Syafii, Lovely Son, Ali Basrah Pulungan, Nur Asni
The installations of power plants scattered from solar energy resources have been increasing in various countries with the availability of renewable energy policy and carbon emission reduction. In addition to being environmentally friendly, the construction of solar power plants in load centers can reduce network losses, land investment costs, and not dependence from fossil energy, thereby increasing energy security and independence. This paper describes the development and optimization of the utilization of solar energy through the design, construction, and upscaling of solar panel position tracker mechanisms to increase the efficiency of solar power plants. The purpose of this study is the development of technology for optimizing solar energy conversion using a raspberry pi based solar tracker. The prototype of a sensorless solar tracker of previous studies has been scaled up and implemented on the large-scale PV system 3.12 kWp. The external memory and RTC module have been reduced by using Raspberry Pi based solar tracker. The research results that have been obtained are a solar tracker system that operated without sensors but move based on a database of sun position. The advantages of the proposed tracker system can increase the efficiency of solar energy conversion to electricity up to 29% with a compact controller circuit and can be reprogrammed. © 2019, World Academy of Research in Science and Engineering. All rights reserved.
Electrical Engineering Department, Universitas Andalas, Indonesia; Mechanical Engineering Department, Universitas Andalas, Indonesia; Electrical Engineering Department, Universitas Negeri Padang, Padang, Indonesia
