Grid-tie rooftop solar system using enhanced utilization of solar energy

Because of recent concerns about air and water pollution and the depletion of fossil fuels, interest on use of renewable energy is growing day by day. Solar energy is one of the important renewable energy resources on earth. The present trend is to use the solar energy for generating electricity with the help of grid-tie roof top solar system. But due to improper harvesting technique, efficiency of this system is very poor. Therefore, different types of techniques have been developed. One of such techniques is the use of solar tracker which is very popular today. As we know sun is continuously changing its position in a day, the incident light on solar panels may vary accordingly, thereby varying the efficiency of the system. In this paper, we have shown the operation of an ARDUINO based dual-axis active tracking system, which can keep the solar panels following the direction of the sun face in a continuous fashion. Dual axis motion is done by two stepper motors and the sun position is sensed by LDRs. Thus we can improve the light gathering capability of the panels as well as the efficiency to some extent.