Theoretical and experimental performance investigation of a twoaxis solar tracker under the climatic condition of Denizli, Turkey

Abstract

In this study, an open-loop, two axes movable photovoltaic (PV) solar tracker is designed and analyzed as detailed. Its performance over a fixed tilted (37o) PV system is evaluated theoretically and experimentally for the climatic condition of Denizli, Turkey. Two DC actuators motors are used for the movement of the solar tracker. In addition to the experimental data, a computer program in Visual C#2005 that uses the equations for the solar radiation values of fixed and moving systems is developed. The performance difference of a fixed tilt PV panel and a two-axis moving PV panel was compared for months of May and June and it was found that the energy generation increases nearly 64% for tracking system when it is compared with fixed PV system. Moreover, the performance improvement values for each month are obtained by using the developed and designed computer program.