Agriculture (Aug 2023)
An Intelligent Dual-Axis Solar Tracking System for Remote Weather Monitoring in the Agricultural Field
Abstract
Agriculture is a critical domain, where technology can have a significant impact on increasing yields, improving crop quality, and reducing environmental impact. The use of renewable energy sources such as solar power in agriculture has gained momentum in recent years due to the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of farming operations. In addition to providing a source of clean energy, solar tracking systems can also be used for remote weather monitoring in the agricultural field. The ability to collect real-time data on weather parameters such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall can help farmers make informed decisions on irrigation, pest control, and other crop management practices. The main idea of this study is to present a system that can improve the efficiency of solar panels to provide constant power to the sensor in the agricultural field and transfer real-time data to the app. This research presents a mechanism to improve the arrangement of a photovoltaic (PV) array with solar power and to produce maximum energy. The proposed system changes its direction in two axes (azimuth and elevation) by detecting the difference between the position of the sun and the panel to track the sun using a light-dependent resistor. A testbed with a hardware experimental setup is designed to test the system’s capability to track according to the position of the sun effectively. In the end, real-time data are displayed using the Android app, and the weather data are transferred to the app using a GSM/WiFi module. This research improves the existing system, and results showed that the relative increase in power generation was up to 52%. Using intelligent artificial intelligence techniques with the QoS algorithm, the quality of service produced by the existing system is improved.
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