DUAL AXIS SOLAR TRACKER

Energy crisis is one of the biggest problems in developing countries. There is a big gap between generation and demand of Electric energy. Solar energy which is present in abundance can play a vital role to overcome the energy deficiency. The potential of solar voltaic energy can also be exploited for averting environmental pollution and managing atmospheric emission. This project work provides a proposal for design of an inverter using dual axis solar tracker installed on rooftop with a single phase hybrid cascaded multilevel inverter. The output of a photovoltaic panel depends on its position with respect to the sun at any instant of time. To extract the maximum power from the panel, tracking systems are generally used for positioning it at an optimal angle. . This project focuses on presenting the structure and application of a microcontroller based dual axis solar tracker which tracks the direction of the solar radiation thereby adjusting the movement of solar panel accordingly. This facilitates the sun to remain perpendicular to the PV panel throughout the day which makes the total energy received to be increased by 30-40%. The energy hence received gets stored in a chargeable battery. This battery has an inverter attached to it so that whenever there is a power-cut, the stored energy may be used to light up the appliances. This project also provides single phase hybrid cascaded modular multilevel inverter topology which is derived from a proposed modified H-bridge (MHB) module. This topology results in the reduction of number of power switches, losses, installation area, voltage stress and converter cost. For renewable energy environment such as Photovoltaic (PV) connected to the micro-grid system, it enables the transformer less operation and enhances the power quality. This multilevel inverter is an effective and efficient power electronic interface strategy for renewable energy systems. The verification of the applicability and performance of the propose