Design of a low cost sun tracking controller system for photovoltaic panels

Abstract

The two most important parameters in generating electrical energy from photovoltaic panels are the amount of sun radiance and sunshine duration. Because sunshine duration cannot be consistently relied upon, the most important factor is to utilize sun radiance at an optimum level. In the consequence of the experimentally made study and measurements, the capacity of the utilization of sun tracking systems and the capacity to produce electrical energy obtained from photovoltaic panels can be increased by 25%–50%. The decrease of photovoltaic panel sale prices down to $0.5 per watt in the consequence of intense studies over photovoltaic panel seems to have decreased the demand on sun tracking systems with high costs because the manufacturers of photovoltaic panels have heavily made their investments not on tracking systems but on panel production. In order to decrease the costs, to some degree, of sun tracking systems in this study, both the easy setup of the system is performed and the decrease of costs is enabled by improving the tracking system. For this purpose, only two-small photovoltaic panels mounted back-to-back with each other are used to provide the necessary movement for the tracking system. Also, an electronic circuit card design is made for control and system movement. The average cost of the system is accounted to be about $48. Such a kind of sun tracking system provides a considerable advantage of cost compared to currently used systems and the obtained gain is more.