OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Thanks mate. I too have been mostly missing from the forum, just giving a peek once in a while. This was something I thought I should share with you guys here, since I had shared it through the beginning too.
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Actually the answer to this one is tricky. Here, Quality (Efficiency) and Cost are directly related. This means that costs go up with the quality. As such, commercially, (as far as I know) there are two major kinds of solar panels available. Monocrystalline, and Poly Crystalline. Monocrystalline cells are considered more efficient than their polycrystalline counterparts, and thus are more expensive than the latter. In terms of physical form, there are two kinds of cells available. One is the regular glass laminated which are bulky, and the second type is the flexible one (thin film) wherein the cells are built up over flexible and thin plastic sheets. These are cheaper, but then, are less efficient.
To start with, you can opt for a 40-50 Watt solar panel, a suitable small solar charge controller of 12 Volt 6 Amps, and one or two 7AH lead acid batteries (the UPS ones). This will give you enough power to have enough energy to drive a couple of LED's in a DC configuration. You can optionally go for readymade kits that are on offer for roughly the same cost you will bear for the above mentioned system.
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Yeah, I was thinking of the instructable, afterall, I have to thank the guy whose idea helped me think through, as a base for this, plus, I have to help spread the knowledge I gathered while transforming that small palmtop model idea into a real world working rig. But the problem is that I haven't completed the work on this. Once this work gets completed, and the tracker starts working, as planned, it will be the right time to build an instructable.
As for the power output, I am just using a 12 volt 40 watt panel, on this, as a test rig, before I bring in the planned 2x250 watt panels, and put the system to work, by feeding the panel output to the inverter. Plus, the tracking part is not functional yet. So, essentially, this is just a stationary solar panel, as of now, which can be moved by hand. In terms of power output, all I can say is that the 15 watt LED arrangement I have done that is powered directly by the panel output kicks in at 7 in the morning, and goes away at around 4-4:30 in the evening, which is when the light is not enough to be used alone. I feel this is good enough, considering that we are in the middle of the winter season here in Delhi, and this Sunlight hours is not at it's peak. Once the system is complete, I will then focus on the remaining things like plotting the daily power output, and a couple of other ideas.
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Not yet. The IC on the motor driver I was using has broken somehow, so I am waiting for a new IC to be shipped to me. Till then the remaining tasks won't move an inch. I tried looking for the places I usually get these components from, but couldn't find them, so had to rely on online shops.^ cool stuff dude, did u complete the program to drive the motors and tested it ?
icebags
Technomancer
^thats a normal dc motor right ? whats the current requirement ? if it's less than 400mA, just use a 2N2222 with pulse code modulation, or even without modulation, with a BC548 previous stage. our you can use a mosfet, or even u can use a lm386 amp.
try it without the expensive driver chips, they work fine for low power motors.
try it without the expensive driver chips, they work fine for low power motors.
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Yes, but actually that's a geared DC motor which needs current in access to 1Amps to work well, and it's limit is 4Amps. Additionally, I need a very good amount of torque to move those panels, once installed, hence I have opted for the L298N Dual full-bridge driver circuit that can supply a max of 2Amps per channel. The driver board is already there, just the problem is that the terminals of the IC somehow broke down from the chip and hence, I need to replace it.^thats a normal dc motor right ? whats the current requirement ? if it's less than 400mA, just use a 2N2222 with pulse code modulation, or even without modulation, with a BC548 previous stage. our you can use a mosfet, or even u can use a lm386 amp.
try it without the expensive driver chips, they work fine for low power motors.
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
After more days of part hunting and scratching around heads here and there, today I can say that the tracker is finally in field testing phase. The modified designs of sensor assembly, motor and gear assembly and the rest of the stuff are finally working in tandem to give me a near accurate tracking of the sun throughout the day.
What's the cause of concern now is the somewhat jittery and abrupt movement in case of sudden cloud cover and during overcast conditions (seen during earlier phases of field testing). Though some more logics have been integrated to make sure that the tracker falls dead once the light coming through the sensors falls below a certain threshold value, the efficacy of this code needs to be checked in real life, i.e. on a day with cloudy conditions.
Also, the tracker needs to be restricted to a certain limit to make sure that the horizontal tracking doesn't result in winding the wires in the rod and thus causing damage to the system.
Change Log:
1. Certain mechanisms have been changed from the last build posted here. We found out that the vertical tracking by the DC motor and the gear assembly was putting a lot of strain on the assembly when the panel moved from a near horizontal level from the ground to an angle thus causing an seemingly dangerous jerk, which could cause serious problems once I add on the two panels weighing ~40kgs. So we decided to make the vertical tracking possible with the help of a linear actuator which could take care of the panel's inclination till around 100 degrees. So a linear actuator was built using a long bolt, some nuts and some other stuff including the DC motor.
The geared mechanism now works at the bottom of the tracker to take care of the horizontal tracking.
2. Additional support bars have been added on the two sides to provide additional support to horizontal bar that holds the shaft which will be used to mount the solar panels.
Here's the tracker in action. In this video, I am intentionally blocking the light on a couple of sensors so that the tracker could be seen in action, otherwise, one has to see throughout the day to really make out what it is doing.
What's the cause of concern now is the somewhat jittery and abrupt movement in case of sudden cloud cover and during overcast conditions (seen during earlier phases of field testing). Though some more logics have been integrated to make sure that the tracker falls dead once the light coming through the sensors falls below a certain threshold value, the efficacy of this code needs to be checked in real life, i.e. on a day with cloudy conditions.
Also, the tracker needs to be restricted to a certain limit to make sure that the horizontal tracking doesn't result in winding the wires in the rod and thus causing damage to the system.
Change Log:
1. Certain mechanisms have been changed from the last build posted here. We found out that the vertical tracking by the DC motor and the gear assembly was putting a lot of strain on the assembly when the panel moved from a near horizontal level from the ground to an angle thus causing an seemingly dangerous jerk, which could cause serious problems once I add on the two panels weighing ~40kgs. So we decided to make the vertical tracking possible with the help of a linear actuator which could take care of the panel's inclination till around 100 degrees. So a linear actuator was built using a long bolt, some nuts and some other stuff including the DC motor.
The geared mechanism now works at the bottom of the tracker to take care of the horizontal tracking.
2. Additional support bars have been added on the two sides to provide additional support to horizontal bar that holds the shaft which will be used to mount the solar panels.
Here's the tracker in action. In this video, I am intentionally blocking the light on a couple of sensors so that the tracker could be seen in action, otherwise, one has to see throughout the day to really make out what it is doing.
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Yes, that's why it's a Dual Axis tracker. It has the possibility of doing both, the daily tracking as well as tracking the seasonal changes of the sun's location/direction, i.e. both Azimuthal as well as Zenithal tracking. As far as the electricity generation is concerned, for now, just ~40 watts an hour. Once the tracker is fully functional, I will be getting two more panels 250 watt each to start with the real life application, and that is when the real power will be generated.
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Finally the real life tracker testing is underway. Also, as you might be knowing, the solar modules and the charge controllers are on the way. I am hoping that the system would be ready to give me some power beginning the new financial year.
Some updates:
1. Changed the sensor module with a better built piece with bigger LDR's, and better connections and mountings to be properly mounted along with the solar modules.
2. Just doday had to change one of the drive gears as the earlier one had got damaged because of poor design, and had, of late started to go free, and, thus failed to drive the system towards West after around 1pm. So, today, I replaced this gear with a new one with some additional and mandatory design changes, and am now hoping that this will be able to keep up in tomorrow's testing, for the whole day.
3. The tracker mechanism has now been made almost self sufficient, with the 40watt module being used to power the drive systems, throughout the day. The MCU too is being powered by a battery bank throughout the day, and this has removed a lot of unwanted problems.
4. The tracker code too has been optimized a bit to ensure it doesn't act weirdly enough in the morning and evenings.
What's in future: 1. Some more changes to realign the panels towards East in the morning, automatically.
2. I have also planned to make this an IoT project, which will enable me to have real-time data logging and viewing abilities, where the values will be automatically updated from the MCU to a Web host, and from there, it will be displayed on a special webpage, for monitoring purposes.
Some updates:
1. Changed the sensor module with a better built piece with bigger LDR's, and better connections and mountings to be properly mounted along with the solar modules.
2. Just doday had to change one of the drive gears as the earlier one had got damaged because of poor design, and had, of late started to go free, and, thus failed to drive the system towards West after around 1pm. So, today, I replaced this gear with a new one with some additional and mandatory design changes, and am now hoping that this will be able to keep up in tomorrow's testing, for the whole day.
3. The tracker mechanism has now been made almost self sufficient, with the 40watt module being used to power the drive systems, throughout the day. The MCU too is being powered by a battery bank throughout the day, and this has removed a lot of unwanted problems.
4. The tracker code too has been optimized a bit to ensure it doesn't act weirdly enough in the morning and evenings.
What's in future: 1. Some more changes to realign the panels towards East in the morning, automatically.
2. I have also planned to make this an IoT project, which will enable me to have real-time data logging and viewing abilities, where the values will be automatically updated from the MCU to a Web host, and from there, it will be displayed on a special webpage, for monitoring purposes.
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Today, I tried on making an 11 hour time lapse video to capture the functioning of the solar tracker, and document it in action. Appears, the 10 second capture interval was a bit too much, for a fast acting thing like this, also, the phone didn't have a very good placement, was using my phone because my camera had a limitation in terms of battery life which meant there was no way I could've captured such a long time lapse video with it.
[YOUTUBE]*youtu.be/QOoARMGo7v4[/YOUTUBE]by
[YOUTUBE]*youtu.be/QOoARMGo7v4[/YOUTUBE]by
kunalgujarathi
Cyborg Agent
How much energy efficiency you are able to achieve with such arrangement of a solar tracker compared to a fixed setup.
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Theoretically, a tracked solar PV installation with a provision to track down Zenithal and Azimuthal position of the sun to align the solar photovoltaic array perpendicular to the sun, throughout the day, and the year, is said to have a better efficiency that can go as high as 45%, when compared to a fixed PV array. Now, this is just a piece of claim made by - maybe, tracking equipment manufacturers-purely for business purposes, or others, and I can not however, at this point of time, give you a first hand experience about the efficiency of such a system and whether it is better than a fixed setup, by giving you data to support my claim. Anything that I say now, for such a system will be just a speculation, because I do not possess any data to prove it.
However, based on some research that I have done over the past few years, and some common sense - that says the greater the deviation from the sun rays falling perpendicularly (90 degrees) on the panels the lesser the efficiency of the panels, so, I do expect the tracked system to have a better efficiency in converting the solar radiation than a fixed array (even after considering the power spent in driving such a system, throughout the day).
You can consider this real-life scenario to understand it better - At 7 in the morning (during summer months), the solar panel in my setup gets the first direct rays of sunlight, and at 5:30 in the evening, my solar panel still has the sunlight falling directly on it. Now try comparing this with a fixed solar panel that sees the direct sun light falling on it, maybe, around 11:30am to 12:30pm in the noon, and the rest of the time, it's not direct sunlight, so lower power density, when compared to the position where the panel was aligned almost perpendicular to the sun. Now in my setup, I am getting the peak power density at all the times throughout the day, which means, my panel is getting peak power from 7 in the morning to 5:30 in the evening (i.e. for a good ten and a half hours, because it is being aligned perpendicular to the sun throughout the day. Compare this with a fixed setup which sees the period of peak power for say 2 hours, 11am to 1pm. Which one is supposed to have better efficiency?
As I have said in a previous update in this thread, I am working on a data logging system that gives me realtime data to analyze the actual power generation from my PV array, and this is something that I need to provide you with a proper analysis with data to support my claims. I will be including data related to Current, Voltage, Module Temperature and Time, which, I think will help me plot a proper analysis of the power production throughout the day. Once this is functional, I can also do a test by aligning the array in a fixed-tilt setup for a day to get comparative data of power generation in a dual-axis tracking setup versus a fixed tilt setup.
anirbandd
Conversation Architect
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Because that's what it has been designed to do. It follows the sun. Now the actuator that we have made that the panel up and down, had a limit of a maximum ~100 degrees, so this is being compensated by moving the entire platform, along with the panel, throughout the day to follow the sun.
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Finally, today, I have got the panels delivered.
*i.imgur.com/0C6jSf7.png *i.imgur.com/Q4R3Pyc.png
kunalgujarathi
Cyborg Agent
Hey why didn't you consider monocrystalline solar panels instead?
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
There are a few reasons.
1. Availability - It is pretty hard to get these things easily, that too in retail, when one is looking for individual components. When I was in the search for these panels, monocrystallines were almost unavailable. Places where these panels were available, I could only place a bulk order, and then the cost of a 250 watt monocrystalline panel is almost 33% higher than a 250 watt polycrystalline panel.
2. Cost - Monocrystalline panels are quite expensive, in comparision to polycrystalline. Now, considering the improved technologies into solar cell manufacturing, polycrystalline solar cells are reaching almost the same efficiencies as of monocrystallines. The other advantage of monocrystallines over polycrystallines is the better performance in high temperature, which, puts polycrystallines at a disadvantage, but then this advantage of monocrystallines doesn't really justify the premium cost. At 16.65% module efficiency, the panel I have got here is one of the highest efficiencies I've seen that are commercially available, at this price point.
Now considering the usage, I did not feel the need to invest a premium for a small scale application like mine.
anirbandd
Conversation Architect
is it a Canadian company or a Chinese??
OP
CyberKID
In search for Tech Gyan!
Haha, then we can also ask if Apple Inc. is an American company or a Chinese one.
In their own words, they are one of the largest Solar Panel manufacturers, based in Canada and having presence in 20 countries across 6 continents.
My choice was entirely governed by the price to performance ratio and the availability.