Two Axis Solar Tracker Monitoring

Abstract

Solar trackers have emerged as an alternative for increased solar energy collection for photovoltaic panels (PV). However, PV trackers could eventually fail or have unexpected changes during tracking, requiring continuous knowledge of the solar tracker parameters at any time. It is possible to accomplish with IoT communication, which consists of implementing microcontrollers, embedded computers and network communication to transmit the information to a server. This paper presents a monitoring scheme for two-axis single pole solar trackers. In contrast to the published papers in the state of the art, it has more functionality and greater flexibility, employing a Wi-Fi connection with the Raspberry PI 4B. This monitoring scheme has been experimentally tested using the motors for a two-axis single pole solar tracker, resulting in an excellent performance along their trajectories.