Solar cell efficiency improvement using compound parabolic concentrator and an implementation of sun tracking system

Abstract

This paper presents how the efficiency of solar cell can be increased with the design of compound parabolic concentrator and the implementation of sun tracking system. Sun tracking systems is an application of the machine vision (MV) and collaboration with data acquisition (DAQ) to systems by using a Web camera as a sensor and sound card as an output channel to drive a motor. The motors react as the mechanism of the camera to make sure it always focuses on the target of sun. By using a MatLab software programming environment, closes loop control is implemented to provide interaction between camera and sound card as a device to control the motor to track the sun.