Power Performance Analysis of Solar Tracking System in UTP

Abstract

In the recent years, Renewable energy has been a lot in talks, the most booming renewable energy currently is the Solar energy. This is because solar energy is a simple, cheap and easy method to generate electricity. In Malaysia, if you have installed solar panel the government will provide a certain compensation, as well as buy excessive solar power which is used to supply power to homes or buildings around it. This study presents the design of prototype and analysis of performance and effectiveness of a single axis and a fixed axis solar tracker with an active closed loop system utilizing Arduino as a microcontroller. Furthermore, the ultimate aim of this study is to test the performance and effectiveness of the two types of tracking system, developing and testing the prototype for the two systems. This study can be divided into two phases, which is the software and hardware development. In hardware development for the single axis tracker, two light dependent resistor (LDR) is being used in order to detect light rays from the sunlight. The highest light intensity which is detected by the LDR will determine the position of the sun. Hence, upon determining the position of sunlight, the LDR will send information on the highest light intensity produced to the linear actuator in order to direct the solar photovoltaic panel to maintain perpendicular to the light intensity which will maximize the output produced. Based on conventional research, the single axis solar tracking system is shown to have the higher effectiveness compared to the fixed axis solar tracker.