Development and Optimization of a Solar Tracking System for Solar Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Putting a solar tracker in a solar panel is non-questionably a better option. It has been proved in various studies that solar trackers based solar panels deliver way higher efficiency. When it comes to real life implementation of solar trackers, there are several problems each one has its particularity depending on the type of the tracker. Our concern in this work is the implementation of a dual axes solar tracker. The common implementation of this model is using two LDRs fully exposed to the sun light. This causes many problems especially when using low cost commercial LDRs. These LDRs do not deliver the same signal when exposed to the same light intensity. Even when trying to make them deliver the same signal using a trimmer, we believe that it is not the best solution. Therefore, in this thesis we propose a prototype of a solar tracking system that solves this problem and guarantee a sun tracking mechanism which is more reliable than the conventional ones. The success of our implementation and the results validate our prototype in which it shows that it adjusts itself with the minimum energy where we used the number of adjustments (Located in the interface control) as a metric to measure it