Rãzvan Bogdan Itu and Alexandra Soica
Abstract
Power grids have been the mainstay of power systems for more than a century, supporting economic activity by bringing power to homes, industry and services. As the transition to green energy advances, the role of electricity will become more important, making power grids even more special to society and economies. The energy sector is going through essential changes such as decarbonization, digitalization, climate change etc. and as a solution, governments, industries and other stakeholders will need to establish new policies, regulations and updated market models for a new system in the future. Therefore, our purpose was to develop a system that can track the sun from sunrise to sunset, which can be placed in a specific location to record and store data about the maximum potential sun that can be produced. The solar tracker is guided by two step-by-step motors, creating horizontal and vertical movement so that the rising sun will fall perpendicular to the solar panel. The two motors are controlled with the mobile phone which stores data about the amount of energy that is produced. A prototype was made using parts from reused materials such as bicycle wheel, concrete mixer crown, computer elements, parts for chairs, etc. The system is independent of electricity, so it can be placed anywhere without being connected to an outlet. The motors and the data controller are powered by the energy produced by the solar panel in the form of a closed circuit.