3 AXIS STEPPER MOTOR CONTROL FOR SOLAR PANEL WITH POWER OPTIMIZATION

INTRODUCTION
Usually ordinary solar panel is always faces only in one direction. Because of this reason the solar panel may not get sufficient sun rays to work. The project SOLAR PANEL CONTROLLER AND POWER OPTIMIZATION is done in order to overcome this defect. Here the panel will rotate according to the readings read by the LDR. So it will utilize the full sun light to work & power optimization is also done by using the LDR.

DISCRIPTION
This project is mainly designed to control the solar panel automatically, maintains face of the solar panel towards the sun. This is done by controlling the mechanical movement of the solar panel. Usually sun rises at east and sets at west. In ordinary system, if it faces towards east then it cannot change the direction towards sun during sunset. Because of this reasons solar panel may not get sufficient sun rays to work. These problems are overcome by using this project. In this project we also build a very good micro controller based solar charger. The mechanical movement of the solar controlled through the stepper motor. 5 LDRs will be placed on an arch. So according to the suns movement LDR intensity will be varied where the sun light intensity is more LDR intensity will be less and depending upon LDR intensities stepper motor will be rotated to the side where the LDR intensity is found to be less so that solar panel also rotates. In this project 3 DC motors will be used one is for the up & down movement & the other one is for left to right movement and the other one for front back forming a 3-axis motion - so that panel will be rotated to the direction where the intensity of light is more. Because of these reasons solar panel get maximum sun rays to work efficiently.

Power optimization is done by using LDR. If the surrounding light is less then LDR reads maximum. According to the value of LDR the ADC shows the reading. The ADC will send this value to microcontroller. According to the value sent by the ADC the microcontroller glows the LED through relay. If the intensity of the light is more means all the LED array will be OFF. Depending upon the intensity of the light LED arrays will be switched ON or OFF 8051 architecture based P89V51RD2 microcontroller from NxP is used to implement this project. Microcontroller acts as the heart of the project, which controls the whole system. It contains 1k RAM, 64k Flash, 3 Timers, 2 external interrupts, 1 UART, 32 GPIOs, ISP programming support etc. KEIL IDE is used to program the microcontroller and the coding will be done using Embedded C.

BLOCK DIAGRAM

5 LDRs

LDR

ADC

8051 MICRO CONTROLLER P89V51RD2

DC MOTOR DRIVER RELAY

3 DC MOTORs

RELAY

LED ARRAY

SOLAR PANEL

COMPONENTS USED
1. 8051 Microcontroller P89V51RD2 2. LDRs 3. DC Motors 4. Solar Panel 5. Relay 6. LED Panel

SOFTWARES USED
1. Embedded C 2. Keil Compiler 3. Flash Magic