Author : Pratik Painjane, Rahul Nangare and Anupsingh Pardeshi

The Sun is the ultimate source of energy for the Earth. Its energy is both clean and free of cost. So maximizing the use of solar energy help to take the load off from fossil fuels like petrol, diesel, etc. and limit the emission of carbon dioxide hence preventing the pollution. It is also necessary to find out the area where this energy is more, so that the solar panel can be installed in such area to get maximum outcome. So to measure solar insolation level at a particular area we have designed a system. This system will measure the incident power per unit area and will also give the duration of maximum sunshine. The system comprises of photodiode, RTC (Real Time Clock), Servo Motors, Microcontroller and LCD. Photodiode gives output proportional to sun intensity. This output is then processed and converted into the unit of insolation level as watt per meter square. Then the value is sent to microcontroller, the output of photodiode and corresponding time is saved in the MicroSD card. We are continuously logging data by reading output of photodiode after particular interval of time. Before the data is logged, set of LDRs track the sun so that Direct Normal Incident radiation is only measured. While data is logged, it is stored in MicroSD card in the form of excel sheet (.csv).

Keywords: Solar Tracker, LDR, Arduino, MicroSD card, Insolation, Servo motor, OPT101, RTC, CSV file