self cleaning and solar tracking of pv solar panels

Energy demands in the recent years have been recorded to be growing at an exponential rate by the commercial and as well as domestic markets. While the non-renewable resources are rapidly getting depleted, it leaves no other option but to use renewable resources to produce usable energy. One of thes

Project Title

self cleaning and solar tracking of pv solar panels

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

Energy demands in the recent years have been recorded to be growing at an exponential rate by the commercial and as well as domestic markets. While the non-renewable resources are rapidly getting depleted, it leaves no other option but to use renewable resources to produce usable energy. One of these resources, the Solar energy is the most abundant and easy to harness resource through Solar panels. This project makes this process of harnessing solar energy more efficient. A solar tracker is a generic term used to describe devices that orient solar panel toward the sun. In flat-panel photovoltic applications trackers are used to minimize the angle of incidence between the incoming light and a photovoltaic panel. This increases the amount of energy produced from a fixed amount of installed power generating capacity of a photovoltaic panel. the design and development of a solar panel cleaning system. The main object of this design prototype is to clean the solar panel using an electrical mechanism, such that efficiency or quality of solar panel is not compromised. As a matter of fact, gulf region - especially Saudi Arabia- are facing a lot of dust storms and the solar panels need to be cleaned frequently. If task is performed manually, it will be very costly and time consuming. Water sprinklers and a special wiping material shall be used in the conceived mechanism design to insure quality of cleaning.

Project Objectives

1. Motion of Solar Panel in accordance with sunlight
2. Cleaning the solar panel when dusty on schedule

Project Implementation Method

Components:

1. Arduino Nano
2. Arduino IDE
3. LDR
4. Resistors
5. Solar Motorized Jack
6. Photovoltaic solar panel
7. DC motor
8. L298N Motor Driver

Benefits of the Project

1. However, the industry has made only the limited use of high technology production concept.
2. There is general need to nature the development program in automation and robotics.
3. Continuous declining productivity
4. A high accident rate.
5. Low quality
6.  In sufficient control of construction site
7. Vanishing of skilled work force.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Firstly, we chose to work on solar project because of the enormous scope of development and implementation in our country. Because of this marvelous form of harvesting energy, many houses in rural areas can now enjoy the blessing of electricity.

But solar energy utilization in rural area is not the answer to the question throw by solar energy. We have to harvest it efficiently and use it to our full benefit. And through our thesis, we effectively tried to propose the solar panels to have sun tracking mechanism. Although this technology is nothing new to this world but it is something new for our country.

Commercially, two axis sun tracking is still rare even in countries where a significant part of electricity is being generated by solar energy as they claim that single axis tracking is doing the job. But dual axis tracking can significantly increase the efficiency – the prime objective of our thesis.

Solar energy is unlimited, solar panels are easy to maintain and has a very long lifetime. All these favor the use of it in our country. With a system that can track the sun – this renewable energy can be harvested even more efficiently and maybe two houses can be supplied with electricity using the panel that could only support one house without any tracking mechanism. We hope that there will be more research on this and our country will move forward to implement sun tracking system to minimize the electricity crisis that is hitting us at the very moment.

The solar panel moved towards the sunny directions which was the objective of the project, consequently it improved the efficiency up to 40%. The cleaning of the solar panel was done on one gram of soil dust. The dust decreases the voltage up to 10%. The rinsing and cleaning of the solar panel recover those damages.

1 Future Recommendations

Currently, Pakistan is going through a major electricity crisis. Government is taking various projects on implementing solar panels to provide a secondary method to provide electricity. But for the time being, all the projects are collecting solar energy and storing them to a DC battery instead of using the energy to support a locality through grid.

In many developed countries, solar arrays are connected to grids and from there; the energy is distributed to the neighborhood. This technology is yet to come to our country.

The project need to implement Artificial Intelligent and Regression algorithm to predict the health and efficiency of the solar panel.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Energy

Other Industries

IT , Manufacturing

Core Technology

Others

Other Technologies

Wearables and Implantables

Sustainable Development Goals

Affordable and Clean Energy, Climate Action

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com