Hello everyone,

The solar tracking team has continued to work on building the prototype so that we can conduct tests with the full sized 100W solar panels by the end of week 7. At the same time, we have conducted tests with the 100W solar panel to see the power loss from the panel being away from the sun at 25 degrees. We first aligned the panel perpendicular to the sun with the panel set up at about 45 degrees from the ground. Then, we marked the ground using a protractor to indicate azimuth angle changes up to 25 degrees. During the testing day, the weather was partly cloudy, so we were unable to get maximum values from the panel. However, we noticed that the power gain at 25 degrees of error gave similar power as when the panel is perpendicular.

We were also able to verify power consumptions of sensors and motors will be negligible compared to the power gained from tracking.

-Solar Tracking 2017-2018