TECHNICAL AREA Project: Electric Photovoltaic Installation

In the last years there has been an unstoppable increase in the use of renewable energy sources in general and of solar energy in particular. This increase may be due to the foreseeable exhaustion of fossil energy resources and the environmental consequences of their exploitation. The Sotavento Galicia Foundation presents this project in order to analyse the different technologies that exist nowadays to optimize the maximum exploitation of solar energy.

Therefore Sotavento has started three photovoltaic installations with the same power but with different solar technologies. This technological diversity will allow a comparative study of the two most common systems that are on the market now.

The main aim is to compare the generation of photovoltaic energy with fixed and mobile systems and to check the influence that the installation of solar followers has on photovoltaic panels in the geographical region of Sotavento. The systems of this project are:

• Fixed installation
• Installation with solar follower on one axis by astronomic calendar
• Installation with solar follower on two axes by solar prisms

Every installation is composed of 15 polycrystalline photovoltaic panels of 120 Wp each, so that they sum a power of 1800 Wp.

One of the other aims is to divulge the results in a simple and interactive way by creating an informatic application where all instant and historic dates of the three installations will be shown: productions, output, avoided CO2 emissions, costs, etc.

This new installation, with polycrystalline solar panels, is added to the already present typology of photovoltaic solar panels at Sotavento: monocrystalline and fine layer (CIS technology)

Used follower systems:

• Fixed, without solar following, with inclination of 35º over the ground and permanently pointed to the south.
• With one axis, pointed to east-west and permanent inclination of 35º over the ground. Solar follower with astronomic calendar. The orientation motor works with a battery charged with electric energy from a solar panel of the proper installation.
• With two axes, pointed to east-west and winter-summer. Solar follower with prisms that detect the position of the sun. The electricity the motor needs is provided by the net.

Each of them is composed of 15 polycrystalline photovoltaic panels of 120 Wp each. The whole installed power of every panel block sums 1800Wp.

Each installation has its own investor that reads the electric production, voltage intensity, generated energy etc. The data of the investors are sent to analysers to be shown later on a monitor by means of an interactive program that incorporates additional information for a better divulgation of the project.

The installations are already working and connected to the net, only the interactive informatics part to divulge the project is still unsettled.