Designing a Dual-axis Open-loop solar tracker for CPV applications

Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) systems offer several advantages such as their superior efficiency compared to conventional PV systems, moreover, producing CPV systems can reduce the cost because they use a very small area of costly PV material and replace it by a large area of inexpensive optical materials. This allows the use of high-efficiency solar cells that would have been prohibitively expensive in the case of a large area of traditional PV system. This paper focuses on determining the required tracking accuracy for a CPV system using a point-focus Fresnel lens and a CIMJ multi-junction solar cell with an aperture area of 98.9 square millimeters. The purposes of this paper is to simulate the power losses with respect to tracking errors, outlining the maximum allowed tolerance as well as the effect of temperature on the output power from the solar cell, and to design an inexpensive dual-axis solar tracker that is made of off the shelf commercial components that satisfies the required degree of accuracy with an efficient control algorithm that allows the system to rotate in Azimuth and Zenith axes.