Title: A sensor-based sun-tracking energy harvest system

Authors: Chia-Hung Tsai; Shu-Chiung Hu; Chung-Hsiang Huang; Yu-Chee Tseng

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Hsin-Chu 30010, Taiwan ' Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Hsin-Chu 30010, Taiwan ' Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Hsin-Chu 30010, Taiwan ' Department of Computer Science, National Chiao Tung University, Hsin-Chu 30010, Taiwan

Abstract: Recent study has shown that the energy gain of a solar panel will be significantly influenced by the incidence angle of the sun radiation. The main goal of this paper is to present a sensor-based sun-tracking system. First, we design a sensing tower for measuring the direction of sun radiation. Then we design a sun-tracking algorithm, which adopts an iterative process to identify the direction of sun radiation to the earth's surface. This information is then passed to the nearby solar panels to adjust their angles. We have also developed a prototype and conducted several simulations to verify our sun-tracking system. Simulation results show that our system has better performance on the solar energy generation than existing ones.

Keywords: energy harvesting; green energy; renewable energy; sensing technology; sensor networks; sun tracking; solar panels; incidence angle; solar radiation; solar energy; solar power; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2015.071631

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2015 Vol.19 No.2, pp.104 - 113

Received: 14 Jun 2013
Accepted: 31 Aug 2013
Published online: 08 Sep 2015 *

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