The project deals with design of solar power LED lighting system using Horizontal Two-Axis Arduino based Solar Tracking System. The main goal of this project is to design a very precise solar tracker. The project is divided into two parts; hardware and software. Hardware part generally composed of solar panel, two-DC motors with gearbox, LDR sensor module and electronic circuit. Software part represents the thinking behavior of the system, that is how the system acting under several weather conditions. In this work sensing of the sun position carried out in two stages primary and secondary. Primary stage or indirect sensing performed via sun-earth relationship as a coarse adjustment and second stage or direct sensing performed via set of LDR sensors as output tuning to trims the azimuth and altitude angles. If the weather is cloudy or dusty, the tracking system uses primary stage or sun-earth geometrical relationships only to identify the location of the sun; so the system tracks the position of the sun regardless the weather condition. The energy extracted from photovoltaic (PV) or any solar collector depends on solar irradiance. For maximum extraction of energy from the sun, the solar collector panel should always be normal to the incident radiation Solar trackers moves the solar collector to follow the sun path and keeps the orientation of the solar collector at an optimal tilt angle. Solar tracking system improves substantially the energy efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) panel. In this paper, an automatic dual axis solar tracking system is designed and developed using Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) and DC motors on a mechanical structure with gear arrangement. Two axis solar tracking (azimuth angle as well as altitude angle) is implemented through Arduino UNO controller based on Sun Earth Geometry. The results indicated that the automatic solar tracking system is more reliable and efficient than fixed one.

1. Design of Solar Power LED Lighting System using Horizontal
Two-Axis Arduino Based Solar Tracking System
P.Suresh1
, S.Manojkumar2
, E.Rakesh3
, N.Saranraj4
1
Assistant Professor, St. Joseph College of Engineering
234
UG Scholar, St. Joseph College of Engineering
1
suresh@stjoseph.ac.in
Abstract
The project deals with design of solar power LED lighting system using Horizontal
Two-Axis Arduino based Solar Tracking System. The main goal of this project is to design
a very precise solar tracker. The project is divided into two parts; hardware and
software. Hardware part generally composed of solar panel, two-DC motors with
gearbox, LDR sensor module and electronic circuit. Software part represents the thinking
behavior of the system, that is how the system acting under several weather conditions. In
this work sensing of the sun position carried out in two stages primary and secondary.
Primary stage or indirect sensing performed via sun-earth relationship as a coarse
adjustment and second stage or direct sensing performed via set of LDR sensors as output
tuning to trims the azimuth and altitude angles. If the weather is cloudy or dusty, the
tracking system uses primary stage or sun-earth geometrical relationships only to identify
the location of the sun; so the system tracks the position of the sun regardless the weather
condition. The energy extracted from photovoltaic (PV) or any solar collector depends on
solar irradiance. For maximum extraction of energy from the sun, the solar collector
panel should always be normal to the incident radiation Solar trackers moves the solar
collector to follow the sun path and keeps the orientation of the solar collector at an
optimal tilt angle. Solar tracking system improves substantially the energy efficiency of
photovoltaic (PV) panel. In this paper, an automatic dual axis solar tracking system is
designed and developed using Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) and DC motors on a
mechanical structure with gear arrangement. Two axis solar tracking (azimuth angle as
well as altitude angle) is implemented through Arduino UNO controller based on Sun
Earth Geometry. The results indicated that the automatic solar tracking system is more
reliable and efficient than fixed one.
Keywords: Arduino UNO Controller, Light Dependent Resistor, Photo-Voltaic, Solar
Tracking System
1. Introduction
Nowadays, the climate change on the world is at a delicate level. Climate change can
be divided into two classes, human and natural causes. Natural causes of climate changes
are ocean current, solar variations and earth orbital changes. The major part of climate
changes caused by human is man-made greenhouse gases emission. Global warning can
be shown through some of the natural phenomenon around the globe like the severe
weather conditions. Solar energy is the energy derived from the sun in the form of solar
irradiation. Solar energy is the most inexhaustible, renewable source of energy known to
humanity. In order to increase the efficiency of solar energy systems, solar tracker is
added at the expense of system's complexity and cost. The two basic categories of trackers
are single axis and dual axis. Single axis tracker has one axis of freedom, vertical or
horizontal. Dual axis tracker has both a vertical and a horizontal axis of freedom, so it
able to track the position of the sun precisely. A prototype of the automatic two-axis solar
tracking system with a new design of sun-position tracker mechanism and wireless
supervisory is designed in this paper. The solar tracker mechanism is composed of
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Volume 8, Issue 3, 2019
ISSN NO: 2279-543X
Page No: 1149

2. Arduino UNO controller, DC motors, gear box, LDR sensor module, angle sensor, timing
circuit, Bluetooth module and motor driving circuit. Arduino UNO sends command to DC
motors to specify elevation and azimuth angles of solar panel in which to maintain the
panel always normal to sun light. Two angle sensors are used to measure the physical
angles on both outlet shafts of azimuth and elevation to make sure the desired angles are
reached. Set of four LDR light sensor are used to trim the errors of altitude and azimuth
angles. The parameters of the tracking system are monitored remotely on the supervisor
and control computer program through Bluetooth module. As a result of experiments the
power generated by the proposed tracking system is increased in the overall of about 1 0%
~ 40% more than fixed angle system in general. The system of the paper is as follows:
Section II deals with system description. Section III provides the design of various
components in solar power tracking system. Section IV shows Hardware results and
discussion.
2. System Description
The system configuration of the proposed method are presented here. Figure 1 shows
the proposed model of solar tracking system.
Figure 1. Block Diagram of Proposed Horizontal Two-Axis Arduino Based
Solar Tracking System
For tracking position of the sun rapidly, the supervisory and control program should
firstly calculate the theoretical altitude angle and azimuth angle as coarse adjustment of
the automatic tracking mechanism through following equations
(1)
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ISSN NO: 2279-543X
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3. (2)
(3)
The theoretical value of altitude angle and azimuth angle were translated into command
string for driving DC motors rotate to the corresponding position. Then, the system
automatically trimming the altitude and azimuth angle of the PV panel according to
feedback signal of the proposed sunlight sensor module. The sunlight sensor module is
consist of eight photo-sensors, glass filters and opaque partitions. Azimuth and Altitude
angle of the Sun is illustrated in Figure 2. Daily variation of altitude angle and azimuth
angle is shown in Figure 3 and 4 respectively.
Flow Chart 1: Dual Axis Mechanism of Solar Tracking System
Figure 2. Illustration of Azimuth and Altitude angle of the Sun
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ISSN NO: 2279-543X
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4. Figure 3. Daily variation of altitude angle
Figure 4. Daily variation of azimuth angle
3. Design of Various Components used in Solar Power Tracking System
This section describes the designing and modelling of various components used in
solar power tracking system and parameter calculation
3.1. Solar Panel
Solar panel cells are really semiconductors that are made using photovoltaic
materials. Photovoltaic (PV) is the technical terminology that is related to the solar energy
and the conversion of the suns ultra-violet rays into electrical energy. They do not have
fluids or chemicals in them and they do not have any moving parts. Solar panel cells
simply convert the sunlight they receive into stored energy with the help of an inverter.
You can take a portable solar panel with you when you travel to places that will not have
electricity and use them to operate your electrical devices such as your lap top, cell phone
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ISSN NO: 2279-543X
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5. or appliances in a camper van or trailer. Some people take them out on their boats to
supply the electricity they may need out on the water.
3.1.1. Approx. Solar Output for 6 Hours a Day Sunlight
1 x 80 watt panel = 30 Amps
2 x 80 watt panels = 60 Amps
3 x 80 watt panels = 90 Amps
A system that requires 90 amps per day would require 3 x 80 watt panels and batteries
equivalent to 300 amp hours for continuous power supply. Your system will perform
much better in summer than what it will in winter due to the longer days and stronger sun.
Keep in mind that batteries are rated in amp hours at 25ºc. This means that temperature
will affect the level of output that you will receive from your batteries. When the
temperature is colder than 25ºc you will receive less output from your batteries, and in
reverse, when temperature is above 25ºc you will receive a higher output from your
batteries.1 Amp at 12 Volts = 12 watts, 1 Amp at 240 Volts = 240 watts, Amps x Volts =
Watts EG 10Amps x 12 Volts = 120 watts, Watts / Volts = Amps EG 120 watts / 12 Volts
= 10 Amps.
3.2. Arduino UNO
Arduino/Genuine Uno is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P. It
has 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog
inputs, a 16 MHz quartz crystal, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header and a
reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect
it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with an AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get
started. You can tinker with your UNO without worrying too much about doing
something wrong, worst case scenario you can replace the chip for a few dollars and start
over again.
Figure 5. Arduino board with UNO Controller
3.3. Boost converter
This XL6009 DC-DC boost/step-up converter module (HCMODU0091) is based
on the XLSemi XL6009 DC-DC converter and is capable of boosting a wide range of
input voltages up to a maximum of 45V. It output can supply up to 2.5A out current
(dependent on input voltage and operating environment) and has built in thermal limiting
protection circuitry. An on-board multi-turn potentiometer allows for adjustment of the
output voltage which can set anywhere from Vin up to its maximum output voltage. The
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ISSN NO: 2279-543X
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6. module is ideal for boosting battery, USB, car lighter, or solar cell voltages and has large
pads for soldering wires to its input and output terminals.
Figure 6. Boost converter board
Table 1. Boost converter Specifications
S.No Specifications Output
1 Input Voltage 5 to 32V DC
2 Output Voltage Vin to 45V DC
3 Max output current 2.5A
4 Operating temperature 0 to 70oC
5 Efficiency Up to 94%
3.4. LDR sensor
The LDR Sensor Module is used to detect the presence of light / measuring the
intensity of light. The output of the module goes high in the presence of light and it
becomes low in the absence of light. The sensitivity of the signal detection can be
adjusted using potentiometer.
Fig 7. LDR sensor
4. System Realization and Experimentation
Dual-axis’’ means that the automatic system can be able to tracking sun follow two
axes simultaneously, Left-Right (azimuth angle) and Up-Down (altitude angle) direction.
The mechanism was consist of aluminum frame and steel pedestal as shown in Figure 8.
The azimuth and altitude angle adjusting mechanism was made up of the DC motor,
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ISSN NO: 2279-543X
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7. worm-gear, rotating encoder, limit switches and shaft coupling as demonstrated in Figure
8. Complete set up of Horizontal Two-Axis Arduino Based Solar Tracking System.
Fig 8. The proposed prototype of the automatic dual-axis solar tracking
mechanism with Azimuth angle adjusting mechanism and Altitude angle
adjusting mechanism.
5. Conclusion
A dual-axis automatic solar tracking system and its supervisory and control
system was proposed and implemented in this paper. It is low-cost, reliable and efficient.
According to the experimental result, the proposed automatic solar tracking system has
an overall energy increase of about 17%~25% more than the fix-angle PV system in
sunny days, and about 8%~11% in cloudy days. Then, a supervisory and control system
was developed to pre-calculate the theoretical altitude angle and azimuth angle of the sun
as coarse adjustment command for automatic mechanism, and storage all electrical and
mechanical parameters into database.
References
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Restorer. International Journal of Control Theory and Apllication, 9(25), pp.417-422.
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International Journal of Scientific Research and Review
Volume 8, Issue 3, 2019
ISSN NO: 2279-543X
Page No: 1155