Performance of Photovoltaic Systems with Solar Tracking in Singapore

• Main Authors: Amin, Zakaria Mohd., Maswood, Ali I., Hawlader, Mohammad Nurul Alam, Al-Ammar, Essam A., Orfi, Jamel, Al-Ansari, Hany A.
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: T175 Industrial research. Research and development
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/26783/1/PV_Solar_tracking_.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/26783/
• Institution: Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia

Photovoltaic technology enables direct conversion of solar irradiation into electricity. This project investigated the performance of a single-axis active solar tracking system by constructing and testing. From the results, it was observed that the output current varied almost instantaneously with the irradiation whilst the output voltage remained fairly constant even with huge fluctuations in irradiation. The efficiency of the solar panels was found to be 11.9% for the tracking configuration. This represented a 33.6% increase in efficiency when using the single-axis tracking system over the fixed ones.