Abstract
In this article, the trajectory tracking control of a solar tracking system is tackled by means of an adaptive active disturbance rejection control scheme. The state and disturbance estimation system is based on the combination of a time varying identification system and an adaptive observer. The stability and robustness of the controller is mathematically tested by means of the second method of Lyapunov, and its effectiveness is experimentally tested in a robotic test bed, achieving both lower energy consumption and better tracking results with respect to a PID-based controller.
Highlights
The tendency of using alternative energy sources has led to the solution of problems concerning a wide variety of collecting technologies, storage and management systems.In the case of solar energy, the increased efficiency of the collected energy has a close relation with the capacity to manipulate the collecting device such that the light incidence is normal to a specific area of interest
The aim to increase the benefits of energy collecting systems has led to the development of solar trackers [4,5], the efficiency of which can be improved through the use of optimal design technologies [6,7,8,9] and concurrent engineering tools [10] as well as highly accurate positioning control systems such as solar sensors [11,12,13,14,15]
In order to compare the results against reported active disturbance rejection controllers, two approaches were used for the test:
Summary
The tendency of using alternative energy sources has led to the solution of problems concerning a wide variety of collecting technologies, storage and management systems. The accuracy and energy consumption in the positioning policy are considered to be among the main aspects of the performance of a solar tracker Both problems are directly related to the nature of the mechanism of the tracker, which can have uncertain dynamics or nonlinearities, and the operation may be affected by external disturbance elements such as wind disturbances, which can produce tracking errors, or high energy compensation actions reducing the energetic efficiency of the controller. One of the most popular approaches to active disturbance rejection is linear active disturbance rejection (LADRC) [48], which consists of the use of an extended state observer of the Luenberger type This scheme is highly effective for the estimation of a large class of additive disturbances, and the high-gain nature of the strategy results in an easy-to-tune procedure.
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