A novel design of a Bi-level automatic solar tracker using rotations around orthogonal axes

Abstract

In today's world, the limitation of fossil fuel has led people to look for renewable energy sources. Among all the sources, solar energy has a remarkable potential of producing electrical energy very cost-effectively. The output of the solar cells depends on the intensity of light and the angle of incident rays from the sun. But because of the earth's rotation the panels can't always maintain their position aligned with the sun. This paper is based on the design and implementation of a multi-level dual axis automatic sun tracking system. Servo motors are used for rotating the panels and LDRs are used as sensors to detect the maximum intensity of the light. Multi-Level Dual axis sun tracking system has a great potential than any other dual axis tracker in terms of both efficiency and cost minimization. This paper describes a system designed with four solar panels, where only four LDRs are required to measure the light intensity for rotation of the panel in both horizontal and vertical axis. Moreover, the unique structural design of the system allows rotating the panels with only five servo motors rather than eight used in normal four dual axis trackers. This reduction of LDRs and motors reduced the cost of the system and made the system simple. The output data is compared with the static solar panel and with some dual axis trackers output data from some research papers in terms of voltage, current and power, which proves that it is a more efficient system.