Sun Tracking Systems: A Review

The output power produced by high-concentration solar thermal and photovoltaic systems is directly related to the amount of solar energy acquired by the system, and it is therefore necessary to track the sun's position with a high degree of accuracy. Many systems have been proposed to facilitate this task over the past 20 years. Accordingly, this paper commences by providing a high level overview of the sun tracking system field and then describes some of the more significant proposals for closed-loop and open-loop types of sun tracking systems.

[1]  Salah Abdallah.  The effect of using sun tracking systems on the voltage–current characteristics and power generation of flat plate photovoltaics , 2004 .

[2]  Pedro Roth,et al.  Sun following system adjustment at the UTFSM , 2004 .

[3]  Kazuo Yoshida,et al.  Sun Tracking Photo-Sensor for Solar Thermal Concentrating System , 2004 .

[4]  Werner Lorenz.  Design guidelines for a glazing with a seasonally dependent solar transmittance , 1998 .

[5]  I. Luque-Heredia,et al.  A subdegree precision sun tracker for 1000X microconcentrator modules , 2003, 3rd World Conference onPhotovoltaic Energy Conversion, 2003. Proceedings of.

[6]  Boon-Han Lim,et al.  General Sun Tracking Formula for Heliostats With Arbitrarily Oriented Axes , 2006 .

[7]  Feifan Chen,et al.  Digital sun sensor based on the optical vernier measuring principle , 2006 .

[8]  Viorel Badescu.  Different strategies for maximum solar radiation collection on Mars surface , 1998 .

[9]  Robert O. Hughes,et al.  Effects of tracking errors on the performance of point focusing solar collectors , 1980 .

[10]  G. Falbel,et al.  Sun oriented and powered, 3 axis and spin stabilized CubeSats , 2002, Proceedings, IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[11]  A. K. Agarwal.  Two axis tracking system for solar concentrators , 1992 .

[12]  Manuel R. Arahal,et al.  An artificial vision-based control system for automatic heliostat positioning offset correction in a central receiver solar power plant , 2004 .

[13]  Salem Nijmeh,et al.  Two axes sun tracking system with PLC control , 2004 .

[14]  P. Roth,et al.  Design and construction of a system for sun-tracking , 2004 .

[15]  Saiful Bari,et al.  Optimum slope angle and orientation of solar collectors for different periods of possible utilization , 2000 .

[16]  Kok Kiong Tan,et al.  Report of the first prototype of non-imaging focusing heliostat and its application in high temperature solar furnace , 2002 .

[17]  Yasuhiro Matsumoto,et al.  5 Wp PV module-based stand-alone solar tracking system , 2003, 3rd World Conference onPhotovoltaic Energy Conversion, 2003. Proceedings of.

[18]  Chihchiang Hua,et al.  Comparative study of peak power tracking techniques for solar storage system , 1998, APEC '98 Thirteenth Annual Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition.

[19]  Jin Wen,et al.  Absorption of solar energy in a room , 2002 .

[20]  A. B. Maish,et al.  Performance of a self-aligning solar array tracking controller , 1990, IEEE Conference on Photovoltaic Specialists.

[21]  P. O. Carden.  Steering a field of mirrors using a shared computer-based controller☆ , 1978 .

[22]  Abderrahmane Bairi.  Method of quick determination of the angle of slope and the orientation of solar collectors without a sun tracking system , 1990 .

[23]  McFee Rh,et al.  Power collection reduction by mirror surface nonflatness and tracking error for a central receiver solar power system. , 1975 .

[24]  Kok-Keong Chong,et al.  Design and construction of non-imaging planar concentrator for concentrator photovoltaic system , 2009 .

[25]  F. M. Al-Naima,et al.  Design and construction of a solar tracking system , 1990 .

[26]  V. Bădescu.  Une évaluation probabiliste pour l'erreur d'orientation des héliostats , 1982 .

[27]  Roberto Grena,et al.  An algorithm for the computation of the solar position , 2008 .

[28]  Mohanad Alata,et al.  Developing a multipurpose sun tracking system using fuzzy control , 2005 .

[29]  Ali Al-Mohamad,et al.  Efficiency improvements of photo-voltaic panels using a Sun-tracking system , 2004 .

[30]  S. Kalogirou.  Design and construction of a one-axis sun-tracking system , 1996 .

[31]  David L. Beshears,et al.  Tracking Systems Evaluation for the “Hybrid Lighting System” , 2003 .

[32]  R H McFee.  Power collection reduction by mirror surface nonflatness and tracking error for a central receiver solar power system. , 1975, Applied optics.

[33]  Hassan Yousef,et al.  Design and implementation of a fuzzy logic computer-controlled sun tracking system , 1999, ISIE '99. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (Cat. No.99TH8465).

[34]  M. S. Imamura,et al.  Sun tracking controller for multi-kW photovoltaic concentrator system , 1981 .

[35]  A. H. Algifri,et al.  Efficient orientation impacts of box-type solar cooker on the cooker performance , 2001 .

[36]  I. Reda,et al.  Solar position algorithm for solar radiation applications , 2004 .

[37]  H. S. Wolff,et al.  iRun: Horizontal and Vertical Shape of a Region-Based Graph Compression , 2022, Sensors.

[38]  Teodoro López-Moratalla,et al.  Computing the solar vector , 2001 .

[39]  A. Q. Malik,et al.  Optimum tilt angle and orientation for solar collector in Brunei Darussalam , 2001 .

[40]  Viorel Badescu,et al.  Theoretical derivation of heliostat tracking errors distribution , 2008 .

[41]  Johan Enslin.  Maximum power point tracking: A cost saving necessity in solar energy systems , 1992 .

[42]  Kok-Keong Chong,et al.  General formula for on-axis sun-tracking system and its application in improving tracking accuracy of solar collector , 2009 .

[43]  J. Michalsky.  The Astronomical Almanac's algorithm for approximate solar position (1950 - 2050). , 1988 .

[44]  Abdul Jabbar N. Khalifa,et al.  Effect of two-axis sun tracking on the performance of compound parabolic concentrators , 1998 .

[45]  Feifan Chen,et al.  Analogue sun sensor based on the optical nonlinear compensation measuring principle , 2007 .

[46]  Il-Song Kim,et al.  Robust maximum power point tracker using sliding mode controller for the three-phase grid-connected photovoltaic system , 2007 .

[47]  Seung Kyu Park,et al.  A novel maximum power point tracking control for photovoltaic power system under rapidly changing solar radiation , 2001, ISIE 2001. 2001 IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8570).

[48]  R McCluney.  Passive optical solar tracking system. , 1983, Applied optics.