Design and Performance of an Automatic Solar Tracker Using GPS and Tilt Angle Measurement

During recent years solar energy has been the most important renewable energy. Due to the Earth’s rotation, the Sun rises and falls every day and its illumination angle changes continuously. PV systems equipped with solar tracker keeping solar cells directly facing the sun in real time is the best way to ensure the highest photoelectric conversion efficiency. In this paper a solar tracker system is proposed to increase efficiency and the ability of absorbing solarradiation of the photovoltaic module. An automatic designed system consists of GPS module, accelerometer for angle measurement, and a microcontroller which is responsible for the equipment management. The processing and control unit receives the current angle (feedback signal) and compare it to the desired angle from the database. If the difference between the feedback signal and the database angle is not zero, then the proposed system operates and fixes panels in optimum angle.

کلیدواژه ها:

olar Tracker ، GPS ، MEMS Accelerometer ، Photovoltaic power systems ، Single-axis Tracker ، Tilt angle ، solar radiation ، Energy efficiency