Design and fabrication of a prototype solar tapping device

Abstract

Fossil fuel based energy sources are most commonly used because of the ease of availability and affordability, but have many long lasting negative effects, due to which a shift must be made to renewable and clean energy sources such as solar energy. Efficiency of the photovoltaic cells have increased by 1% every ten months, resulting in reduced costs and increased number of users. The project will explore the design and fabrication of an improved and efficient solar tapping device. An effort will be made to incorporate an architectural concept called “barrel vault” that is primarily used for natural lighting, over a Fresnel lens plate setup to act as a collector. The tracking mechanism incorporated is unique and can be modified to either have single axis or dual axis tracking depending on the requirements. Keeping in mind the environment and cost, an attempt has been made to fabricate the product with higher energy conversion rate, at an affordable cost using the above techniques. Upon analysing the results, the conclusion could be drawn that there was an increase in conversion rate of up to twice the traditional setup.