A Three Level Solar Panel System with an Automated Solar Tracker

H. M. Moniruzzaman1, Munia Patwary2 and Mosaddequr Rahman3

School of Computer Science and Engineering, BRAC University
66 Mohakhali C/A, Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh
1

neermoniruzzaman@yahoo.com
2
pmunia@yahoo.com
3
mosaddeq@bracu.ac.bd

Abstract In this work, a detailed performance analysis of a

three level solar panel system intended for its use in urban
residential areas is carried out. The system consists of three
panels fitted with automated solar tracker and mounted in a rack
one above another at a fixed distance from each other to
minimize the floor area while shifted horizontally from each
other by half the panel width to avoid shading of the lower
panels. Calculation shows that the proposed three level panel
system can harness 18 64 % more energy than the three
conventional single level fixed panel systems with 33% less area.
An automated microcontroller controlled solar tracker is also
developed for the proposed system to track the sun.
Microcontroller calculates the sunrise and sunset times on each
day using a set of equations and sends signal to the controlling
motors to rotate the panels at a predetermined time intervals by
a fixed angle to track the sun. Rotating the panels at some fixed
time interval rather than on a continuous basis will minimize the
energy consumption. The proposed system is easy to construct
and implement, takes less floor space and will be effective for
urban areas where not only electricity is in short supply,
availability of roof top space to install solar panels is also very
limited.
Index Terms electricity, photovoltaic systems, solar energy.
solar tracker, microcontroller

I. INTRODUCTION
Like many of the third world countries, Bangladesh is also
facing an acute shortage of energy. Only 62 per cent of the
population is somehow covered by electric supply through
national grid. Even with such lower percentage coverage, the
national power requirement is on an average more than 8000
MW; whereas in 2013, generation capacity has reached to
10213 MW of which only three-fourth is considered to be
available [1]. This shortfall necessitates load shedding.
Suffering of the common people is nowhere more pronounced
than in urban areas where electricity is a necessity in carrying
out daily activities. solar energy, like most other places, has the
promise and potential to solve the energy crisis of Bangladesh
as it is available through-out the country and does not need a
broad technological base. However, urban areas are densely
populated with many high rise buildings with little room left
for setting solar photovoltaic (PV) panels which require a lot of
space to generate sufficient power required by the building
dwellers.
To solve this problem a novel approach was introduced in
[2] where solar panels are arranged in a way that minimizes the
use of floor space. In this proposed system, three solar panels
are stacked one above another in a rack under a modified

structure to minimize the floor area, while at the same time

equipped with a sliding mechanism on a horizontal plane and
sun tracking system to maximize power generation. The three
panels can be operated in a space of two and the tracking and
sliding makes it more efficient than the conventional single
level fixed panel system. The proposed system is easy to
construct and implement, takes less floor space and will be
effective for urban areas where the rooftop space is used for
various purposes. This could be of immense benefit for the
dwellers of large cities like Dhaka, where not only electricity is
in short supply, availability of roof top space to install solar
panels is also very limited.
In this work, a detailed performance analysis of the
proposed system is carried out by calculating the solar energy
collected by the proposed system during different seasons and
comparing it to that of the existing fixed panel system of the
same size. An automated microcontroller controlled solar
tracker is also developed for the proposed system to track the
sun. The panels will be equipped with servo motors, precisely
controlled by the microcontroller, to rotate the panels on a
horizontal axis to track the sun. Micro-controller will take note
of the local date and time from a digital clock attached to it. It
will calculate sunrise and sunset times on each day using a set
of equations and compare with the time taken from the digital
clock. Once the calculated sunrise time matches with the clock
time, it will send signal to the servo motors to initiate the
rotation of the panels. Rotation of the panels will be carried out
at some fixed time interval rather than on a continuous basis, in
order to minimize energy consumption. At sunset, panels will
be realigned to its starting position for the next day.
The rest of the paper has been organized in the following
way: section II gives a brief description of the proposed
system, its structure and operation; section III outlines a
procedure to calculate incident solar energy and provides a
comparison of the cumulative incident energy for the proposed
system with that of existing fixed panel system; section IV
provides a detailed description of the micro-controller based
sun tracking system developed for the proposed system, and
finally section V makes concluding remarks.
II. THE PROPOSED SYSTEM: STRUCTURE AND OPERATION
Fig. 1 shows a simplified 2-D schematic side view of the
proposed three level solar panel system where the three panels
are mounted in a rack one above another and shifted
horizontally at a fixed distance from each other to avoid the
shading of the lower panels and maximize energy collection.

Fig. 1 A 2-D schematic side view of the proposed three level solar panel
system. The three panels are mounted one above another at a fixed
distance and are shifted horizontally from each other by half a panel
width. d is the inter-panel separation, w is the panel width, is the
maximum angular position of the sun for which bottom panels gets full
sun exposure without getting shadowed over by the upper panels. (E:
East, W: West)

The panels will be supported by a frame and will have a

fixed tilt angle equal to the latitude along north-south direction
facing south, in order to maximize energy collection
throughout the year. For the sake of clarity, tilt of the panels
along the north-south direction is not shown in the figure. Each
of the panels will be supported by a servo motor to have the
rotation around the horizontal axis so that it can track the sun
and get maximum sun light. Rotation of these motors will be
controlled by a microcontroller based controller on the basis of
solar hour angle.
As the sun moves from east in the morning to west in the
afternoon, the panels will have to be repositioned with the top
panel moved to the east side and the bottom panel moved to
the west side horizontally, so that all the panels can get full sun
exposure. To realize this, panels will be set with a special
gliding mechanism that will allow the top and bottom panels to
glide horizontally both ways during noon and the middle panel
will be turned vertically up so that partial shading of the
bottom panel is avoided and the upper and lower panels are
exposed to the full sunlight. The gliding distance is chosen to
be equal to the panel width as that will allow the top and
bottom panels get the full sun exposure during noon with these
two panels placed at two ends and the middle panel set
vertically up, as shown in Fig. 2. This will necessitate the

Fig. 2 2-D schematic side view of the proposed three level solar panel
system at noon, with the two panels placed at two ends and the middle
panel set vertically up, to avoid partial shading of the lower panels.

system to have an overall width equal to the width of two

panels (2w) on its side.
As the sun rises up in the sky, shadow of the upper panel
will start to fall on the lower one. The angle of the sun at which
this will happen depends on the separation, both vertical and
horizontal, between the two panels. It is assumed that with the
panel separation as shown in Fig. 1, is the maximum angle
for which the lower (middle and bottom) panels get full
exposure without being shaded over by the upper panels. At
this point, the middle panel will be turned vertically up to
allow the bottom panel to get the full exposure afterwards. The
middle panel will be kept in this position until the sun tilts to
the west and makes the same angle with the horizontal plane.
As horizontally two consecutive panels are separated by a
fixed distance of half the panel width as already discussed, the
sun angle at which shading of the lower panel begins will
depend on the vertical separation between the panels. The
greater is the vertical separation, the greater will be sun angle
and the higher will be the position of the sun in the sky for
which shading of the lower panel will begin. This means that
with a greater panel separation, the panels will get sun
exposure for a greater length of time, harnessing more solar
energy. However, increasing panel separation, will increase the
overall size and, thereby, the cost of the system. Therefore, it is
necessary to estimate the panel separation that will enable
harnessing enough solar energy without making the system
size too large. A detailed design analysis carried out in [2]
shows that a panel separation d equal to 1.5 times the panel
width, which corresponds to an angular position = 67.5, will

enable collection of high solar energy without increasing its

size to too high level. With this panel separation, the total
height of the structure will be (1.5+1.5+0.5) or 3.5 times the
panel width, as can be seen from Fig. 1. If we choose a 100 W
panel with width w = 668 mm and length l = 1245 mm, an
overall height of 3.5w = 2338 mm will result for the structure.
It is estimated that with this panel separation, about 68% of
total solar irradiation will fall on the middle panel. It can be
noted here that if we want to increase energy collection from
68% to 75% for the middle panel, the minimum panel
separation needed will be 2.5 times the panel width requiring
the overall height to be (2.5+2.5+0.5)w = 3674 mm, which is
about 57% larger than the previous size for an increase of just
7% in incident energy.
III. DETERMINING THE CUMULATIVE INCIDENT ENERGY
The total solar radiation incident on the panels integrated
over time from sunrise to sunset would give the cumulative
incident energy on the panels. Incident energy is maximum
when the incident solar radiation is perpendicular to panel
surface. For any other angle of incident radiation, the effective
area of the panel that receives the energy reduces and so does
the received energy. The effective panel area depends on the
angle between incident radiation and the normal of the panel
plane which varies with the position of the sun and the panel
mounting angle. As the suns position changes from sunrise to
sunset and also with different seasons, panels effective surface
area also changes with time. Thus the cumulative incident
energy will depend on the solar irradiance as well as on the
suns position and the panels orientation.
The solar irradiance I is given by the following empirical
relation [3]:

I = I 0 (0.7) AM

0.678

(1)

with Io = 1367 W/m2 is the solar irradiance in space outside the

atmosphere and AM = csc () is the air mass which is a
function of angle of incidence () of sunlight on earths
surface, also known as the altitude, and is given by [4],

= sin 1 (sin sin + cos cos cos ) ,

(2)

s = cos 1 ( tan tan ) .

(5)

For countries in northern hemisphere such as in

Bangladesh, panels are mounted at latitude angle facing south
in order to maximise the energy collection for the whole year.
With this panel orientation, sunrays fall vertically on panel in
spring and fall, however, due to the seasonal variation in suns
inclination, an angle between the normal of the panel and
the incident radiation is introduced in the north-south direction
for other times of the year which reaches its maximum (m) in
summer (June 21st) and in winter (Dec 21st) and thus reduces
the panels effective area, as shown in Fig. 3. Thus the
effective area of the panel, corrected for daily and seasonal
variations of suns position, can be given as,
Aeff = A cos cos

(6)

where A is the area of the panel, is the angular position of

sun at any time of the day and varies from 90 to 0 from
sunrise to noon and then 0 to -90 from noon to sunset, as
shown in Fig. 4.
Thus the cumulative solar energy incident on the panel in a
day can be calculated using the following equation:
TSS

Cumulative Incident Energy =

eff

I dt

TSR

= A cos

TSS

I cos dt

(7)

TSR

where TSR and TSS are the sunrise and sunset times,
respectively.
For the proposed multilevel panels with sun tracking
system, will be zero as the panels will be aligned with the
suns position and the expression for cumulative incident
energy can be written as,
TSS

Cumulative Incident Energy = A cos

I dt

(8)

TSR

However, as the middle panel does not receive sunlight around

the noon time, to find the incident energy on the middle panel,

where is the latitude, and is angle of deviation of the sun

from directly above the equator, i.e., 0 latitude, known as
angle of declination and is given by [5]:
360
(n + 284) ,
365

= 23.45 sin

(3)

where n= nth day of the year (i.e. January 1st means n=1). In
(2), is the hour angle and represents the number of hours
elapsed during the day from sunrise to sunset expressed in
degree and can be calculated as below [4]:

= s 15(t TSR ) ,

(4)

where t is the time of day on a 24-hour clock, -s is the sunrise

and s is the sunset angle given by [4]:

Fig. 3: Angular position of the sun with respect to the panel orientation
with panel mounting angle = 23.1,for different seasons.

Figure 4: Variation in suns position during the day.

(8) can be modified as:

TSS
T1

Cumulative Incident Energy = A cos

I dt + I dt

T2
TSR

(9)

where T1 and T2 are the beginning and the end of the time
period during which the middle panel is kept vertically up.
Estimates of the total incident energies for four different
seasons are calculated for the proposed multilevel panel
system, using (8) and (9), and for the conventional single level
fixed panel system of the same size using (7), and are shown in
the table I. Calculations are carried out for December 21st
(winter), March 21st (spring), June 21st (summer), and
September 21st (fall), considering the contribution of the direct
beam only. As can be seen from table I, the proposed system,
fitted with sun tracking system, can harness about 18 - 64%
more solar energy when compared with those of the
conventional fixed panel system of same size.
It is obvious that the proposed system will yield greater
output than the existing fixed panel system, with smaller area.
It can be noted that if the single level panels are fitted with
solar tracking system, then the total incident energy on the
fixed panel of same size would be about 13% greater than that
incident on the proposed system; however it would take almost
50% more area than that required for proposed system.

controller takes the reading of date and time from a digital

clock and check for the sunrise and sunset times that it
calculates using a set of equations.
Initially the panels will be tilted at 7.5 facing east. As the
sun moves 15 up in the sky after sunrise, micro-controller will
send a signal to the servo-motor to rotate the panels by 15.
This will place the panels 7.5 ahead of the suns position. As
the sun moves further up in the sky and passes the panels
position by 7.5, the panels will be rotated by another 15. In
this way, the panels will be rotated by 15 at a fixed time
interval until the panels are tilted at an angle 172.5 before
sunset. Thus the panels will be rotated 11 times from sunrise to
sunset, starting from 7.5 to 172.5 in steps of 15, from east to
west following the sun, precisely controlled and monitored by
the microcontroller.
When the sun reaches angular position in the sky, which is
the maximum angle for which the lower (middle and bottom)
panels get full exposure without getting shaded over by the
upper panels, the middle panel will be set in vertically up
position to avoid shading of the bottom panel. Middle panel
will be kept in that position until sun moves past the zenith
towards west by the same angle. During noon the top and
bottom panels will be horizontally shifted to the other side to
realign the panels with the suns position. At sunset, the panels
will be reset to their original positions for the next day.
Instead of continuous tracking, the developed system will
track the sun by rotating the panels in discreet steps, only 11
times a day, in each step rotating the panels by 15. As the
panels does track the sun continuously, there will be some loss

IV. MICRO-CONTROLLER BASED SUN-TRACKING SYSTEM

A. Circuit Diagram
Fig. 5 shows the schematic circuit diagram of the microcontroller based control circuit that controls the rotational and
horizontal gliding motion of the panels to track the sun. Micro-

TABLE I. COMARISON OF TOTAL INCIDENT ENERGY ON THE

PROPOSED SYSTEM WITH THAT OF EXISTING FIXED PANEL SYSTEM

Season
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall

Cumulative Incident
Energy/day (kWh)
Existing
Proposed
Fixed Panel
System
System
16.5
10.06
20.12
16.5
24.94
20.51
20.12
16.5

%
Difference
64.1
18.6
21.6
18.6

Fig. 5 Schematic circuit diagram of the micro-controller based control

circuit to control the rotational and horizontal gliding motion of the
panels.

in energy collection. However, initial estimate shows that any

such loss will be limited to less than 1% of the total incident
energy. On the other hand, as the motors will be operated only
for a small fraction of the total time the panels collect energy,
the energy consumed by the motors will be only a small
fraction of the total energy collected by the system.
B. Calculation of Sunrise and Sunset Times
Microcontroller will take reading of the local time and date
from a digital clock and check for the sunrise and sunset times.
Sunrise time in actual solar time (AST) can be calculated from
the sunrise angle s using the following [6],
AST = 720mins s (4mins / deg ) .

START

Read time t
and day n

Real Time
Digital Clock

N=1
Calculate
TSR, TSS, T

(10)

Sun rise time in AST can be converted in local standard time

(LST) using the following relation [7],

T =TSR+ N. T

LST = AST (4 min s )(LSTM longitude ) ET . (11)

In (11), LSTM is the local solar time meridian, measured in
degrees, which runs through the center of each time zone, and
is given by,
longitude
LSTM = 15D
.
(12)

15

round to integer

t = T ?

t=T?

In (11), ET is the equation of time, which is an adjustment in

minutes to account for the earth's slightly irregular motion
around the sun, and is given by [7],

Rotate All
Panels

ET = 9.87 sin (2 D ) 7.53 cos(D ) 1.5 sin( D) .

N = N+1

(13)

Align middle panel in

vertically up position
and deactivate

where,

D = 360

n 80
.degree
365

(14)

t = T-T
T TSS
t = TSR + SR

with n being the nth day of the year.

Similarly, the LST for sunset can be calculated with s
being the sunset angle.
C. Flow Chart
The flow chart in Fig. 6 shows the algorithm used in the
micro-controller programming to control the horizontal gliding
and rotational motion of the panels to track the sun. The microcontroller reads the real time t and nth day from a digital clock
and determines the sunrise (TSR) and sunset (TSS) times using
the set of Eq. (10)-(14). It then calculates the time interval
T = (TSS T SR ) 12 at which the panels should be rotated.
The panels are rotated at every instance t = TSR + N.T, where
N is number of instances the panels should be rotated and
varies from 1 to 11.
When t = T, the time that corresponds to the maximum
position of the sun in the sky until which lower panels get full
sun exposure, the middle panel is turned in vertically upright
position and deactivated until t = TSS -T .
At t = TSR + (TSS TSR ) 2 , i.e. at noon, the upper and lower
panels are glided and realigned. At t = TSS , the sunset time,
the panels are reset to their original position and angle.

Y
Activate
middle panel

Glide Panels
N

N > 11 ?
Y

t = TSS ?
Y
Reset panels to
7.5 and glide

Fig. 6 Flow chart of the algorithm used in the microcontroller

programming to control the horizontal gliding and rotational motion of
the panels to track the sun.

V. CONCLUSIONS
A detailed performance analysis of a newly proposed
multilevel solar panel system is carried out. The system
proposed consists of 3 PV solar panels stacked one above
another at some fixed distance to minimize the floor space and
fitted with motors controlled by a micro-controller to track the
sun to maximize the energy collection. Calculation shows that
18 64 % more solar energy can be collected with the
proposed system compared with that of conventional single
level fixed panel of same size. The proposed system with three
panels can be operated in a space of two conventional fixed
panel systems and the tracking and sliding mechanisms will
make it more efficient than fixed panel system.
An automated micro-controller based solar tracker system
for the three level solar panel system has also been developed
that uses a set of equations to calculate the sunrise and sunset
times and send signals to the servo-motors to rotate the panels
by a fixed angle at pre-determined time intervals. Instead of
continuous tracking, the developed system rotates the panels
only 11 times a day, in a step of 15 in each rotation. As the
motors are operated only for a small fraction of the total time
the panels collect energy, the energy consumed by the motors
will be only a small fraction of the energy collected by the
system. Specially designed solar concentrator can be used to
further enhance the output of the system. Construction of the
proposed system with full micro-controller control is under
way.
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