Design and Implementation of Hybrid Automatic Solar-Tracking System

A solar tracker is a system for orienting solar photovoltaic modules and solar thermal collectors toward the sun. This paper presents a microcontroller based energy efficient hybrid automatic solar-tracking system with a view to assess the improvement in solar conversion efficiency. The two-axis solar-tracking system is constructed with both hardware and software implementations. The proposed tracking system uses a new solar position sensor with adaptive features. A comparative analysis was performed using four systems, i.e., hybrid tracking, dual-axis, single-axis, and stationary module. The results showed that the use of the dual-axis tracking system produced 18% gain of power output, compared with a single-axis tracking system. The gain of output power with the hybrid tracking system was much higher (54%) when compared with a stationary system inclined at 23.5 deg to the horizontal. Considering the state of the art of the technology, successful strategy, robust control philosophy, and the potential added benefit of this research work can be employed on a large scale in sustainable manner.