Performance Evaluation of Solar Tracking System

Abstract

Today’s scenario of growth for the demand of energy and concern for environmental benefits, has created a need for using renewable energy for meeting the demand for power production. Solar energy has emerged to be of utmost important Renewable Energy Sources (RES). The use of solar collector systems in many power plants has eased the conversion of solar energy into electrical power as compared to other sources. Since there is significant movement of the sun’s angle w.r.t. earth’s surface, which results in reducing the efficiency of the collector and the power delivered by solar systems. So, there lies a need for the design of such suntracking system that improves the panel efficiency by continuous tracking of the sun throughout the day. The present work explores distinct types of solar tracking system and its implementation for evaluating the performance of the solar power system. Tests were conducted on Parabolic Trough Collector (PTC) demonstrated at National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE), India. The present work consists of three sections wherein the first section deals with analyzing the solar radiation for Rajasthan station that represents hot & dry climatic conditions. The second section determines the distinct types of the solar tracking system and its implementation and the third section evaluates the energy yield for solar tracking system. It has been observed from the performance evaluation that the one-axis PTC with azimuth tracking performs better than the other configuration of the solar tracking system.