

Without tracking:
It has been observed from readings that ADC count is
maximum only once a day , thus making system
inefficient
Time Output Voltage Optimum voltage(with
(ADC COUNT) tracking)
(ADC COUNT)

10:00 am 85 100
11:00 am 90 112
12:00 pm 93 128
1:00pm 98 124
2:00pm 100 123
3:00pm 105 120
4:00pm 110 110
5:00pm 104 107
Results (contd.)
With tracking

Readings taken at 3:00pm on 6/2/2016

It has been observed from results that by using


tracking mechanism , we can get maximum
output throughout the day.
Step Number Output Voltage Solar Panel Position
(ADC count)

1 90

2 94

3 100

4 104

5 110

6 120 120

7 114

8 109
Conclusion & Future scope:
 We can use this innovation for more effective use of
solar panel for the extraction of solar energy by using
microcontroller and stepper motor.

 Precision can be increased by increasing the steps i.e.


taking more reading in a single rotation.
References:
Reference links

1. Why Solar Tracking Systems: http://www.solar-tracking.com/


2. Advantages, Applications, Limitations:
http://www.electronicshub.org/sun-tracking-solar-panel/#How_
Sun_Tracking_Solar_Panel_Works
3. Construction Idea: http://www.mdpub.com/suntracker/
4. Concepts:
http://www.slideshare.net/ASJamwal/solar-tracking-system-rep
ort
IEEE Papers
1. S. Fadil, A. C. Çapar and K. Çağlar, "Two axis solar tracker design and
implementation," Electrical and Electronics Engineering (ELECO), 2013 8th
International Conference on, Bursa, 2013, pp. 554-557.
2. F. Afrin, T. Titirsha, S. Sanjidah, A. R. M. Siddique and A. Rabbani, "Installing dual
axis solar tracker on rooftop to meet the soaring demand of energy for developing
countries," 2013 Annual IEEE India Conference (INDICON), Mumbai, 2013, pp. 1-5
3. N. Othman, M. I. A. Manan, Z. Othman and S. A. M. Al Junid, "Performance
analysis of dual-axis solar tracking system," Control System, Computing and
Engineering (ICCSCE), 2013 IEEE International Conference on, Mindeb, 2013, pp.
370-375.
4. M. Haryanti, A. Halim and A. Yusuf, "Development of two axis solar tracking using
five photodiodes," Electrical Power, Electronics, Communications, Controls and
Informatics Seminar (EECCIS), 2014, Malang, 2014, pp. 40-44.
Thank You!!!

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