IOT BASED SMART SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEM WITH REMOTE MONITORING AND CONTROL.

In point of fact, as the energy demand is increasing, the renewable sources are being used enormously now a days since they are clean and green sources of energy unlike conventional sources. Photovoltaic (PV) technology is counted to be one of the best renewable energy sources with brilliant fut

Project Title

IOT BASED SMART SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEM WITH REMOTE MONITORING AND CONTROL.

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

In point of fact, as the energy demand is increasing, the renewable sources are being used enormously now a days since they are clean and green sources of energy unlike conventional sources. Photovoltaic (PV) technology is counted to be one of the best renewable energy sources with brilliant futurism due it’s simple and easy installation, low maintenance and better reliability with no fuel cost. Photovoltaic panels harness solar energy from the sun, but they can’t harness it completely in daytime if they are static. So, the PV panels must move perpendicularly with the sun continuously. Solar trackers are of two types. One is single axis tracker and the other is dual axis tracker. A single axis solar tracker can give an average of 30% more electrical output than fixed solar panel while the dual axis solar tracker can give 81.68% higher output than the fixed one.

 IOT is an arising and a futuristic technology which is effectively and efficiently edifying our way of life by controlling a machine at distant with the help of cloud server.  Generally, in our country Pakistan, solar systems for electric power generation is manual. In this modern-day life we need an intelligent system for automatically monitoring and controlling solar power generation. Therefore, we are going to use a rising technology named as “IOT” in solar tracking system for remotely monitoring and controlling solar power generation to make the system smart, robust, and more reliable.

Project Objectives

• To make solar systems computational intelligence based.
• To develop a solar tracker system based on IoT.
• To implement IoT based control system for continuous monitoring from anywhere.
• To enhance the performance of the developed system.
• To monitor the dust accumulated on PV panels which causes reduction of efficiency of PV panels.

Project Implementation Method

This proposed IOT based solar tracking structure is made up of electrical and mechanical systems. The electrical system controls the servo motors according to the data given by the sensors. The mechanical system controls the Elevation and Azimuth of motors on the basis of information of angle fetched from a website. With the help of Internet of things technology data is transferred on the web. The data of position is given to Arduino to control the motors which rotate the solar panel. Accelerometer and Gyroscope sensors are used to check the orientation of solar panels, whether they are oriented correctly or not according to the given data. The data of sensors is uploaded on the internet, which can be viewed by anybody from any place who has the internet access.

Solar panel, voltage sensor, current sensor, dust sensor and LM35 temperature sensor are connected to Raspberry Pi 3 B module. An ADC, MCP3008 is used between sensors and processor to change analog signals into digital. With the help of Wi - Fi 802.11 n, Sensors data communicates with the cloud. The cloud data will be accessible on the platform of IoT using a device like mobile phone or laptop with access of internet. A user can carry out plant supervising, fault detection, analysis of historical recorded data at distant on the platform of IOT. Four light dependent resistors are used for solar tracking, output of the four LDRs is fed to the Arduino Uno microcontroller. Decision is taken by Arduino Uno microcontroller for driving a motor. To monitor the cloud data and control solar photovoltaic generation through the IOT, an IOT platform the Ubidots website is used.

Block diagram

Benefits of the Project

1. Remotely control and monitor the solar panels through android phone, laptop or desktop computer.
2. Less human efforts and hence time saving. 
3. Efficiency improvement of solar panels by tracking and following the sun's movement. 
4. providing a cost-effective solution. 
5. Obtaining maximum power from the photovoltaic module. 
6. Avoiding human errors by implementation of IoT intelligence.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Using this smart solar PV system based on IOT, the required time for the management of plant is reduced.  Also, remote monitoring and control through IOT technology reduce work of manual directions for solar PV plant by making it computational intelligence-based system. Beside this, the dual axis solar tracking structure in this proposed system can generate more electricity by increasing exposure to solar radiations and ultimately it increases the efficiency of this smart solar system.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Energy

Other Industries

Core Technology

Internet of Things (IoT)

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Affordable and Clean Energy, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production

Required Resources

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