PV panel positioning using a robot manipulator

The need for automatic orientation of solar panels in order to increase the amount of the collected sun rays is increasing. In this paper, the orientation and positioning of solar panels by employing a robot manipulator is presented. The robot manipulator system structure has first been presented. The robot controller is then modeled. The solar altitude and azimuth movements with two decoupled movement are the outputs of the controller. The determination of the position of the sun at anytime and anywhere on the globe is performed using MATLAB software. The results have been validated by comparing them with those obtained by the PVSYST software. Four situation tests have been performed: panel tilted at 0°, panel tilted at 30 one axis tracking and finally the two axes tracking cases with a robot controlling a solar PV panel. The application has been done for Algiers. A gain about 34% in terms of solar energy yield compared to fixed panel case has been obtained.