Dual axis solar tracker system using optimal hybrid controller

Abstract

Renewable energy plays a crucial role in the modern life. It has several forms, such as wind, hydroelectric, and solar energy. The latter is the most popular energy sources in wide areas. In order to maximize the generated energy from solar panels, these panels should be placed and remain in a vertical position with the sun rays. Therefore, a novel system is proposed in this paper to track the sun rays through designing and implementing a solar tracking system with hybrid controller type (controllino), which a hybrid controller that combines the programmable logic controller (PLC) and microcontroller. This leads us to mix the advantages of PLC and microcontroller thus, get fast and flexible control with several input and output which makes the cost is very low and the software is free and unprotected from the production companies. The system that has been built is controlled by self-controller which has the ability to track the position of the sun and control on the movement of the solar panel in order to keep the direction of the solar panels perpendicular to the sun. As a result, the efficiency will increase without the need to identify the geographical location where the solar panels are located and reduce the cost of generating energy by requiring a minimum number of solar panels.