Date of Award

Fall 2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Program/Concentration

Electrical Engineering

Committee Director

Sylvain Marsillac

Committee Member

Shirshak Dhali

Committee Member

Gon Namkoong

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.E55 I55 2012

Abstract

Oil, coal and natural gas reserves are being depleted faster than forecasted due to continued increase in demand for energy sources. We need, therefore, to develop renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, hydro power and tidal energy. In spite of having very high potential, harvesting solar energy has been a challenge because of the relatively low efficiency of solar cells. In the past few years different methods have been developed to increase the efficiency of the photovoltaic (PV) system: (I) improve the efficiency of solar cells (ill use a solar tracking system to increase the received solar radiation on the modules.

For a photovoltaic tracking system, the amount of power generated by the solar trackers is monitored by the inverters, which monitor the power of up to 100 trackers each. If there emerges a situation where the power output of a certain inverter decreases when compared to the average, it then becomes really difficult to predict or judge the source of the problem. So, in order to determine the root cause of the reduction in output power, each and every tracker is supposed to be tested. A good solution to prevent this problem is to use micro-inverter systems with lower capacities which handle inputs from fewer trackers. This would, however, increase the total cost of the project by a large margin.

We have therefore proposed and developed a solution for the above problem which is both cost effective and easy to use. We built a fault detection system which monitors the variations in the current and voltage of each individual tracker and relays that to the on-field controller. This system can monitor the above mentioned parameters of several photovoltaic trackers (currently designed for fourteen trackers using one Programmable Logic Controller. Furthermore, this system helps in comparing the performance levels of the inverter which has the input of the combined trackers with that of a single tracker. The data provided by this system can also help in making a deep analysis of the decreasing efficiency over a period of time.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/fkk0-rp54

Download

Share

COinS