Design of Photovoltaic Tracking Systems

Abstract

Automatic Solar Tracking is mainly utilized to maximize the efficiency of the output of the solar panel. Also, the main function of it is to follow the solar radiation at any time in any day taking into consideration that the panel is always perpendicular to the solar radiation. Since the motion plane of the sun is varying everyday as the sun shines at a different angle each day and also all over the day because it goes from east direction to west direction, so a dual-axis tracker is used to track the sun in the vertical and horizontal motion .unlike the single axis tracking which follow only the sun's east-west motion. However, the efficiency of the dual solar tracker is much higher than single tracker and fixed one, it is considered more complex and higher in cost than the other two designs; one needs a compromise between cost, complexity, and maximum collected power so a single axis tracker will be the applicable solution. And this thesis is to provide a solution of ( dual and single axis ) automatic tracking systems.