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Project Idea | Go Solar Green

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Project Title: Go Solar Green

Introduction: Go solar green is an application made for solar panel users. It helps them to identify the correct angle at which the panel should be installed, to find the correct direction the solar panel should face with the help of a compass and allow the user to use their phones to adjust the solar panel and to bring it to a correct angle just by keeping the phone onto the panel. It also notifies and reminds the user time-to-time as season changes to adjust the panel. In addition, it also makes easy for the users to select the solar panel based on power output.

Conceptual framework: The application comprises three domains as mentioned below:

  • 1.1. Quick mode/static mode (when GPS is not available): This mode further comprises of three sub-domains:
    • 1.1.1. Select city: User can select the city where solar panel needs to be installed. The appropriate angle of solar panel for three different seasons (summer, winter, and spring) would be displayed. The user can select the season according to his preference and slide to go to next page.
    • 1.1.2. Direction: A compass is used to help you find the correct direction the solar panel should face. You have to rotate your phone for this to get to know the right direction.
    • 1.1.3. Angle: You can also use your mobile phone to adjust the solar panel and to bring it to a correct angle just by keeping your phone onto the panel.
  • 1.2. GPS mode (when GPS is available): This mode further comprises of the same sub-domains as explained in the static mode except, “rather than selecting the city, it would use your GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude) to find the pre-eminent angle as per the location”.
  • 1.3. Power estimate mode: It would evaluate the power output of solar panel, either by entering monthly usage of power and hours of sunlight at your location or by entering the number of appliances you use with the total number of hours.

Objective: Our objective is to facilitate the solar panel users to use our application for the purpose of aligning the panel to the correct angle as per the season and maintaining it throughout the year. With an increase in population, the use of resources is increasing and if the same continues, the resources will soon extinct. To avoid such a situation, we should start using renewable sources of energy. Go solar green is one such application that would help people who use solar energy. The problem faced by the solar panel users is that the tilt angle of the panel gets distorted with time due to natural calamities. Also, they require an engineer to modify the tilt with the change of season who would charge more. Our application serves as a complete guide to all the users for checking the angle and changing it with the season to maximize the energy produced by the solar panel.
Generally, the solar panels used in homes and industries are placed considering the main factor that affects the efficiency of the photovoltaic system i.e. The amount of sunlight captured by them. Our solution is to facilitate this factor and provide an appropriate result to the user, so that photovoltaic panel (solar panel) produces
effective results.

Details of Project Report Work:

The proposed method of entire application is to install the solar panel. The initial step is to know the specification of solar panel required to set up, for this we have power mode which is further divided as 1) power estimate 2) load evaluation.

Power estimate: By monthly usage, and estimated hours of sunlight on average in a particular area as input, the amount of energy that could be produced is estimated. This is evaluated as:

(daily usage of power) / (k*daily hours of sunlight)

Where k is constant and generally taken as 0.8

Load evaluation: Setting up average usage of loads i.e. Number of appliances, its usage in hrs on daily basis is used to estimate the total power consumption and the number of hours of sunlight as input, the power generated by the solar panel is obtained. This is evaluated as:

(power consumption) / (daily hours of sunlight)

Here constant k is considered as 1

Next step is the installation of solar panel which could be carried out either using quick mode or GPS mode. Quick mode serves as a static mode which uses the database provided by green stream publishing for estimating angle. It requires selecting city/state as input, and angles for three season summer, winter, and spring would be provided. On other hands, GPS mode uses location as an input for evaluating the angle for the same. Using location we have latitude and longitude which are used as:

Summer tilt: ((latitude * 0.9) – 23.5),
Winter tilt: ((latitude * 0.9) + 29),
Spring tilt: (latitude – 2.5)

Further, the system provides magnetic compass for facing the panel in the direction required. It uses magnetic field sensor of smartphones for estimating the direction. Once the panel is placed in direction specified next step is to set up the panel at the required tilt, this is achieved by using orientation sensor of smartphones which when
placed over the panel results the tilt of panel. The result includes following calculations:

The global positioning system (gps) tracks the position of user through its latitude and longitude. The values of latitude and longitude are used to calculate the angle of tilt in different seasons. The mathematical expressions used are:

Summer tilt: ((latitude * 0.9) – 23.5),
Winter tilt: ((latitude * 0.9) + 29),
Spring tilt: (latitude – 2.5)

And average tilt can be calculated by:

Average tilt = (summer tilt + winter tilt + spring tilt) / 3

For evaluating the load, the user needs to select the load that he wants to run on the solar panel. Once the loads are selected by the user, then the total power consumption is evaluated by:

Total power consumption in watts = watts * quantity * hours/day

And finally the power output is evaluated by:

Power output of solar panel = total power consumption in watts / total hours of sunshine

Our country India lies in the northern hemisphere. Therefore when the sun travels, it creates an elliptical trajectory moving from east to west and having an inclination in the south. Hence to get the maximum quantity of solar energy, panels in india face towards the south. Mobile sensors that android use to determine the position are geomagnetic field sensor and the accelerometer. The geomagnetic field sensor and accelerometer return multidimensional arrays of sensor values for each sensor event. The geomagnetic field sensor provides geomagnetic field strength values for each of the three coordinate axes during a single sensor event. Likewise, the accelerometer sensor measures the acceleration applied to the device during a sensor event. Our application uses one of these sensor values to adjust the solar panel and to bring it to a correct angle just by keeping the mobile device onto the panel.

Research Paper:

Tarun Sethia et al. International Journal of Recent Research Aspects
ISSN: 2349-7688,
Vol. 4, Issue 3, Sept 2017, pp. 59-62
https://www.ijrra.net/Vol4issue3/IJRRA-04-03-12.pdf

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reEhFU3Pf60

Team Members:

  • Tarun sethia (ABES EC)
  • Shreya Bharti (ABES EC)

Note: This project idea is contributed for ProGeek Cup 2.0- A project competition by GeeksforGeeks.


Last Updated : 25 Jun, 2018
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