Solar energy is rapidly gaining notoriety as an important means of expanding renewable energy resources. As such, it is vital that those in engineering fields understand the technologies associated with this area. Our project will include the design and construction of a microcontroller-based solar panel tracking system. Solar tracking allows more energy to be produced because the solar array is able to remain aligned to the sun. This system builds upon topics learned in this course. A working system will ultimately be demonstrated to validate the design. Problems and possible improvements will also be presented. The unique feature of this solar tracking system is that instead of taking the earth as its reference, it takes the sun as a guiding source. Its active sensors constantly monitor the sunlight and rotate the panel towards the direction where the intensity of sunlight is maximum.

We all know Sun is the best source of energy source and has been shining since the universe was created. We can harness solar energy by either converting it into electricity using Solar cell or using solar thermal energy by means of solar cooker, solar water heater or by using it to heat or cool a room using solar passive systems. Amongst these the most popular and best method to harness solar energy is by using Solar cell. We all know during summer heat is more intense because sun rays are perpendicular to the earth surface and hence the solar energy is concentrated over a small region.This can be applied to solar cell as well viz. the power output from a solar cell is directly proportional to sine of angle between the cell surface and light rays. So it’s clear that the power output from a solar cell will be maximum when it is facing the sun i.e. the angle between its surface and sun rays is 900.Thus the setup by which the above objective is achieved is known as solar tracker. Solar trackers are continually being employed in practice to get max efficiency. In this project we will design a simplest single axis solar tracker and its concept can be expanded to make a full fledged dual axis solar tracker. We are making single axis for sake of simplicity and better understanding.