Construction and Performance Test of Smartflower Solar Tracking System
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38032/scse.2025.3.144Keywords:
Solar Tracking, Smartflower Design, Renewable Energy, Photovoltaic Technology, Environmental ImpactAbstract
The exploitation of solar energy is a viable solution not only to the energy crisis but also to environmental disasters of the present world, as it is a clean and abundant source. Among many modern technologies, solar photovoltaic panels are a prominent technology that can capture both direct and diffuse solar radiation and directly produce electrical energy from it. As the sun changes its position throughout the day, solar trackers are essential for ensuring maximum panel efficiency, by enabling the panels to consistently orient towards the sun such that the sun rays always incident perpendicularly on the panels. However, traditional sun trackers suffer from a few limitations including poor performance under bad weather conditions, lower response rate of the sensors, lack of self-cleaning ability etc. A smartflower solar tracker can thus be a convenient upgrade of the tracking technology that addresses and effectively resolves these issues. In this work, a prototype of the smartflower solar tracker was constructed and its performance evaluation was carried out under different illumination conditions such as well lit, low light, partial shading etc. The results revealed that well-lit environments were ideal for the system's performance, but low light levels caused some difficulties. However, the capability of this responsive mechanism to safeguard the PV panels in adverse environmental conditions sets it apart from conventional solar tracking systems.
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