Comparison of efficiency of the solar tracking methods

Recently, the trend and importance about renewable energy sources are increased as a result of the negative effect on environment which is caused by fossil fuel usage for energy and the extinction reality of this fossil resources. Renewable energy is shown as the future energy technology because of increasing efficiency of the renewable energy systems with the developing technology and their non-pollution characteristics. Therefore, researches on the topic of renewable energy have been increased in these days. Solar energy is an extremely important and widely used source among the renewable energy resources. Solar energy is converted to electricity by the use of photovoltaic systems. Meanwhile, photovoltaic system efficiency determines the amount of power recovery from existing solar energy potential. Obtained energy depends on the factors such as panel surface temperature, solar radiation, type of material, etc. Solar tracking systems are used to gain maximum power by tracking the sun with the aim of increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic panel. Especially, research about the technologies such as solar tracking and maximum power point tracking are increased rapidly to enhance the efficiency for the photovoltaic systems recently. In this thesis, different type of solar tracking systems have been evaluated in terms of efficiency according to tracking techniques of the monitoring units, axes, control strategies and tracking strategies. The review deals with the efficiency comparision, performance, advantages and disadvantages to determine the best panel orientation. Photovoltaic power plant which has 500 kWp power capacity is considered for efficiency evaluation and the location of this power plant is accepted in Muğla province. The reason for choosing Muğla as the place of installation is the easy access to the electricity transmission lines and also it has annual avarage of 3043 hours sunshine duration which is above the avarage of Turkey and it has avarage of 1621 kWh/m2 –year solar radiation value. Also, efficient analysis is performed by using solar energy simulation programs such as PVSOL and PVsyst.