A household friendly solar system 1

• Main Author: Chia, Edmund Yong Kiat
• Other Authors: LING Keck Voon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/149135
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

As standard of living gets higher over the years, the requirements for technologies are getting more advanced and innovative. Due to this demand, resources are required to produce more energy to sustain the standard of living. Fossil fuels have always been the main source of energy, however, burning of fossil fuels will have a negative impact on the environment such as global warming and climate changes. Hence, alternative methods of generating resources must be considered and discovered to fulfil the demand. Renewable energies are the ideal alternative methods that promote clean and green energy. However, there are different varieties of renewable energies and implementation is based on the country’s terrain and other factors. For Singapore, solar energy can be utilised as the most ideal and suitable renewable as sunlight is presented throughout the year. Solar energy refers to the term of harvesting the solar radiation from the sun and through the solar cells integrated within solar panels, they can convert the solar energy into other useful forms of energy such as electricity. However, certain factors, such as the limitation of land and space, are limiting Singapore to deploy large scale solar panels. To overcome this limitation, the solar panels will be deployed outside of the window railing of individual households. And to provide maximum efficiency, a dual axis solar tracker will be implemented to ensure the solar panels will be perpendicular to the sun throughout the day. The power output of the solar panel will be properly regulated and managed by a pulse width modulation charge controller, by a comparison between the solar panel voltage output and battery voltage, the charge controller will select the most suitable type of charging to charge the battery. Finally, a DC to AC inverter will be connected to the battery and it can be used to power up low DC home appliances. In this report, the implementation of the pulse width modulation charge controller, dual axis solar tracker and the integration between the two systems will be discussed.