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For millennia, stories have been told of mans’ attempts to control nature and these tales have led to many innovations. In order to utilize the sun, a clean renewable energy source, humans not only invented solar cells, but also developed solar tracker systems to efficiently gather solar energy with limited sunshine hours in a day. Solar tracker systems detect sunlight intensity and then adjust the angle of the solar panel to the best direction to enhance the power generation efficiency of solar cells.
However, such an outdoor system must constantly adjust the position of the panels, so the control equipment has to be able to withstand the harsh operating environment with multi-axis motion control, high-performance data acquisition, as well as a stable and reliable control device in order to meet the various requirements of the tracking system.
Advantech’s ADAM-4117 is a robust 8-channel analog input module with features such as broad temperature range, anti-noise, anti-surge, and so on can operate in harsh environments. This rugged module with Modbus obtains the input voltage signal and sends the data to the embedded PEC-3240 motion controller, which provides high-performance and built-in 4-axis motion control. Moreover, with its abundant motion control functions (2/3-axis linear, 2-axis circular interpolation function, continuous interpolation, T/S-curve speed profile, and position limit detection), the PEC-3240 can perfectly control the servo drive and motor in solar tracking system, and quickly adjust the stepping motor according to the angle of the sunlight, to ensure that the solar module is always in the best position to capture the maximum amount of sunlight.
According to sources at a solar power plant in China, they are amazed that the system operates almost without any failures and downtime after adopting Advantech’s IO module and embedded motion controller to be in the control mechanism of the tracking system. Advantech indicated that these two products can not only simplify the existing system architecture of the power plant, but also save costs with flexible configuration. Advantech’s robust design provides a reliable solution to enhance output from the power plant.
