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Development of Microcontroller-Based Solar Tracking System Using LDR

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 Development of Microcontroller-Based Solar
Tracking System Using LDR Sensor
Cindy Tay Yin Xi, Muhamad Zalani Daud, Wan Mariam Wan Muda, Mohd Afifi Jusoh
School of Ocean Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia
[email protected]

Abstract—This paper presents the design of solar tracking output and stability of solar PV. From the literature, there are
controller used in the photovoltaic (PV) generation system. A many research works that have been carried out to study the
low cost and simple single axis tracker is constructed using the optimal solar PV placement, considering the geographical
Programmable Interface Controller (PIC). The control goal for locations and weather conditions as constraints [4-6].
the controller is to ensure the position of the solar PV cell is
The efficiency and output of the solar PV also can be
continuously adjusted according to the sun’s position. In this
regard, tracking mechanism ensures that the surface of the PV increased by using high efficiency solar cell materials. The
cell is always perpendicular to the solar radiation allowing an example of the types of materials that are currently in use are
optimum power extraction from the sun. The controller utilizes crystalline silicon, thin film or multi-junction cells. However,
two Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) sensors as the input sensor the high efficiency materials of solar panels currently in the
that sense the light intensity. The difference in resistance data of market are relatively expensive [7]. There are still ongoing
LDRs is used by the stepper motor to rotate clockwise or counter researches of low cost high efficient materials currently been
clockwise to move the solar PV cell toward the side of higher done throughout the world.
intensity. From the experimental test results, the developed Some researchers are focusing on the power conversion
prototype system is able to function properly, in which the motor
systems. For example, the high efficiency solar PV charge
is able to rotate according to the input light source.
controllers that employs dc-to-dc converter used for charging
Index Terms—Photovoltaic Energy; Solar Tracker; PIC the battery storage. Such mechanism is normally found in
Microcontroller; LDR Sensor. solar PV applications for powering the telecommunication
system or supplying the energy to remote areas or islands [8].
I. INTRODUCTION Similar studies are also carried out for solar PV inverters.
This is another important part of the solar PV power
The installed capacity of solar PV in Malaysia is recently conversion system that focuses on dc-to-ac conversion.
reported to achieve about 260 MW in total which is Normally, it is found in the application of grid-connected
equivalent to 70% of the total renewable energy generation system or solar PV applications in supplying the ac loads [9].
capacity considered in Feed in Tariff (FiT) Program in The researches on power conversion system are quite
Malaysia [1]. A growing number of the solar PV installation challenging as they deal with power electronic and switching
can be seen throughout the country, particularly in the urban devices that need some knowledge of control system.
residential areas. The government incentive for the solar PV Furthermore, many aspects need to be considered when
investment has attracted many residential customers to install studying about solar PV connected to the grid as it involves
the solar PV at their rooftop and participate in FiT program. the problem of power quality. Consequently, in such study,
This mechanism will promote more penetration of renewable the hardware implementation is not easy and most of the
energy sources to the electricity grid, particularly the solar hardware components are relatively high cost.
energy and also contribute in reducing the use of conventional Other than the aforementioned methods of improving the
fuels as the source of energy. solar PV system output and efficiency, a similar goal can be
Despite the benefits in terms of clean energy, solar PV achieved by using the solar tracking system. The tracking
suffers from the low energy yield, poor conversion efficiency, system is essential in many applications, such as thermal
and in some situations, the uncontrolled generation may cause energy storage system that is mostly used in electricity
many problems to the utility in terms of access generation, generation or solar PV generations [10]. The solar tracking
power fluctuation or other power quality problems. The low system is a mechanism that utilizes the sensors, motor and
efficiency of the solar PV is an ongoing challenge to the controller in order to capture maximum sunlight over the day.
researchers and many efforts have been carried out to In this case, a low cost and high performance
improve its efficiency so as to reduce the installation and microcontrollers such as PIC microcontroller or Arduino can
maintenance costs [2]. be used. This paper presents a low-cost design and prototype
One possible way of improving the output of the solar PV development of solar tracking controller for solar PV
cell is to choose the location of installation at the area that application. The system consists of two LDR sensors that are
receives maximum sunlight throughout the year [3]. The used as input for the PIC microcontroller to control a stepper
example of such viable locations are horizontal ground, near motor in order to track the sun light. A prototype system has
the shoreline and building rooftops. Other than the location, been developed and testing has been carried out to validate
solar PV output is subjected to the seasonal and weather the proposed system.
conditions. For example, location that receives a lot of rains
and high cloud intensity will not be suitable for solar PV
installation because such conditions will affect the total

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II. OVERVIEW OF SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEM A. LDR Sensor Properties

The properties of the LDR sensors have been studied as
When the sun is observed from the earth’s surface, every they serve as the essential part of the program in PIC. In
day it rises from east and sets in the west. In general, a solar general, LDRs are used to detect the light intensity. In the
PV cell will produce maximum output when the surface of dark condition, the resistance of the LDR is nearly 1M ohms,
the cell is perpendicular to the solar radiation. By keeping the and when it is illuminated with the light, the resistance value
surface continuously at the right angle to the sun’s radiation, drops exponentially to several hundreds of ohms. Such
the daily extraction and conversion of the solar energy to property is essential in identifying the light source, for
electric energy is maximized [11]. This is called a solar example by comparing the resistance values of the two LDRs
tracking system, which commonly facilitates an optimum that are placed at different positions on the solar PV panel:
energy extraction by the solar thermal system as well as the The surface of the solar PV can be adjusted by the motor to
photovoltaic system. rotate toward the light source.
Currently, the majority of residential solar PV systems are For the LDR to function, a series of connection with a
installed at the rooftop of the buildings. Thus, the installation resistor is required as shown in Figure 2. The circuit forms a
is of a fixed type. This mechanism results in a poor energy voltage divider at the junction of the sensor and the resistor. In
yield as fixed installation can only capture the most energy general, the change of light intensity causes the changes of
when the sun’s shine is directly perpendicular to the cell’s output voltage that will be used as input to the PIC
surface. As the sun moves during the day, the average daily microcontroller. From figure 2, V0 can be measured from the
output of the energy from a fixed installation is low because voltage divider rule of V0 = 5 volt  [RLDR / (RLDR+R1)]. By
some of the energy are wasted. In some situations, the fixed substituting an appropriate value of the resistance, R1, the
type system requires more series connected to solar panels to voltage range can be set, for example 0 volt in bright light and
increase the output at the desired level. This occupies more 5 volt in the shade situation. This analog voltage, ranging of 0
spaces at the rooftop and causes more investment to the solar and 5 volt will be read by 10-bit ADC as 0 decimal and 1023
PV panels. In most cases, the cost of PV panels overweights decimal, respectively.
the cost of tracker system. A well-designed system which
utilizes a simple tracker will need fewer panels due to the
increased efficiency resulting in a reduction of initial
implementation costs [11]. The commercially available solar
tracking systems are also relatively expensive and sometimes
they do not meet the user’s need. Therefore, there is a need to
develop a high efficient solar tracker from the low-cost
materials.

III. DESIGN OF SOLAR TRACKER USING LDR SENSOR

In this research work, the low-cost components of the solar

tracking controller have been selected. The main controller
board consists of PIC microcontroller kit that serves as the
main unit with a voltage regulator as well as an amplifier as
the signal conditioning unit. The design concept of the
proposed solar tracking controller is as shown in Figure 1.
The controller is programmed to control the stepper motor at
Figure 2: Circuit for measuring the output voltage of LDR sensor [12]
the output, where the stepper motor is attached to the gears
that will rotate the solar PV panel. As can be seen from Figure
1, at the input side, two LDRs are used in which each of the B. System Block Diagram and Circuit Design
LDR is placed at the two sides of the solar PV panel, Figure 3 shows the system block diagram. It consists of
respectively. The relative position of the LDR will ensure the LDR sensors, PIC16F877A microcontroller (with built in
difference in resistance value (bright and shaded conditions) ADC), stepper motor (with L293D driver) and a solar panel.
that will be compared in order to rotate the motor in clockwise At the input, there are two LDR sensors used to sense the light
or counterclockwise directions. intensity and the analog data from the sensors will be
converted to digital data by the ADC inside the PIC16F877A
microcontroller. The digital is then used by the PIC
microcontroller to determine either the stepper motor should
rotate clockwise or counterclockwise. PIC stored the program
for the system to function where it received input from the
LDRs and sent the data signal to the stepper motor. At the
output, the motor was rotated according to the input
conditions so that the surface of the solar panel can be
adjusted accordingly.

Figure 1: The design concept of the proposed solar tracker

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 Development of Microcontroller-Based Solar Tracking System Using LDR Sensor

Figure 3: Solar tracking system block diagram

The circuit design of this project was carried out using

Proteus 8.0. Simulation of the circuit is as shown in figure 4.
Here, it is important to know if there is any error in the circuit.
From Figure 4, it is known that the circuit of stepper motor
and LDR sensors that are connected with the PIC16F877A
microcontroller is functioning well.

Figure 5: Program execution flowchart

The program code was written using C language in

MPLAB software. The general flow of the coding is as can
be seen in the flowchart shown in Figure 5. From the
completed codes, the source code is compiled and
downloaded into the PIC using the PICkit 2 programmer.

Figure 4: Solar tracking system circuit simulation IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

C. Program Execution Flowchart The results are divided into two categories: The results of
The flowchart of the solar tracking system is as shown in hardware testing and the results of final hardware prototype
Figure 5. From the figure, the signal from the LDRs is testing.
converted to digital form, which is then compared to the
PIC16F877A so that the stepper motor rotates accordingly. In A. Results of Hardware Testing
principle, the resistance of the LDR that receives brighter
light decreases, which in return results in lower voltage value. The hardware testing represents the results obtained from
On the other hand, higher voltage means the LDR is in a dark the experiment carried out for LDR sensor. Figure 6 shows
situation. As can be seen from the flowchart in Figure 5, when the circuit of LDR when it is exposed to sunlight. From the
the two LDRs have equal value of intensity, the motor is kept whole day experiment, the light intensity and the changes in
idle and in static position. If LDR1 has higher intensity (lower current of the LDR has been measured. Table I shows the
voltage) than the LDR2, it means that the resistance of the relationship of the light intensity, resistance and the current
LDR1 is smaller. This condition causes the motor to rotate of the LDR sensor. It is clearly shown that when the light
the solar panel in clockwise direction. In contrast, when intensity is high, the resistance is low and the flow of current
LDR2 has higher intensity than the LDR1, the LDR1 will is high. On the other hand, in the dark or during low light
have larger resistance value causing the stepper motor to be level, no extra electron is flowing, resulting in smaller
rotated in counter clockwise direction toward the brighter current. From the values in Table I, an appropriate value of
light source. These processes will continue over the day for resistance R1 has been chosen to cater for the PIC input
19:00 hours, in which with the time set in the PIC, the panel voltage range of 0-5 volts.
will be rotated back to its initial position for the following
day’s operation.

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Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer Engineering

Figure 6: Lux meter used to measure the light detection of LDR Figure 8: Hardware prototype model of a complete solar tracking system

Table 1 Figure 9 shows the testing of the prototype, in which the

LDR Sensor Measurements
solar panel has been replaced with a PCB board as it is much
Light Intensity Current lighter; hence it is easy for the motor to rotate. The prototype
Time (hrs) Resistance (k) has been tested in the laboratory using a torchlight as the light
(W/m^2) (mA)
830 41 19.2 2.54 source.
930 156 16.4 3.16
1030 229 15.1 3.17
1130 305 14.8 3.24
1230 315 13.3 3.35
1330 321 12.5 3.51
1430 294 13.2 3.33
1530 232 17.1 3.24
1630 154 16.9 3.11

In addition to the experiment for measuring the relationship

between light intensity with the resistance of the LDR, the
effects of distance between two LDRs also have been studied.
Figure 7 shows the changes in resistance of the LDRs with
the change of the distance between LDRs and the light source.
This indicates that, for a single axis rotation, the use of a
minimum of two LDRs is adequate as the resistance value Figure 9: LDR1 brighter than LDR2 – motor rotate CW
between two LDRs is always different and the LDR with
From Figure 9, as the light is directed to the LDR1, the
larger distance with the light source always returns higher
brighter light condition of the LDR1 will cause the motor to
resistance values.
rotate in clockwise direction. This means that the solar PV
panel will be rotated toward the light source that is located
closer to LDR1 sensor. Similarly, as shown in Figure 10,
when LDR1 is shaded, it returns higher voltage value of the
LDR1 so that the motor is now rotated in counter clockwise
direction.

Figure 7: Relationship between resistance values of two LDRs with the

distance from the light source

B. Results of Complete Prototype Testing

The prototype model as shown in Figure 8 is the final
system that has been developed. The circuit is connected to
Figure 10: LDR1 shaded – motor rotate CCW
the input power supply of 12 V and the running condition of
the prototype has been observed.
Consequently, a similar procedure of experiment has been
carried out for LDR2 that results in the motor to rotate
accordingly toward the light source when there are changes in
the input sensors. The working conditions of the motor at the
output with respect to the input condition of LDRs show that
the programmed code in the PIC is working properly.

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 Development of Microcontroller-Based Solar Tracking System Using LDR Sensor

V. CONCLUSION ACKNOWLEDGMENT

In this paper, a study on the development and The authors would like to acknowledge Universiti
implementation of a single axis solar tracking system based on Malaysia Terengganu Malaysia and Ministry of Higher
two LDR sensors has been presented. The circuit design has Education Malaysia (MOHE) for the financial support of this
been developed at a minimum cost and has been integrated research. This research is supported by MOHE under the
onto a single board for simple assembly. A simple mechanical Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS), Vot No.
structure of the controller board hopefully can fit within the 59418 (Ref: FRGS/1/2015/TK10/UMT/02/1)
base platform of the solar tracking system. The software
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