Design of an Automatic High Precision Solar Tracking System with an Integrated Solar Sensor

Abstract

A sustainable powered standalone automatic Solar Tracking System is designed and successfully simulated to provide the best alignment of solar panel with position of the sun automatically, to extract an increased efficiency by 40 percent. A very low cost (approx. 5 USD), high precision Solar Tacking Sensor has been designed to rotate the solar panel coupled to the stepper motor rotates 25.70 degree at single step and to tracks the whole 180-degree trace in 8 (eight) steps per day with greater accuracy. Microcontroller (ATmega16) is used as main control unit where its ADC ports are used to interface the Sensor unit and ULN2000A motor driver is used to interface the stepper motor to rotate the solar panel at maximum solar energy angle. The results found from the simulation and analysis shows that, the system required 12.04 mA and 37.163 mA current, and 144.48 mW and 445.956 mW power, during standby and panel rotating mode respectively. The maximum current drawn by the Solar Tracking Sensor is less than 0.5 mA. ‘Proteus ISIS 7.7 professional’ is used for design and simulation, and ‘Code Vision AVR v2.5’ is used to write the program code and burning into the ATmega16 for simulation and analysis.