Design Strategy for Low-Power Consumption in Solar Trackers

The new energy generation technologies that transform the solar energy, require a high accuracy for the tracking of the solar vector path, which increases the system energy consumption and reduces the entire system performance. From an optimization approach, a novel design strategy for low-power trackers is proposed, which consists of two main stages, a first for the physical tracker design optimization, and a second for the design of the tracker behavior. For the validation of the proposed design strategy, the implementation is presented through the development of a solar tracker prototype. For the implementation of the second stage, three Tracking Error Minimization Strategies (TEMS) are proposed (PI, GPI, and cascade control), and four Energy Saving Strategies (ESS) are proposed. The presented experimental results show that the saving energy strategy can reduce the energy consumption in up to 27.2771% in tracking tasks with an absolute maximum tracking error of 0.08 degrees, and obtaining a low-power prototype tracker with 5.4749 Wh energy consumption. The proposed design strategy allows the design of solar trackers with a balance between the energy consumption and the tracking error.