A three level solar panel system with an automated solar tracker

In this work, a detailed performance analysis of a three level solar panel system intended for its use in urban residential areas is carried out. The system consists of three panels fitted with automated solar tracker and mounted in a rack one above another at a fixed distance from each other to minimize the floor area while shifted horizontally from each other by half the panel width to avoid shading of the lower panels. Calculation shows that the proposed three level panel system can harness 18 – 64 % more energy than the three conventional single level fixed panel systems with 33% less area. An automated microcontroller controlled solar tracker is also developed for the proposed system to track the sun. Microcontroller calculates the sunrise and sunset times on each day using a set of equations and sends signal to the controlling motors to rotate the panels at a predetermined time intervals by a fixed angle to track the sun. Rotating the panels at some fixed time interval rather than on a continuous basis will minimize the energy consumption. The proposed system is easy to construct and implement, takes less floor space and will be effective for urban areas where not only electricity is in short supply, availability of roof top space to install solar panels is also very limited.