A Novel Solar Tracker Driven by Waves: From Idea to Implementation*

2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Pub Date : 2020-05-01 DOI:10.1109/ICRA40945.2020.9196998

Ruoyu Xu, Hengli Liu, Chongfeng Liu, Zhenglong Sun, Tin Lun Lam, Huihuan Qian

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Traditional solar trackers often adopt motors to automatically adjust the attitude of the solar panels towards the sun for maximum power efficiency. In this paper, a novel design of solar tracker for the ocean environment is introduced. Utilizing the fluctuations due to the waves, electromagnetic brakes are utilized instead of motors to adjust the attitude of the solar panels. Compared with the traditional solar trackers, the proposed one is simpler in hardware while the harvesting efficiency is similar. The desired attitude is calculated out of the local location and time. Then based on the dynamic model of the system, the angular acceleration of the solar panels is estimated and a control algorithm is proposed to decide the release and lock states of the brakes. In such a manner, the adjustment of the attitude of the solar panels can be achieved by using two brakes only. Experiments are conducted to validate the acceleration estimator and the dynamic model. At last, the feasibility of the proposed solar tracker is tested on the real water surface. The results show that the system is able to adjust 40° in two dimensions within 28 seconds.

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一种由波浪驱动的新型太阳能跟踪器:从想法到实现*

传统的太阳能跟踪器通常采用电机来自动调整太阳能电池板对太阳的姿态，以获得最大的电力效率。本文介绍了一种适用于海洋环境的太阳能跟踪器的新设计。利用波浪产生的波动，电磁制动器代替电动机来调节太阳能电池板的姿态。与传统的太阳能跟踪器相比，该跟踪器硬件结构简单，但收集效率相近。期望的姿态是由局部位置和时间计算出来的。然后在系统动力学模型的基础上，估计了太阳能帆板的角加速度，并提出了一种控制算法来确定刹车的释放和锁定状态。在这种方式下，太阳能电池板的姿态调整可以通过使用两个制动器来实现。通过实验对加速度估计器和动态模型进行了验证。最后，在实际水面上对所提出的太阳能跟踪器的可行性进行了验证。结果表明，该系统可在28秒内实现二维方向40°的调整。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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