Saur vedh means follow the sun according with sun movement in whole day i.e solar tracker.
Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture, molten salt power plants and artificial photosynthesis.It is an important source of renewable energy and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power.
WHY I AM DOING THIS PROJECT??
Solar energy is easily available. In vigyan ashram we focus most of the time on renewable energy that's why here we have 2 solar panel system for cooking and water heating.The below solar concentrator having a fixed focal point gives the solar energy for bakery use at vigyan asharam.
During the day time the sun moves and that's why the focal point is not concentrated on target object. For tracking the object, the existing system in vigyan ashram firstly uses the motor to move the panel in one direction and the second axis tracking is done manualy so it requires a lot of energy. the motor is driven by lead acid battery means it increses the system cost
The reflector is a small lateral section of a much larger Parabolic. The inclined cut produces the typical elliptical shape of the SchefflerReflector. The sunlight that falls onto this section of the Parabolic is reflected sideways to the focus located at some distance of the reflector. Scheffler reflectors have the advantage of having a fixed focal point which improves the ease of cooking.
Disadvantages of solar concentrator in vigyan ashram
This sytem requires lot of manual work to track the sun so it wastes the human energy
SO......
To reduce the manual energy and battery cost i made an automatic solar tracker for solar concentrator.
This solar concentrator is,
Big in size
Having large battery
Heavy weight
High powered motor
To make the automatic tracker for this system it is requird more than 6 months. So as a solution for this i will make a prototype which is made within 6 months and which reduces the above problem.
Challenge for this project
Finding out the low cost power storage solution
Working on light sensor
Reducing the motor size to reduce cost of system
To make lite weight system
Project Managment Week
In this week i refered some websites and reserach papers of the solar tracker and did some litrature review then i got to a conclusion which i explained below.
In my project there are two main parts
mechanical
electronics
Mechanical design
In this mechanical design i used the parabolic dish for my solar concentrator,i stick the mirror on that dish for solar energy concentration.There is one motor connected to the dish through the wheel,which is used to move the panel.Then a pot is used there for cooking purpose.
Electronics design
In this system i used a 1 watt solar photovoltaic panel it has 3 tasks: first task is it gives power to the controller board, second task is it gives power to the super capacitor and final task is it gives an input signal for sensing the light to the controller board
Computer aided design week
In this week I have drawn all the parts like solar dish,stand,dish holder,middle rod then I assembled these all parts in solid works design.This helped me in fabrication
Fabrication of project
first i made a stand for the system. i learned how welding can be done while making the stand with metal material.
Making of solar concentrator
This is the most imporatant part of my project the main point of this system is focus point that I have to maintain while doing its fabrication.For this i made a mould using laser cutter, using natural fiber and resin to make a dish
composite week
I have used parabolic calculator which takes the values of diameter and depth to calculate focal length.
diameter=600mm,depth=90mm, then i got focal length=250mm and with these dimensions i have drawn the concentrator dish in solid works software
The concentrator dish design is in 3d which need to be in 2D to use with laser cutter. so I sliced this object in 123dmake and then i cut this part in laser cutter
Then the dish is assembled and the natural fiber is applied on it.
the finished dish with fiber had a rough surface. so I didn't use this dish for my solar concentrator
Then i decided to use a sattelite dish for solar concentrator I kept mirrors within the dish surface and checked its focus point
Electronics design and fabrication
I designed the input output combined board in this section.In this I used attiny45. Design need 2 input pins and one output pin and this output pin is connected to the relay switch. This relay is connected to the motor.I set the simple logic for this board i have to check the difference between 2 solar panel and according with that difference i set the relay.
3D printing
The solar panel used here gives the input signal to controller board and also the power signal to super capacitor.I wanted to place the solar panel at an angle, so I made a 3D printer part which is a panel holder for solar panel in the system.
Computer controlled cutting
The tracker system is having no. of electronics parts, so there is a need of casing for all the electronics parts used. For that i used the laser cutter.i made casing part in solid works software and saved that part in .dxf format.then i cut it on laser cutter using the mdf material. i designed this considering the kerf.
But this box is made by mdf and it is not an wetherproof so I tried to make an one box in composite.I made that box with the fiber glass. and it is wetherproof
one more part is made using laser cutter i.e motor holder which is made with acrylic material
Vinyl cutter
Vinyl cutter which used here for writing title of the project flow and to print vigyan ashram logo on the casing.and in this I make the flow of circuit.The sun is given power to the
Testing
After the testing of solar tracker for 5 hours in a day, a temperature of 65 to 70 degree celsius is attained.
With the above discussed parts of the system, the following model is developed.
Cost of project
bill of material download from here
License
This project is kept as open source and i had a open source license for this project.
solar tracker
by Arundhati jadhav is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://archive.fabacademy.org/archives/2017/fablabvigyanashram/students/53/.