ALIGNMENT AND DESIGN OF POINTING OF SOLAR PANEL FOR OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

This project work was aimed at the Alignement and Design of pointing of Solar Panel for optimal Performance. The solar panel was placed under the sun, the peak sun radiation was on the panel surface and then 17.5 volts was observed using a multimeter. While observing the voltage, the panel was slightly adjusted and the voltage varied at an angle away from the sun. The voltage depreciated. The output from the solar panel was connected to the charge controller with respect to their polarities and when the output voltage was observed, it read 12.56 volts which was right for charging 12 volts battery. The voltage was 17.5 volts DC because the solar and the charge controller were connected without load. Then load was added to the inverter which gave an output of 230 volts which was left for about 30 minutes. It was observed again and the voltage did not vary. The inverter has five LED indicators. The first indicator shows if the system is connected to the mains or not, the second indicator shows if the inverter system is switched ON or OFF, the third was used to display battery low or if the system experience any fault or not, the fourth indicator is used to show the battery full and the last indicator is used to show if the inverter is charging or not. The inverter also had an additional socket for plugging the inverter to mains to serves as another means to charge the batteries other than the solar system. When tested with the volt meter as it was plugged on the mains out, it read 14.4 volts which was basically because of the state of the charge level of the batteries. The batteries would normally self-discharge over time even when not used. Since the inverter included a triple cycle charger, it could continue to maintain the battery with equalization charge voltage of about 12 volts just to make sure that the battery does not discharge even it was on standby mode.