Solar tracking system using 8051 microcontroller

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SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEM USING 8051 MICROCONTROLLER

2 THE SOLAR OPTION: Solar energy is a very large, inexhaustible source of energy. The power from the sun

intercepted by the earth is approximately 1.8*1011MW, which is many thousands of times larger than the present consumption rate on the earth of all commercial energy sources.

Solar energy could supply all the present and future energy needs of the world on a continuing basis. This makes it one of the most promising of the unconventional energy sources.

It has two other factors in the favour:

i. Firstly, unlike fossil fuels and nuclear power, it is environmentally clean source of energy.

ii.Secondly, it is free and available in adequate quantities in almost all parts of the world where people live. Also it has no heavy mechanical section and is free from noise.

3 OBJECTIVE The aim of our projects is to utilize the maximum solar energy through solar panel. For this a digital

based automatic sun tracking system is proposed.

The solar panel tracks the sun from east to west automatically for maximum intensity of light.

Processes Involved are-:

i.To fabricate a Stepper motor control interfaced with driver circuit.

ii.To construct a model prototype solar cell movement system with a mechanical assemble to move the panel from 180 E to W.⁰

iii.To design an electronic circuit to sense the intensity of light and to control stepper motor driver for the panel movement.

4 How the Tracker follow the Sun:

1.Sunrise "Wake- Up: The Track Rack begins the day facing west. As the morning sun rises, the sun rays falls on the LDR, it detects and sends signal to stepper motor to turn towards the east.

2. Mid-Morning:As the sun rises, the LDR also detect the angle, where its getting maximum efficiency and correspondingly move towards that direction.

3. Mid-Afternoon:As the sun moves, the Track Rack follows (at approximately 15o per hour, continually moving from one side to another.

4. Sunset:The Track Rack completes its daily cycle facing west. It remains in this position overnight until it is "awakened" by the rising sun the following morning.

5 BLOCK DIAGRAM

MICROCONTROLLERLDR 2

POWER SUPPLY

DRIVER

STEPPER MOTOR

LDR 1COMPARATOR

6 CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

7 COMPONENTS USED:

SOFTWARE:

Embedded C programming.

Keil C compiler.

COMPONENT SPECIFICATIONS

1. Microcontroller AT89S52.

2. Voltage regulator 7812,7805.

3. Driver ULN2003.

4. LDR,LCD ---

5. Stepper Motor 7.5 degree per step

6. Transformer TRAN-2P2S

7. Crystal Oscillator 11.0592 MHz

8. Resistors 100Ω.

9. Capacitor 33pF, 1000uF.

10. Potentiometer 10KΩ(3).

8 POWER SUPPLY:

The aim is to design the power supply section which converts 230V AC in to 5V DC.

We short listed to use Bridge rectifier, because half wave rectifier has less efficiency. Even though the efficiency of full wave and bridge rectifier are the same, but as there is no requirement for any negative voltage for our application, we gone with bridge rectifier.

9 WORKING WITH KEIL SOFTWARE:

10 FUTURE ADVANCEMENTS:

More Sensitive Photo resistors.

Comparing Efficiency with Fixed Solar panel.

11 ECONOMICALLY AFORDABLE:

The attractive feature of the constructed prototype is the software solution of many challenges regarding solar tracking system.

The designed prototype requires only two photo resistors to sense the light, which lessens the cost of the system.

Power consumption of the system is negligible as ‘wait’ states are calculated perfectly with the sun’s position.

Another major problem of system initialization at the start of the day is solved through a simple programming application. All these software based solution reduce the system cost far more than all other systems proposed to date.

12 CONCLUSION

We presented a means of tracking the sun’s position with the help of microcontroller. Specially, it demonstrates a working software solution for maximizing solar cell output by positioning a solar panel at the point of maximum light intensity.

Moreover, the tracker can initialize the starting position itself which reduce the need of any more photo resistors.

Though the prototype has limitations in hardware areas as an initial set up, still it provides an opportunity for improvement of the design methodology in future.

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THANK YOU