Solar Energy

Solar radiation is the electromagnetic energy emitted by the Sun due to nuclear fusion.
The intensity of solar radiation varies with wavelength of the radiation and the
representation of intensity wavelength relationship is called the solar spectral distribution.
The spectral distribution outside the Earth's
atmosphere is very close to that of a blackbody at
5900K. When this solar radiation passes through the
Earth's atmosphere, the spectral distribution is
modified by absorption and scattering losses by
atmospheric constituents.
Solar constant is a measure of the amount of
incoming solar radiation per unit area incident on a
plane perpendicular to the radiation, at a distance of
one astronomical unit.
One astronomical unit is roughly the average distance from the Sun to Earth =150 million
kilometres).
Average value of the solar constant, measured outside the Earth's atmosphere, is 1.366kW/m².
Values measured on the surface of Earth are usually lower than the solar constant due to
reflection by the atmosphere, absorption in the atmosphere, Rayleigh scattering and Mie
scattering.
The amount of solar power per unit area at the surface of the Earth is known as solar irradiance.
Solar irradiance varies with the location on earth, local time, and the angle of the Sun relative to
the plane of S the surface on which the incident power falls.
Other variable that determine the irradiance are the atmospheric conditions such as clouds, fog,
atmospheric pollution etc.
Irradiance due to direct sunlight depends on the angle that the Sun make with the normal to the
surface on which direct light falls in accordance with the relationship:
S = S0Cos θ where S0 is the direct irradiance for normal incidence at that place and time. The
term cos θ arises due to the projection effect, when the angle of incidence is other than 0° the
solar power is spread out over a larger area.
In the figure we can see that the same irradiance falling on an imaginary surface A' falls on the
actual surface A is increased by a factor of 1 / (cos θ) Hence, the power per unit area for A is
reduced by the factor cos θ
Since solar energy is radiated as electromagnetic waves, we have to convert it into other forms
for effective use. The two principal ways to harvest solar energy are:
(1) Heat production using solar collectors for domestic and the commercial uses
(2) Electricity production using photovoltaic (PV) cells

Solar Pond
A solar pond is a natural or artificial body of
water for absorbing and collecting solar radiation
and storing it as heat.
Solar pond can be used for various applications,
such as industrial process, heating, desalination,
drying and solar power generation.
There are two types of solar ponds; (1)
Convective type, and (ii) Salt gradient type, of
which the second one is much more efficient than
the first one
Convective Type Solar Pond
This is the simplest type of solar pond, which is
very shallow, about 5 to 10 cm deep, with a
radiation absorbing black plastic painted bottom.
A bed of insulating material under the pond
minimizes loss of heat to the ground.
A curved cover made of transparent plastic over
the pond reduces heat loss through radiation and
convection from the water surface
Salt Gradient Type Solar Pond
This type of solar pond is typically few meters deep and large in area. Bottom of the pond is
black painted/plastic lined.
Salt is dissolved at the bottom of the pond to generate a stable density gradient from the bottom
to the top.
Denser salt water will remain at the bottom and less salty water will be at the top of the pond.
Solar radiation is absorbed throughout the remainder
which penetrates the bottom of the pond is absorbed
at the black bottom.
Natural convection will not take place in this type of
ponds as the density of salty bottom layer of water is
high enough, even after rising its temperature to a very
high value, compared to the less salty top layer of
water. The hot water remains at the bottom and the
only mode of heat loss from bottom is through
conduction.
There are three layers to a salt gradient type solar pond
1. Upper convective zone
2. Non-convective middle zone (salinity increases with depth)
3. Lower convective zone or storage zone
The surface convective zone is relatively a thin layer of water, whereas the non-convective
middle zone occupies almost half of the pond.
Both the concentration and temperature increases with depth in this middle layer. Both the salt
concentration and temperature are nearly constant in this zone and it serves as the main heat
collection and storage zone.
As this salty bottom layer heats up, it expands but still remains at the bottom because the top
layer is less salty and hence less dense than the bottom layer, thereby preventing the convection
effect.
Hot salt water can be extracted without disturbing the upper layer by keeping the water out and
in pipes at the same level and keeping the water flow at a very low speed.
Applications of Solar pond
Heating of buildings
Electricity production
Industrial process heating
Desalination
Heating animal housing and drying crops in farms
Heat for biomass conversion

Flat Plate Collector

The heart of any solar thermal device is the solar collector.
Solar radiation is absorbed in a solar collector and the absorbed solar energy is converted into
heat to raise the temperature of the working fluid.
A flat plate collector is a type of solar thermal collector, which absorbs sunlight and converts it
into heat. It consist of
1. Dark flat-plate absorber
2. Transparent cover that reduces heat losses
3. Heat-transport fluid (air, water or
antifreeze) to collect and remove heat from
the absorber
4. Heat insulating backing
The absorber consists of a thin absorber sheet of metal on which a special black coating is
applied. The absorbing layer must be able to absorb more than 90% of the incident light.
Water or air flowing through a grid or coil of metal tube, thermally attached to the bottom of
this flat plate, absorbs and remove heat from the absorber.
The whole unit is placed in an insulated casing with a glass or polycarbonate cover to minimise
the heat loss.
In this design, number of parallel tubes of copper or a single tube in the form of a coil is
attached to the backside of a blackened metal absorbing plate. Insulation is placed in the
backside of the absorbing plate and the copper tube to prevent heat loss.
The disadvantage of this design is that only a small area of the tubes are in contact with the
absorbing sheet and hence heat collection efficiency is lower.
In the case of typical household purposes, solar
collectors are placed at some predetermined tilt
angle and orientation to collect the maximum
sunlight throughout the day.
In order to increase the heat collection efficiency,
another design known as flooded plate design
makes use of a pair of corrugated plates.
Flooded plate collectors are similar to the tube
designs, except that two metal absorbing plates
are sandwiched together, allowing the water to
flow through the entire area in between the plates.
The increased thermal contact results in
significant improvements in the efficiency of the system. In the case of typical household
purposes, solar collectors are placed at some predetermined tilt angle and orientation to
collect the maximum sunlight throughout the day.
For maximum efficiency averaged over the year, the proper slope of the collector would equal
your latitude, so that at solar noon on the day of the equinoxes, the direct sunlight should strike
the collector at normal incidence.
Nowadays evacuated tube solar collectors are commonly used to achieve high efficiency by
reducing the thermal losses.
It is made of two concentric glass tubes sealed at one end. The space in between is evacuated
to a medium high vacuum (minimum 10ª Pa).
A selective absorption coating is applied on the outer surface of the inner glass tube. The tube
will be placed at an angle, connecting to a water storage tank.
Natural convection process moves the heated water up to the top of the tank, while relatively
colder water from the bottom of the tank flows into the tube and gets heated and this process
continues.
There are different configurations of evacuated tube solar collectors, but the simplest and most
commonly used one is the direct flow evacuated tube collector.
Because of its cylindrical shape it has better sunlight collecting capacity from sunrise to sunset.
Whereas in flat plate collector, the angle of incidence varies from morning to evening and it
affect the amount of light absorbed by the collector.

Solar Water Heater

Solar water heater is a non-polluting, eco-friendly device to heat water to a very high
temperature using the energy of sunlight.
It finds extensive use in domestic water heating as well as for commercial purposes. Solar
collector is the heart of a solar water heater.
A solar water heater is a solar collector attached to a water storage tank.
Solar water heaters are broadly classified into direct and indirect systems (also called open
and closed system respectively) based on the fluid used in the solar collector.
There is also another classification based on the type of flow of the fluid in the system and are
called active (forced circulation) and passive (natural circulation) solar water heater.
Direct and Indirect Systems
Direct systems circulate potable water through the collectors and the heated water is used
directly for the household uses. They are relatively cheap
Drawbacks:
They offer little or no overheat protection.
They offer little or no freeze protection.
Scales will be formed inside the collectors if hard water is used regularly.
Indirect systems use a heat exchanger that
separates the potable water from the "heat
transfer fluid".
The heat-transfer fluid circulates through the
collector, after being heated in the panels, the
heat-transfer fluid travels to the heat exchanger,
where its heat is transferred to the potable water.
Though more expensive, indirect systems offer
freeze protection and overheat protection and
such systems are better to use in places with
extreme weather conditions.
Passive and Active Systems
Passive systems depend on natural convection
to circulate the water or heating fluid in the
system.
In this design, the storage tank must be placed at
a position higher than the heat collector panel.
The cold water from the bottom of the tank
enters to the bottom of the flat plate collector
and through natural convection, heated water
exit through the top of the collector to the top of
the storage tank.
Warmer water stays at the top of the storage tank and colder water at the bottom.
It cost less and need low maintenance, but the efficiency of a passive system is lower than that
of an active system
Active systems use one or more pumps to
circulate water in the system.
Active systems are more expensive than
Passive systems.
A solar cell array can be used together with
such system to power up the pumps and to
make it completely renewable- energy type.
The storage tank can be placed anywhere
because water circulation is forced type using
a pump.
The choice of the system depends purely on the climate and space/facility where it is installed.
Both passive and active systems can be direct or indirect type.

Optical Concentrator
It is possible to produce electricity using heated fluid (steam), in addition to the direct
electricity production using photovoltaic cells.
For such large-scale electricity generation using solar heated water, the efficiency of light heat
conversion must be much higher than normal household water heaters.
Concentrated solar power production is gaining momentum due to its simplicity, maturity of the
technology and cost efficiency compared to photovoltaic systems.
A solar concentrator concentrates large area of sunlight onto a small area using mirrors or
lenses. The concentrating collectors must track the Sun (change its orientation according to the
position of sun) using some mechanical movement system
Five different types of solar concentrator technologies are commonly used:
1) Parabolic trough reflector

2) Mirror strip reflector

3) Fresnel lens collector
4) Flat plate collector with adjustable mirrors
5) Compound parabolic concentrator
Parabolic trough reflector
Parabolic trough reflector is a line focus system in which a long mirrored concentrator in the
shape of a parabolic trough is used.
Sunlight collected over the entire area of the reflecting surface is concentrated at its focus.
Collector pipe with special coating at its outer surface is fixed along the focus (axis) of the
reflector and the heat is transferred to the heat exchanging fluid flowing through this pipe
Many such reflectors are arranged in parallel to produce sufficient quantity of hot fluid to run a
thermal electric plant.
The receiver tube is constructed using two concentric tubes placed along the focal line of the
trough.
The inner metallic tube transports the working fluid and is separated from the outer transparent
glass tube by vacuum.
Different working fluids such as demineralised water and ethylene glycol mixture, or a
synthetic oil can be used.

Mirror Strip Reflector

A mirror strip reflector uses large pieces of mirrors forming a concave surface, thereby
reflecting the sunlight by each of these mirror strips to the focal point of the concave surface.
The mirror strips are used because it is not practical to make a parabolic dish of such larger size
using a single piece of glass.
Principle of a mirror strip reflector
The mirror strips are arranged close to each other on a
metallic frame having concave shape, effectively
forming a large concave mirror It is very similar to the
shape of a satellite TV receiver, but having a much
larger size. The absorber has to be placed at the focus of
the dish to extract the heat from concentrated light.

India's first solar thermal power plant with thermal

storage is established at Mount Abu in Rajasthan in 2017.
The plant is based on mirror strip reflector dish technology. 770 such dishes, each having an
area of 60 m², generate 1 MW electricity from 25 acre solar field.
The dish concentrates solar rays towards the indigenously developed, highly efficient cavity
receivers, which are positioned in front of each dish to store thermal energy.
The iron core storage can be heated up to a maximum of 450 °C and it can store heat up to 16
hours
Fresnel Lens Collector
This is a transmitting type solar concentrator and
this type of concentrator can be used to focus
light for heat generation by placing the light
absorber at the focus.
A Fresnel lens collector can also be used to focus
light on to a solar cell placed at its focal point for
electricity generation.
Fresnel lens design can be used in reflection
mode also, and that is commonly used for solar
thermal power generation.
A Fresnel reflector system simplifies the parabolic trough design. Instead of using a large single
parabolic reflector, Fresnel reflector mimics the parabolic shape with a set of flat mirrors. The
use of

Solar Desalination
Desalination is the process that removes salts and minerals from water to make it suitable for
human consumption or irrigation.
Solar desalination is a technique to desalinate water
using solar energy.
Solar distillation is based on flat plate collector
technology.
There are direct and indirect types of solar
desalination methods.
In the direct method, a solar collector is coupled
with a distilling mechanism such as a solar still . In
this system, saline water contained in the tank at the
bottom is evaporated by the heat from the sun and is condensed under a clear glass/plastic and
the pure water is finally dripped into a water collector attached to the cover.
Indirect solar desalination employs two separate systems, a solar collection array, consisting
of photovoltaic and/or fluid based thermal collectors, and a separate conventional desalination
plant.
The electrical output/thermal energy from the former is used to drive the conventional
desalination plant.
Average efficiency of direct method is only about 3-4L/m²/day, whereas that of indirect
photovoltaic-based system is about 200L/m²/day.

Solar Dryer:
Solar dryers use solar energy to dry solid substances that contain moisture, especially food and
agriculture crops.
Solar dryers are also used in dairy industries for production of milk powder, in seasoning of
wood and timber, in textile industries for drying of textile materials etc.
Drying of agricultural products, washed clothes etc directly under the Sun on the open ground
is the most fundamental way of solar drying.
This open sun-drying method is suffering from uncontrolled drying, as well as contamination of
the product.
Solar dryers can be broadly classified into passive and active types.
Passive type itself divided into direct and indirect types.
Direct Type Solar Dryer
Direct solar dryers expose the substance to be
dehydrated to direct sunlight.
To increase the drying efficiency, these dryer
have a black absorbing surface which collects the
light and converts it to heat and the substance to
be dried is placed directly on this surface.
These driers may have enclosures; glass covers
and vents to increase the efficiency.

Indirect Type Solar Dryer

In passive indirect solar dryers, a blackened surface
is converting the solar energy to heat (basically
used to a flat plate solar collector with air as the
heat exchanging fluid).
The hot air is then allowed to pass through the
substance to be dried, normally placed in stacks
inside a closed chamber and exits through a
chimney, taking moisture from the substance with
it.

Active solar dryers

Active solar dryers are very much similar to the
indirect type solar dryer, but normally a fan is used
to enhance the air flow and this type of dryers can
be used to dry substances having higher moisture
content.
Normally the fan will be operated using the
electricity produced with a photovoltaic cell, so
that the entire unit is a solar based system.

Solar Cooker
Solar Cooker is a device which uses the energy of sunlight to heat, cook or pasteurize food or
drinks.
There are different designs for solar cookers, such as box type cooker, Parabolic dish
concentrator type and multi reflector type.
In the box type cooker, an insulating material is attached inside the walls of a wooden box to
reduce the heat loss. Top of the cooker is covered with two layers of glass sheets. Side walls
and the bottom of the cooker are black painted. The lid at the top of the cooker is fitted with a
reflector to reflect maximum sunlight into the cooker. Cooking pots are also painted black to
absorb maximum heat
Parabolic solar cooker concentrate
sunlight to a single point. The cooking
pot is placed with its bottom at the focal
point and the pot quickly heated to a
very high temperature comparable to
that achieved in gas and wood stoves.
Advantages of a solar cooker
1) No Pollution
2) No fuel is required
3) Negligible maintenance
4) No attention is needed during cooking
5) Vitamins of the food are preserved

Solar Heating of Buildings

In many countries, significant amount of energy is used for room (space) heating of homes and
offices during winter. By using solar energy for this purpose we can reduce the consumption of
polluting fossil fuels or expensive electricity.
Passive and active solar space heating systems are commonly used.
Passive Space Heating System
Passive heating systems operate without pumps or any other mechanical devices.
Natural convection of hot air through the building results in warming of the room space.
With proper design, the building (house) itself with large glass windows in the south-facing
walls and absorbing walls inside the room act as a solar collector.
Typically double layer glass windows are used to reduce the heat loss
Thick concrete, brick or stone floors and walls absorbs sunlight entering through the glass
window and heat is generated, keeping the room warmer.
Holes are provided at the bottom and top of this wall.
Sunlight absorbed by the black wall heats the wall and the air between the wall and the glass
cover.
Natural convection causes the warm air to move up, enter the room through the hole at the top
of the wall.
Colder air in the room leaves the room
through the hole at the bottom of the wall and
enters the heating space where it is heated and moves
up.
This circulation process continues as long as
there is sunlight and the room continuously
gets heated up
Another passive space heating system is
through roof storage, in which a small
amount of water is stored in blackened
metallic containers (about 25cm tall) on top of the roof.
Several such storage tanks placed on the roof act as the solar heat storage system.
This design is ideal for flat metallic roof structure.

Active Space Heating System

Active space heating systems make use of solar heat collectors such as flat plate collectors. A
pump or fan is used to circulate the heated liquid or air in the solar collector through heat
exchangers placed inside the building. Advantage of this design is that highly efficient solar
collectors can be used in this design. This approach is suitable to collect maximum sunlight and
hence it is more efficient than passive systems.

Solar Green Houses

A greenhouse facilitates crop cultivation under controlled environment, which offers year-round
vegetable/fruit production.
The plant environment in a greenhouse composes of the soil temperature, air temperature, air
humidity, soil moisture, light etc.
A solar greenhouse is a modified version of traditional greenhouse, to collect solar energy from
sunlight and store it as heat and slowly release it so as to maintain the temperature inside the
unit without using conventional energy.
Solar greenhouses differ from conventional greenhouses in five ways.
Solar greenhouses:
1) Have glazing (glass window) oriented to receive maximum solar energy during the winter
2) Uses heat storing materials to retain solar heat
3) Have large amounts of insulation where there is little or no direct sunlight 4)
Use glazing material and glazing installation methods that minimize heat loss 5)
Rely primarily on natural ventilation for summer cooling
A solar greenhouse may be an underground pit or a freestanding shed type structure. They
can be either stand-alone or attached to houses.
They may be covered with glass or plastic sheets.
In cold climates, two or more layer of glazing is required
to reduce the heat loss.
Solar greenhouse is oriented in southern direction to
collect maximum solar energy
In both freestanding and pit type, insulated walls are on
the northeast and west sides.
In pít type, the greenhouse is partially sunk in the earth.
In attached type, the greenhouse is usually attached to a
wall in the southern side of a building.
Heat storage facility is the most important feature of a
solar greenhouse.
Massive walls, floor and growing beds are usually acts as
heat storage units during sunshine and slowly liberate the
stored heat during night, thus maintaining the
temperature inside the greenhouse in a reasonable level.

Photovoltaic (PV) System

Direct conversion of solar energy to electricity can be done using photovoltaic (PV) system.
Photovoltaics is the third most important renewable energy source, contributing about 1.7% of
total electricity production.
India is a fast growing PV market and the total installed capacity of PV system is about 5.4% of
total electricity produced in India.

Principle of a Solar Cell

Since sunlight is used to produce electricity using a photovoltaic cell, they are commonly
known as solar cells.
A solar cell is a semiconductor pn junction
that converts incident radiation (solar or any
other light) into electrical energy.
In this structure, the n region is narrow and
heavily doped. The light illumination is
through the n-side.
As soon as the pn junction is formed,
electrons from n-region diffuse into p-region
and recombine with the holes there, leaving
exposed positive donor ions.
Similarly holes from p-region diffuse into n-region and recombine with the electrons there,
leaving exposed negative acceptor ions.
Thus, a small region on either side of the junction becomes depleted of free carriers and this
region is called the depletion region or space charge layer
An internal electric field E, in the direction from positive ions to negative ions is formed and
this field will drift the holes back into the p-region and electrons back into the n-region.
The maximum electric field will be at the metallurgical junction of p and n regions and the field
is zero outside the depletion region
In this case, majority of the depletion region is inside the p region because of the heavy doping
in n-side.
Light falls on the n-side penetrates deeper into the structure, up to the depletion region or even
to p-region, because the n-side is very thin.
Electrode attached to the n-side is called finger electrode because it is designed such that it
allows light to pass through the gaps and at the same time, the narrow electrode structure
collects the electrons from the solar cell
Each photon absorbed by the solar cell, in the n-region, or depletion region, or in the p-region,
produce an electron-hole pair and the internal electric field E, drift the photo generated electron
and hole to either side of the structure.
Consequently an open circuit voltage is developed between the terminals of the device with p
side positive with respect to the n-side.
If an external load is connected to these terminals, then the excess photogenerated electrons in
the n-side can travel around the external circuit, do work, and reach the p-side to recombine
with the excess hole there.
A solar cell works purely because of the built in internal field. Since each absorbed photon
produce an electron-hole pair, the photogenerated current is proportional to the incident
(absorbed) light.
Equivalent Circuit
The photogeneration process results in the
current production in a solar cell.
Hence an equivalent circuit of a solar cell
can be drawn by replacing the
photogeneration process with a current
source.
A solar cell can be considered as a normal
diode with in internal current source Iph
This is an ideal case and in practice there
will be both series and parallel resistance
The series resistance arise due to the finger electrode design in the n-side and the parallel
resistance arise due to the surface short circuit flow of electrons from n region to p-region,
instead of flowing through the external load.
The flow of photogenerated carriers across the junction produces a photovoltaic voltage V
across the junction and this voltage leads to a normal diode current as in the case of a normal
diode, given by
���� = ����[������ (����

��������) − ��]
where I0 is the reverse saturation current, η is the ideality factor which depends on the
semiconductor material ( in the range 1 to 2).
In an open circuit (without connecting the load), the net current is zero, means that the
photocurrent Iph develops enough voltage VOC to generate a diode current Id = I ph
V-I Characteristics
The total current through the solar cell is given by
�� = − ������ + ����[������

(����

��������) − ��]

The overall V-I characteristics of a solar cell

is shown in figure.
The open circuit output voltage VOC of the
solar cell is given by the point where the V-I
curve cuts the voltage axis (I=0)
VOC depends on the light intensity and
typically lies in the 0.4 - 0.6 volt. In the absence of any external light, a solar cell behaves like
a normal pn junction diode.
When the solar cell is connected to an external load, the current through the external load is
according to the equation I = - (V / R)
The current is taken as negative because it flows through the load in the opposite direction to
the conventionally taken direction of flow of current from high to low potential.
By plotting the load line, which is the I-V characteristics of the load, together with the I-V
characteristics of the solar cell for a particular illumination, we can find the operating point (P)
of the circuit, at which the two curves intercept.
Slope of the load line is reciprocal of the load resistance (1 / R)
The power delivered to the load is the product of the voltage and current at the operating point,
ie. Pout =V’ I’
The position of intercept between the V-I curve of the solar cell and the load line depends on
the value of the load, which determines the output power.
It is always desirable to get the maximum power output from a solar cell and hence the load has
to be adjusted accordingly for a particular illumination.
The ratio of the actual power obtained to the maximum possible power output is called the Fill
Factor of the solar cell circuit and is given by

�������� ������������ =��������

������ ������
Where �������� is the obtained maximum power output, and ������ ������ is the ideal
maximum possible output. Typical value of fill factor is in the range of 70 85 %

Conversion efficiency of a solar cell is the ratio of maximum power output from the solar cell
to the incident light intensity in W/m2 .
The efficiency is normally measured under standard test conditions, with a solar irradiation of
1000 W/m2 at a temperature of 25 oC and under a standard spectrum (AM 1.5 spectrum).

PV Sun Tracking Systems

A solar tracking system is a device designed to move a PV module in such a way that the
sunlight always falls normally on it so that its output is maximum at any time.
A solar tracking system consists of three major components:
(1) The mechanism
(2) The driver
(3) The tracking controller
The tracker mechanism can be one-axis or two-axis type.(1)The single-axis tracking system is
best suitable for small PV power plants. As the name suggests, this mechanism can tilt the solar
panel array along a trajectory relative to the Sun's position.
With one-axis tracker, the Sun is perpendicular to the module only in one plane. The best
conditions for one-axis tracking are obtained if the axis is parallel to the earth's axis.
With two axis tracking the Sun is always perpendicular to the module in both planes.
Solar tracker driver can be active or passive type.
Active driving mechanisms are based on electric motors or hydraulic systems, and passive
ones are based on gravitational systems.
Electric motor based active driving mechanism is most common because of its simplicity and
precise control of the movement. Only one motor is required for single-axis trackers, whereas
two motors are required for two-axis trackers.
Passive trackers consists of two tubular tanks
placed at either side of the solar panel in such
a way that if the sunlight is not falling
normally on the panel, the light intensity on
the two tanks will be unequal and hence the
liquid in the tanks gets unevenly heated.
The hotter liquid will expand and move
towards the tank having lower temperature.
This result in a shift in weight and naturally
gravity helps to rotate the entire panel system
until it is perfectly aligned with the Sun. They are less expensive and requires no electrical
appliances and maintenance free.
This mechanism is not very accurate, especially during cloudy days and is not very efficient
either. day's
(3) Solar Tracker controller is the brain of the tracking system, which controls the driver.
System using passive trackers does not have the controller, only active tracker need a
controller.
Controllers are classified into (i) open-loop controller, and (ii) closed-loop controller.
Open-loop controller orient the PV panels based on previously computed Sun trajectories.
Using the known astronomical data, the microprocessor predicts the Sun's position at any time
and location and it drives the motor accordingly.
Closed-loop controller uses solar radiation sensors to control the orientation of the system.
Output from a number of photo- sensors mounted on the panel is used to calculate the Sun's
position in real time and it drives the motor accordingly so that the panel is always aligned
normal to the sunlight.
Advantages of PV System
1) Sunlight is available everywhere
2) Best places to use PV system are actually places that have almost no other uses (deserts,
roofs)
3) No environmental pollution during operation
4) Little maintenance needed once installed
5) Ease of implementation even in remote places for variety of applications.
6) Easily scalable as need evolves

7) Works over a wide range of ambient temperatures

8) Mature technology (and still improving)
9) Direct conversion of solar radiation into electricity
10)No mechanical moving parts and no noise pollution
11)PV modules have a very long lifetime
12)PV is a very flexible energy source, its power ranging from microwatts to megawatts
Disadvantages of PV System

1) Relatively Costly
2) Intermittent, works only when there is sufficient sunlight
3) Some toxic chemicals, like cadmium and arsenic, are used in the PV production process