Improving the Efficiency and the Cost of Energy Production in Photovoltaic Systems Using Smart Tracking Mechanism

Nowadays, photovoltaic systems have received a lot of attention due to their widespread application. One of the important applications of these systems is to provide energy for vital public service centers, security centers and law enforcement centers in critical situations. They are also used in centers located in mountains and hard-to-reach areas, road control centers and wireless relay stations. In this paper, a tracking photovoltaic system has been used instead of a fixed one to improve efficiency, naturally expected to increase system cost because of adding tracking equipment. In order to decrease the cost, smart tracking algorithm has been used which generates the sun path according to the location of the solar panel and local astronomical calendar, without using any sensor. First, the motor and the control unit of tracking system were analyzed in detail and were simulated using MATLAB. Then, the solar power curve, the received power curve, the generated power curve and the efficiency of both fixed and tracking systems were calculated. The results show that the tracking system is able to receive almost all the power from the sun’s rays which leads to efficiency of 20.02%, meanwhile the fixed system efficiency is 14.16%. Moreover, the economic analysis confirms that the cost-efficiency ratio of fixed and tracking systems are 1959 and 1785 dollar per unit efficiency, respectively, that represents a reduction in the cost of energy production in a smart tracking-based photovoltaic system.