Microprocessor based automatic sun tracker

A. Konar, MPhil

A.K. Mandal, PhD

Indexing terms: Solar power, Servomotors, Microprocessors, Control systems

Abstract: A microprocessor-based automatic position control scheme has been designed for controlling the azimuth angle of an optimally tilted photovoltaic flat type solar panel or a cylindrical parabolic reflector to get the illuminating surface appropriately positioned for the collection of maximum solar irradiance. The scheme present ed results in considerable saving in power and is independent of the geographical location of the site of erection or temporal variations in environmental parameters.
1

Introduction

Eficient collection of maximum solar irradiance (MSI) on a flat plate type photovoltaic solar panel [i] or a cylindrical parabolic solar reflector [2] requires adjustments of two parameters of the energy collecting surface namely the angle of azimuth, ((I, and the angle of tilt, a, of the surface to be illuminated as shown in Fig. 1. As the ele-

Fig. 1

Solar geometry

vation angle of the sun remains almost invariant in a month [3] and varies little (latitude lOq [3] in a year, there is no need for automatic adjustment of the tilt angle. A single axis position control scheme is sufficient for the collection of MSI on a solar energy collector. A description of such a scheme for the energy collectors mentioned above is presented. Rumala [4] has developed a tracking system which tracks the sun both in the azimuth as well as in the elevation plane. Hession and Bonwick [2] have devised a tracking system for placing a cylindrical parabolic reflecPaper 7979A (Sl), first received 18th May 1989 and in revised form t4th January 1991 A. Konar and A.K. Mandal are with the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Jadavpur University, Calcutta 700032, West Bengal, India
IEE PROCEEDINGS-A, Vol. 138, No. 4, JULY 1991

tor appropriately in the direction of MSI. Both these tracking systems are continuous types [SI, i.e., control command is continuously generated for the tracking system. Batlas et al. [5] have made a comparative study between the effects of continuous tracking and step tracking. They have shown that as much as 99.7% of the continuously trackable solar insolation can be received if a plate type photovoltaic array is rotated by 7.5" every hour. The step tracking, where the motor in the tracking system would remain idle for most of the time [SI, is thus preferable to continuous tracking. Batlas et al. [SI have also reported that a two step tracking system which needs to be operated twice a day, once at solar noon and once at night to turn east, can capture as much as 95% of the total continuously trackable solar insolation. Two-step tracking is thus preferable for a small photovoltaic system which can be manually positioned. But for a large panel an n-step (n > 2) tracking is preferred to two-step tracking since the energy required by the stepper motor in n-step tracking would not differ from two-step tracking as the total angular displacement of the motor shaft in both cases is 360". Additional energy would be required for the generation of control signals. This energy becomes negligibly small when a microprocessor is used. A common question arises which is how to fix the value of n. This can be experimentally determined by satisfying the following criteria of energy gain. The tracking system should continue n-step tracking if the extra energy collected at the nth step exceeds the energy consumed by the tracking device for the nth positioning. Thus the value of n can be determined through a set of trials by the user. One way of implementing the n-step tracking without much power consumption is to use a pseudo-tracker instead of using the solar panel itself. In this arrangement, a pseudo-tracker which consumes negligible power may be used for determining the direction of MSI and when the change in the direction of MSI is adequate (say three motor step angles, i.e. 5.4") then a control command is generated for the stepper motor for positioning the solar panel. Temporal variations in the atmospheric refractive index caused by rain, cloud, fog, etc., at a distance from the location where the solar panel is mounted may give rise to an erroneous detection in the direction of MSI. This may lead to the wrong positioning of the solar panel between two successive tracking cycles which may be long. The problem can be avoided if the tracking is performed using sensors in the red to infrared wavelength since the light at this wavelength has minimum path deviation. The detector should be highly directive (+So) for determining the direction of MSI. An infrared phototransistor detector that incorporates the above features
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has been used in the pseudo-tracking system for finding the direction of MSI. The hardware aspects of the pseudo-tracker are described. The algorithm used for tracking is then described. Finally, the merits and demerits of the tracking system presented are highlighted.
2
Hardware of the pseudo tracker

The pseudo-tracker has been designed and developed in the Control Engineering Laboratory at Jadavpur University, India. The laboratory model with control in one axis is shown in Fig. 2. The block diagram of the tracker is given in Fig. 3. An infrared detector has been mounted on the shaft of the motor. The axis of the motor is kept vertical with the plane of the table where the motor is placed. An infrared source is kept a few inches from the axis of the motor. The infrared source-detector pair are at the same height from the plane of the table. The detector is basically a phototransistor whose emitter drop varies linearly with the input irradiance at the base terminal. The detector output is first digitised and then transferred to an input port of a microcomputer board. The SDK-85 microcomputer kit board has been used in the system as the controller. Another output port of the microcomputer is used to transfer four control pulses to the stepper motor through a current driver

Fig. 2

Photograph ofpseudo tracker

card. The current driver card increases the current strength of the output pulses generated by the microcomputer. A description of some of the major blocks of Fig. 3 are given in the following. 2.1 Microcomputer system The SDK-85 microcomputer system used as the controller of the position control scheme offers 2 kbytes of monitor ROM, 512 bytes of RAM and eight 1 / 0 ports

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I !

Infrared source LED

infrared transistor detector

Vcc

ViEF

V i E F GND

CLP

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A0

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/I

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Fig. 3

8155

PA

PB

PC

8155

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I

SDK 85 microcomputer system

Schemntic representation of pseudo tracker IEE PROCEEDINGS-A, Vol. 138, No. 4 , JULY 1991

238

[SI. Out of eight 1/0 ports six are 1 byte wide and the remaining two are of 6 bits. 8155 chips [7] which are part of the microcomputer system have 256 bytes of RAM, two 1/0 ports (port A and B) of 1 byte, one 1/0 port of 6 bits width and a 14 bit timer. The ports of the 8155 are connected to the ADC and to the driver card for the stepper motor as shown in Fig. 4.
IN4007
bit

3.1 Main module The main module of the software comprises a locking cycle followed by tracking cycles. The locking cycle is used to determine the direction of MSI in the whole azimuth angle of 360" and is executed once daily after power-on of the tracking system. This cycle is executed for both the pseudo-tracker and the solar panel driven by a stepper motor. At the end of the cycle, the circuit board containing the phototransistor and the solar panel are positioned perpendicular to the direction of MSI. After the execution of the locking cycle, tracking cycles are repeated n times in a solar day to keep track of the position of the sun in the azimuth.

3.2 Locking cycle The locking cycle is described in Fig. 5. Initialisation of ports is performed at the beginning of this cycle. A variable count is initialised to 200 (360"/1.8" = 200 steps) and
start

Fig. 4

Stepper motor driver card

2.2 Analogue to digital convertor An ADC LM 0809 chip was used in the system for digitising the detector output. The ADC [8] has a built-in eight-input analogue multiplexer. The zeroth channel of the ADC was tied to the emitter of the phototransistor detector. The three bit channel select lines were grounded, indicating that the channel zero has to be active all the time. Address-latch-enable (ALE) and start conversion signals are communicated to the ADC from the microcomputer. The microcomputer then polls for a low to high edge of the end of conversion (EOC) message produced by the ADC. A data byte can then be transferred from the ADC to the microcomputer through a port. The dynamic range of the input signal was chosen to be 0 V to 5.12 V and the Kef- and terminals of the ADC were aflixed with those values, respectively. A 100KHz clock, generated from a 555 timer drives the ADC.

I
-'1

count =200(dectmal),
0-1

c a l l moveforward

call adcon store digitised detector output i n memory location

count:count

-1

vel+

2.3 Stepper motor The stepper motor requires a 12V supply and four control pulses at its terminals. The pulses are generated from the microcomputer in sequence so as to rotate the motor the required number of steps (one step angle of the motor is equal to 1.8")in the forward or the reverse direction [SI.

backcountzaddress of

200 th memory locationaddress of memory

I/

c a l l movebackward

2.4 Driver card The driver card consists of four Darlington pairs of transistors. The inputs to this card are four pulse trains generated by the microcomputer. The outputs of the card are connected to four coils of the stepper motor with the required current drive. Details of this card are shown in Fig. 4.

11

:
call delayback

11

bockcount

= backcount -1

Software for proposed tracking system

Fig. 5

exit

The software was developed in assembly and 8085A compatible machine level language and tested on the microcomputer board. The software consists of a main module and a few subroutines. The software was written in a highly structured manner.
IEE PROCEEDINGS-A, Vol. 1-38. N o . 4 , J U L Y 1991

Flowchart for locking cycle

each time the 'moveforward' and 'adcon' routines are called, the count is decremented by one. The moveforward routine generates the pulses required to rotate the
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Another point that needs special mention regarding the reliability of the tracking system will be described. If the detector is temporarily shadowed by clouds or aircraft during the locking cycle, then the true maximum may be missed which will make the subsequent tracking cycles ineffective. This problem can easily be avoided by allowing bidirectional searching during the tracking cycles, at the cost of additional energy and computational time. To describe the bidirectional tracking algorithm, let F and V + l be the detector outputs at the ith and (i + 1)th instants between which motor movement by a step takes place. The tracking algorithm for bidirectional search comprises of the following steps: (1) Move the motor clockwise by one step. (2) If F + l 3 F,repeat step 1 until it fails. (3) Move the motor anticlockwise by one (4) If &+ 2 repeat step 3 until it fails. (5) Move the motor clockwise by one step. (6) Exit.

v,

3.4 Adcon routine The Adcon routine was developed from the timing diagram [6] of the ADC LM 0809. The routine is explained clearly in the flowchart representation shown in Fig. 7.

enter adcon

keep A L E high. make start conversion

11

call movebac-]I

1
record digitised detector output i n memory location M

col I moveforward

receive d l g i t a l data byte

exit

Fig. 6

Flowchartfor tracking cycle

program module

Fig. 7

Flowchartfor Adcon routine

keep the flowchart simple. In the actual system, the direction of MSI obtained in the present tracking cycle has to be compared with that of the last cycle. If they differ by at least by three steps of motor rotation, then the corresponding control command has to be communicated to the stepper motor that drives the solar panel. Otherwise, the pseudo-tracker will return back to its last position.
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3.5 Moveforward routine The moveforward routine behaves like a software counter which counts 05, 09, OA, 06 in sequence and outputs them through the port. Between two successive counts an equal time delay may be introduced by another routine to control the speed of the stepper motor.
I E E PROCEEDINGS-A, Vol. 138, No. 4, JULY 1991

3.6 Movebackward routine The movebackward routine counts the reverse sequence, i.e. 06, OA, 09, 05 in sequence. A transition from one state to another moves the motor by one step. A very small uniform delay may be provided between each pair of successive counting sequences to control the speed of the motor in the backward direction. 3.7 Maxevaluate routine The maxevaluate routine is called from the main module to determine the maximum value of 200 measurements of the infrared detector outputs. A linear search algorithm has been used to determine the maximum value.

infrared wavelength region which has minimum path deviation when there is a change in the atmospheric refractive index. Relative change in the elevation angle of the sun has been neglected. This does not create problems within the period of a month, but adjustment of the tilt angle is necessary every month. A complete automation scheme using a two-dimensional search strategy could easily be developed following the present scheme at the cost of additional energy.
5
Acknowledgment

3.8 Delayforldelayback routines The delayfor and delayback routines are called from the main module between two successive counts of the counting sequence during forward and reverse movements of the motor, respectively. The routines basically initialise the DE register pair with a value and decrements them until it reaches zero. The control exits from the routines when the content of the DE register pair becomes zero.
4
Conclusions

The authors appreciate the effort of their students who have assembled the subsystems and verified the algorithms as part of their project assignments. The authors are also grateful for the assistance provided by the Appropriate Automation Promotion Programme Project, sponsored by the Department of Electronics, Government of India.
6
References

The sun-tracking system presented has the following advantages: The proposed tracking system results in a considerable saving in energy, as a pseudo-tracker instead of the solar panel itself has been used for detecting the direction of MSI. Use of the step-tracking scheme instead of continuous tracking keeps the motors idle for most of the time which also helps to save energy. The tracking system is not constrained by the geographical location of installation of the solar panel since it is designed for searching the MSI in the whole azimuth angle of 360 during the locking cycle. Temporal variations in environmental parameters caused by fog, rain etc., at a distance from the location where panel is mounted, do not affect proper direction finding. This is because sensing for tracking has been performed in the

1 PISCIMANIS, D., NOTARIDOU, V., and LALAS, P.D.: Estimating direct, diffuse and global solar radiation on an arbitrarily inclined plane in Greece, Sol. Energy, 1987,39, (3), pp. 529-538 2 HESSIAN, J.P., and BONWICK, J.W.: Experience with a sun tracker system, Sol. Energy, 1984.32, (I), pp. 3 1 1 3 ELSAYED, M.M.: Optimum orientation of absorber plates, Sol. Energy, 1989.42, (Z), pp. 89-102 4 RUMALA, N.S.: A shadow method for automatic tracking, Sol. Energy, 1986,37, (3). pp. 245-247 5 BATLAS, P., TORTORELI, M., and RUSSEL, E.P.: Evaluation of power output Cor fixed and step tracking photovoltaic arrays, Sol. Energy, 1986,37, (2), pp. 147-163 6 Intel Corporation: SDK-85 users manual (Santa Clara, 1978), pp. 5-1-5-2 7 Intel Corporation: Microprocessorand peripheral handbook (Santa Clara, 1983), pp. 2-30-2-32 8 National Semiconductor: Linear databook (Santa Clara, 1982). pp. 8-60-8-70, 9-339-37 9 HALL, V.D.: Microprocessor and digital systems (McGraw-Hill, 1983). p. 315

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