INTEGRATION OF SOLAR TRACKER AND MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING FOR IMPROVING PHOTOVOLTAIC (PV)SYSTEM EFFICIENCY

This paper presents a method to integrate the solar tracker and the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to improve the photovoltaic (PV) system efficiency. The integrated system provides a closed-loop solar tracker without the sensors. Instead of using the solar sensor, the output power of the MPPT is employed as the feedback signal to the solar tracker. The solar tracker estimates the solar azimuth and elevation angles using an astronomical algorithm based on the latitude, longitude and the date-time of the local site. To improve the solar tracking accuracy, the fuzzy logic controller is employed to adjust the angle according to the power slope of maximum power with respect to the solar tracker angle. From the simulation results, the proposed method increases the PV energy by 23.23% compared to the fixed PV panel. It improves the efficiency of the existing integrated solar tracker by 0.25% based on the simulation models.