Design and implementation of photovoltaic energy harvesting automaton

Author

Iskandar Askarov, New Jersey Institute of TechnologyFollow

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

1-14-2022

Degree Name

Master of Science in Computer Science - (M.S.)

Department

Computer Science

First Advisor

Jing Li

Second Advisor

Shantanu Sharma

Third Advisor

Xiaoning Ding

Abstract

Global domestic electricity consumption has been rapidly increasing in the past three decades. In fact, from 1990 to 2020, consumption has more than doubled from 10,120 TWh to 23,177 TWh [1]. Moreover, consumers have been turning more towards clean, renewable energy sources such as Photovoltaic. According to International Energy Agency, global Solar power generation alone in 2019 has reached almost 3% [4] of the electricity supply. Even though the efficiency of photovoltaic panels has been growing, presently, the highest efficiency solar panels available to an average consumer range only from 20%-22% [14]. Many research papers have been published to increase the harvesting efficiency as well as the monitoring implementations for photovoltaic.

In this thesis, we would like to introduce our design of a photovoltaic energy harvesting automaton - "IziBu". We have aimed our design objectives to be autonomy and scalability. Our design includes dual-axis Sun tracking and sensory data acquisition and processing. We have made our system to be powered solely by an attached photovoltaic panel using an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) and an external battery. Additionally, in case of a complete loss of a charge in the battery, our system has an ability to wake up when battery charge reaches the certain level. The automaton can operate as a standalone or a cluster member. Entire automaton is controlled by the scheduler we have designed.

Recommended Citation

Askarov, Iskandar, "Design and implementation of photovoltaic energy harvesting automaton" (2022). Theses. 1879.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/1879