Automatic Orientation of Photovoltaic Solar Panels for Monitoring the Seasonal Movement of the Sun Using Intelligent Control
Two-Axis Solar Tracker, Photovoltaic Power Generation, Logic Fuzzy.
Solar trackers, besides serving as support for photovoltaic modules, follow the move- ment of the sun throughout the day and try to keep the plane of the photovoltaic modules perpendicular to the sun’s rays, thereby increasing the performance of the photovoltaic module. With the aim of demonstrating the effectiveness of using the automatic orien- tation method of photovoltaic solar modules in following the seasonal movement of the sun as a way of improving energy production, this work analyzes two systems: a solar tracker and a fixed-axis system. The first part simulates two photovoltaic plants with solar tracking and fixed-axis systems using the software PVsyst, consisting of a total of twenty modules. The results show that the solar tracker improved the efficiency of electricity production, with a gain of 25.97% during the day and an annual gain of 25.6% more than a fixed system. The second part presents a proposal for an automatic solar tracking system (with a controller) and a fixed-axis system (without a controller) based on the equations of the sun’s movement angles. This was modeled using the software Matlab/Simulink using Fuzzy logic as the controller, with the aim of evaluating the use of solar radiation throughout the day and to build a real system with the same characteristics as the pro- posed simulation. The gain of this system was approximately 17% to 35% during some hours of the day for the system with a controller. Both software simulations showed that photovoltaic systems that track the movement of the sun during the day and year are more advantageous compared to fixed-axis systems because they take better advantage of solar radiation.