Solar tracking stand for solar panels and collectors

Abstract

The conversation of solar energy into electricity using photovoltaic panels and into heat energy using solar collectors is the challenge of the time. Presently widely used fossil energy is unfriendly to the earth environment and its amount is limited. Both solar panels and solar collectors produce more energy, if direct solar radiation strikes its working surface perpendicularly during all the operation time. For that special device - the sun tracking stands or trackers, automatically keeping their working surface perpendicular to the sunbeams, are used. Different constructions of solar trackers and actuators are known: trackers based on the clockwork principle, based on the principle of freon evaporation and condensation, based on the principle of spring made of shape-memory alloys and others. The trackers act on a control unit and actuator, changing the position of the panels or collectors in azimuth, or azimuth and zenith plane. Different constructions of the actuators are in operation. Driving mechanisms with one electric motor (turning only in one plane) or with two electric motors (turning in two planes) are widely used. In the Ulbroka Research Centre a solar tracking stand of a new construction has been developed. There only one electric motor with a gearbox and a crank mechanism simultaneously is turning solar panels in two planes (Latvia patent LV 15245 A, 2017). The device has been made, experimentally investigated in field conditions on the roof of a house and positive results have been obtained. The amount of electric energy produced by two solar panels placed on the developed stand during the summer time of 2017 has been compared with the gain of electricity produced by in the same conditions working stationary fixed panels of the same type. Tracking the sun panels had produced around 1.48 times more electric energy than the fix ones, but in September 1.3 times more.