A testbed of intelligent sun tracking system and thermoelectric generator with Fresnel lens at solar cell system for maximizing generated energy

Abstract

Abstract Solar or photovoltaic cells are one of the most potent renewable technologies to be applied in Indonesia that have a relatively high average daily solar radiation rate of 4.5 kWh/m2/day. In conventional applications, solar cells still have some weaknesses, especially on the efficiency of output that only reaches in the range of 5—16%. In this paper, optimizing the production of electrical energy in conventional solar cell system is carried out by modifying the system construction and controller. Intelligent Mobile Thermophotovoltaic (IMT) is a modified solar cell system that combines utilization of two sources of solar energy that are photon and thermal energy to convert into electrical energy. The sollar panel is intelligently controlled to maximized the received sunlight in solar cell. Fresnel lens is utilized for supporting the thermal energy collection of sunlight on the solar cell. The total energy produced by IMT is energy from Fresnel solar tracking concentrator plus the energy from thermoelectric heat collector and subtracted by energy which used for tracking system of about 2 Wh. The IMT can yield the electrical power of 91.815 Wh while the conventional solar cell system brought 55.15 Wh for 8 operation hours. This result showed that IMT can raise 66.46% the electrical energy production of conventional solar cell system.