Abstract:
Abstract
Implementation of Solar Position Algorithm (SPA) on an electronic platform is presented.
The system consists of a microcontroller and a real time clock. Solar angles according to
the SPA were calculated on a computer for 5 years (for each minute). The calculated solar
angles indexed according to the time and downloaded to secure digital (SD) through the
microcontroller based SD card read/write system. Solar angles for any given time can be
retrieved by providing the time index to the look up table recorded in the SD card. 5 MB
of space is required to store such a data set for one year. The performance of this system
was evaluated by interfacing to a manual sun tracking system of a parabolic trough solar
concentrator. It was found to be that the maximum variation of the focal line is 1.5 cm and
it is within the full acceptance angle of 3.8º
