Design and Optimization of a Wave Driven Solar Tracker for Floating Photovoltaic Plants

With advances in the ocean exploration, Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) system becomes appealing with the advantages of less valuable land use and higher efficiency. In current development, the PV module of the system is either fixed at an angle or actuated by motor to adjust the angle for solar tracking. In this paper, a novel Tracking-type FPV (TFPV) system is proposed and analysed. Rather than using motor as the actuation method, the proposed system utilized the natural wave energy to adjust the angle of the PV module for solar tracking. With this design, a floating PV plant can be built with reduced total cost and increased energy harvesting efficiency. The novel solar tracking design concept and a corresponding control strategy were firstly presented. Based on its dynamic modeling, the design of the system was analysed and optimized in the aspect of the structure scheme, panel size, and the adjustment frequency. A prototype was built to verify the control strategy on a 3D motion platform to simulate the wave and wind effects.