PARABOLIC TRACKING WITH ANN- AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH

The power generation from the continuous diminution of fossil fuels gives the major challenge for the next half-century. The conversion of solar energy to electrical energy from photovoltaic panels grabs most of the interest compared to other renewable sources. But the power produced by solar panel decreases due to the change in the relative angle of the solar radiation with the earth’s surface. From the previous studies the Conventional photovoltaic panels efficiency results only 15% while converting the solar energy into electricity. The conversion efficiency can be increased up to 40% with the concentration of maximum radiation on the panels. In this perspective, the solar tracking system is the best choice to enhance the efficiency of the photovoltaic panel. To attain the best feasible performance from a solar system, the photovoltaic panel needs to absorb maximum radiation in the effective way.

The major goal of the book is to discuss about the enhancement of the amount of radiation by means of a mirror and auto-tracking system to let additional rays to be concentrated on a photovoltaic panel by placing a new parabolic platform which is adjusted to track the sun. Mirrors and solar panel are attached on a horizontal frame at an angle of 120° to get the maximum amount of radiation from the reflection of on the PV cells. The fuzzy logic control and artificial neural network control are proposed to find the exact maximum radiation point while tracking the sun. Due to the mirror effect, number of solar rays is concentrated on a small portion of the panel which is focus of the parabola. The nearest position while receiving direct sunlight is considered as the input taken from the database. This process minimizes the number of motors for starting and results in a reduced quantity of the loss of energy in different weather conditions. The comparison has been studied for a fixed PV panel and the parabolic tracking PV panel with mirror. The results show a significant variation in terms of average efficiency based on weather conditions even after the mirror and tracking system using both controlling algorithms. For the initial days of experiment for the optimal weather conditions the average percentage of additional energy generated is 71%, while the average is around 57% for some days. For few more days with suboptimal weather conditions, the average percentage of additional energy generated was around 18% for the same time period. So finally, the results are established and analysed completely with the contribution of different weather conditions. The final results show using tracking system with mirrors and fuzzy logic algorithm for tracking point the efficiency improved up to 32.2% with a reliable cost and land. The servo motor position and speed are controlled using fuzzy logic strategy. When compared with traditional controllers, fuzzy logic provides better control on transient and steady state errors viz. maximum overshoot, settling time and peak time.