A self-powered sun tracking system based on a novel lignt direction sensor

Author

Hongyi Wang ; Youyou Fan ; Tao Luo ; Zhijian Lu

Author_Institution

Dept. of Microelectron., Xi´an Jiaotong Univ., Xi´an, China

fYear

2014

fDate

28-31 Oct. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

3

Abstract

We present a self-powered solar tracking system which can automatically adjust the location of the solar panels to optimize the energy harvesting. The solar panels supply power to the entire system, so there is no additional power. The solar panels, a motor, and a CMOS chip constitute the system. Considering the size and the cost, the new sensor and its circuit are integrated in a chip that is implemented by a standard 0.5μm process. We tested the system under the sun. The results indicate that the system is sensitive to the change of light direction and in a optical power range of 30-110 mW/cm² the tracking accuracy can be as good as 1.8 degrees.

Keywords

energy harvesting; optical sensors; solar cells; CMOS chip; energy harvesting; light direction; light direction sensor; optical power; self-powered solar tracking system; self-powered sun tracking system; solar panels; tracking accuracy; Abstracts; Materials; Photodiodes;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology (ICSICT), 2014 12th IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Guilin

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-3296-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSICT.2014.7021218

Filename

7021218