ECE.07 – Smart Solar

• Benjamin Elias
• Halima Muthana
• Steven Nguyen
• Rahiya Rasheed

With the advancement in solar panel technology and the development of flexible photovoltaic (PV), it is no longer required to use a rigid, flat PV module to harvest energy from the sun. The panels being flexible and lightweight make them suitable to mount on non-flat surfaces and be used in a variety of applications. However, flexible solar panels currently face the challenge of not being as efficient as flat solar panels due to material properties of flexible solar panels, and they are not able to extract the maximum amount of power from the sun when they are curved. To optimize the efficiency of photovoltaic systems, we developed lightweight, durable, non-flat shaped solar that have the potential to increase the total energy harvest from the sun. By changing the shape of the panel, the panel gets more direct sunlight throughout the day rather than just at peak sunlight hours. The issue of partial shading over the panel, which makes finding the point at which power output can be maximized difficult, can be solved using a hybrid of power optimization algorithm that extracts maximum available power from panel under different conditions. Using an IC (incremental conductance) algorithm, we were able to confirm that the maximum power point had been reached. Using dSPACE in place of a microcontroller, we confirmed the functionality of the algorithm.