Software solution implemented on hardware system to manage and drive multiple bi-axial solar trackers by PC in photovoltaic solar plants

Solar energy is available almost everywhere but in some circumstances and locations it is necessary to optimize the dimensions of plants, avoiding large surface of PV modules installed on the ground, preferring modules located on solar trackers to increase the efficiency by at least 35%. However, even in this latter case, there are still margins for increasing the PV plant's efficiency. For this purpose, we have developed and tested an electronic system for controlling and driving bi-axial solar trackers of a PV plant, managed by a PC software application with a user-friendly graphical interface. The designed software is able to calculate the sun circadian orbit and consequently to move the solar panels in order to maintain the panel's surface always perpendicular to solar rays, improving the efficiency in energy production. In particular, the object of this work consists in optimizing an existing, designed by us, fully-hardware setup which didn't allow a simple and rapid plant management, completely replacing the Master electronic board with the designed software, so as to be able to communicate, by means of PC's RS232 serial port, with Slave electronic boards for tracker motors driving. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.