Design and prototyping of dual axis solar tracking system for performance enhancement of solar photo-voltaic power plant

Abstract

Increase in the world energy demand has made renewable energy source as one of the best option. It is finding wide utility in comparison with the other sources of energy. Solar energy is one of the major source of renewable energy. The abundance of solar energy in India makes it highly desirable to exploit but due to the limitations of technology, only a fraction of the energy can be extracted and used. This paper describes a concept for solar detection sensor implementation in Photo-Voltaic (PV) dual-axis solar tracking systems. The system uses only three units of identical light-detecting- resistors (LDR) arranged on the three sides of tetrahedron geometry and is able to track the light source position at the strongest intensity of visible light. On the basis of comparative study of outputs of all the three LDRs, the panel will tilt so as to get maximum output from the system. This system results in a wide field of view with minimum error and also has advantages in terms of sensor quantity, size of the system, accuracy and effectiveness.