TITLE OF PROJECT

A Project Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
in
Electrical/Electrical & Electronics Engineering
by
Bipin Kr. Pandey (1601020016)
Pallaw Verma (1601020032)
Ritvik Singh Kushwaha (1601020038)
Saurabh Patel (1601020043)
Under the Supervision of

Vivek Mishra
(Assistance Professor)

Department of Electrical Engineering

United College of Engineering & Research, Allahabad (Code 010)

Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University

Lucknow
05,2020
 CERTIFICATE

Certified that work presented in this Report entitled “MULTILEVEL DUAL AXIS SOLAR

TRACKER” for the award of Bachelor of Technology from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical

University, Lucknow, embodies results of original work, and studies are carried out by us and the

contents of the thesis do not form the basis for the award of any other degree to the candidate or

to anybody else from this or any other University/Institution.

Name & Signature of Students

Bipin kr. Pandey

1601020016

Pallaw Verma Vivek Mishra (Asst. professor)

1601020032. Sign-

Ritvik Singh Kushwaha

1601020038. Abdul Zeeshan (HOD)

Saurabh Patel Sign-

1601020043
 ABSTRACT

Solar energy has originated to be a feasible source of renewable energy over the past two
or three decades as this has been used to power up our industrial and domestic applications and
gain desired national production.India, like some other third world countries, has higher demand
of energy than production met by the power sector, even after considering only 70% of the
population who are hitherto under electricity coverage of national grid. An inevitable
consequence of this shortage is load-shedding, and people of urban areas are major sufferer of it
because of their dependency on electricity for quotidian activities. Although solar energy has the
promise and potential to solve the energy crisis of India, the limited space for setting enough
solar photovoltaic (PV) panels to meet the demand of city dwellers emerges as a constraint in
implementing solar energy system in densely populated urban areas. In the proposed system, a
modified structure equipped with a sliding mechanism holds three solar panels. The panels are
stacked one above another in a rack to minimize the floor area, and track the sun using a sun
tracking system to maximize power generation. This work focuses on the implementation of the
proposed system and verification of its claims. The implementation has been carried out by
constructing a physical structure equipped with servo motors controlled by a microcontroller to
rotate the panels on a horizontal axis. The Microcontroller determines the appropriate position of
the panels for maximum power absorption for a particular time using a set of equations. The data
of current and voltages of each panel are collected using a data logger device developed for this
purpose. The collected data are then analyzed, which show a high level of conformity to the
theoretically calculated values. The Microcontroller determines the appropriate position of the
panels for maximum power absorption for a particular time using a set of equations. The panels
are supported by a wooden bar fixed at a tilted angle equal to the latitude among north-south
direction facing south. The panels rotate throughout the day from sunrise to sunset through servo
motors controlled by pic microcontroller. It allows rotation of the three panels on a fixed
horizontal axis to track the sun at hourly intervals and maximize power generation. The entire
position of the three panels is changed by the servo motor after midday when the sun moves
from east to west. The projected system will give a worthwhile solution to electricity problems in
urban areas where space is inadequate.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to extend our vivid gratefulness to our project guide Vivek Mishra, Assistant
Professor of AKTU University who has supported us with his kind assistance and dedicated
involvement in every step throughout the accomplishment of this paper and our project work.
We are immensely grateful for his help, professionalism, precious guidance and encouragement
throughout the course of this work. Moreover, we are thankful to our parents and friends for
encouraging us.

Signature

Name of Candidate
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables vii

List of Figures viii

List of Symbols and Abbreviations ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1-7

1.1 GENERAL 1

1.1.1 Advantages of 2

1.1.2 Disadvantages of 3

1.1.2.1 Limitations of 4

1.2 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION 7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 8-15

CHAPTER 3:

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE 50-55

REFERENCES

APPENDICES
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Motivation

Solar energy is considered to play an instrumental role in the infrastructure of a country as a

distributing source. Country like India which has added several natural grids to the national
power grids but still that is not enough. In 2015, despite the requirement of 11,14,408 MW on an
average, the installed capacity has reached to 10,90,850 MW of which only 75% is available.
The consequence of this shortage is nothing but load shedding. People of urban areas are major
sufferers of it because of their dependency on electricity for daily activities. Solar energy is
something that has the promising potentiality to make our country getting rid of electrical energy
crisis. It is shown by theoretical calculations that the system harnesses 18% to 64 % more energy
based on season than that of conventional fixed panel system at the same time occupying 33%
less space. The proposed system is easy to implement, but has a potential to be of immense
benefit for the dwellers of large cities like Delhi, where not only electricity is short in supply but
also availability of rooftop space to install solar panels is also very limited. The position of India
is between 8°4'-37°6' degrees north and 68°7-97°25' degrees east which indicates an ideal
location for solar energy consumption. In our country 200 MWh per square kilo meter and
maximum amount of radiation is available in summer. Therefore India is the suitable place for
installation and testing our system efficiently.
1.2 Project Outline

Figure 1.1: 2-D Physical structure of the rack of solar panels.

The system of this project is designed in such a way that automatically tracks sun from sunrise to
sunset and converts it into solar energy. Each of the three panels is fitted with a servo motor that
is controlled by the microcontroller in the Arduino. In our system, we have used PIC
microcontroller (pic16f72). The PIC16F72 belongs to the Mid-Range family of the PIC micro
devices. The program memory contains 2K words, which translate to 2048 instructions, since
each 14-bit program memory word is the same width as each device instruction. The data
memory (RAM) contains 128 bytes. There are 22 I/O pins that are user configurable on a pin-to-
pin basis. Some pins are multiplexed with other device functions. A simple side view of the
proposed system is depicted in figure 1.1 where three identical panels are supported by a bar
with a mechanism so that the panels can rotate on a horizontal axis. This bar along with the
panels is mounted on another vertical bar fixed to a base in such a way that the former bar can
rotate around a certain pivot. In order to maximize the average solar irradiance on the panels
further throughout the year, the panels are tilted by an angle equal to the latitude along north-
south direction facing south (not shown in Fig). Here we have used potentiometer to vary the
speed of DC motor and general-purpose I/O boards. potentiometer controls four dc motors at a
definite speed according to the set of equations and calculation. The speed can be organized as
motor outputs making this potentiometer well suited for high-precision animatronics, and built-in
speed and acceleration control make it easy to achieve smooth, seamless movements without
requiring the control source to constantly compute. The panels will be reset to their original
position at sunrise for the following day along with the gliding bar.

The gliding bar faces east in the morning with an angle that the axis of top and bottom panels are
away from each other in the horizontal plane by a distance equivalent to the width of a panel;
three panels, thus, occupy the space of two in that plane. The gliding bar, thus, creates an angle
of 67.5 degree. When the sun starts to move to west at noon, the panels need to be repositioned
with the top panel moved to east and bottom panel to west, so that all the panels can experience
maximum sun exposure. The gliding process will allow the top and bottom panels to rotate
throughout noon but the middle panel will stay vertically stationary from 1 hour before the
midday till 1 hour after the midday so that shading over the bottom panel can be eradicated.
According to the theory, the proposed distance between two consecutive panels is selected to be
1.5 times of the panel width .This will allow the top and bottom panels get the full sun exposure
during noon. The angular separation between the vertical bar and the mounted solar panel stack
will be 67.5º at sunrise. The total height of the structure will be (1.5+1.5+0.5) or 3.5 time the
panel width, as can be seen from Fig. 1.
 Figure 1.2: Positions of the solar panels throughout different times of the day.

1.3 Scope of the project

As it was already been proposed to construct a prototype multilevel solar panel and it has already
been constructed. The next plan will be increasing the efficiency of panel as much as possible.
For that we have to use the same component those we have used for constructing this solar panel
and which includes PIC microcontroller, Potentiometer, Bridge rectifier, Resistance and
capacitance, battery for power supply. To increase the efficiency, the panels that will be used
further should generate much more power.
 CHAPTER 2
System Description
2.1 Introduction