• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.53-62
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• 2011

Heliostat in the tower type solar thermal power plant is a sun tracking mirror system to reflect the solar energy to the receiver and the optical performance of it affects to the efficiency of whole power plant most significantly. Thus a proper design of structure of the heliostat reflective surface could be the most important step in the construction of such power plant. The work presented here is a design of structure of optical surface of heliostat, which will be used in 200kW solar thermal power plant. The receiver located at 43(m) high from ground in tower has $2{\times}2$(m) rectangular shape. We first developed the software tool to simulate the energy concentration characteristics of heliostat using the ray tracing technique. Then, the shape of heliostat reflective surface is designed with the consideration of heliostat's energy concentration characteristics, production cost and productivity. The designed heliostat's reflective surface has a structure formed by canting four of $1{\times}1$(m) rectangular flat plate mirror facet and the center of each mirror facet is located on the spherical surface, where the spherical surface is formulated by the mirror facet mounting frame.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.41-57
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• 2018

Concentrated Solar Photovoltaic (CPV) is a promising alternative to conventional solar structures. These solar tracking structures need to be optimized to be competitive against other types of energy production. In particular, the selection of the structural parameters needs to be optimized with regards to the dynamic wind response. This study aims to evaluate the effect of the main structural parameters, as selected in the preliminary design phase, on the wind response and then on the weight of the steel support structure. A parametric study has been performed where parameters influencing dynamic wind response are varied. The study is performed using a semi-deterministic time-domain wind analysis method. Unsteady aerodynamic model is applied for the shape of the CPV structure collector at different configurations in conjunction with a consistent mass-spring-damper model with the corresponding degrees of freedom to describe the dynamic response of the system. It is shown that, unlike the static response analysis, the variation of the peak wind response with many structural parameters is highly nonlinear because of the dynamic wind action. A steel structural optimization process reveals that close attention to structural and site wind parameters could lead to optimal design of CPV steel support structure.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.110-118
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• 2008

The regulated peak power tracking (RPPT) systems such as the series structure and the parallel structure are commonly used in the satellite space power system. However, this structure processes the solar array power to the load through two regulators during one orbit cycle, which reduces the energy transfer efficiency. The series-parallel structure for the RPPT system can improve the power conversion efficiency, but an additional regulator increases the cost, size and weight of the system. In this paper, a simplified series-parallel space power system that consists of two regulators is proposed. The proposed system has the similar energy transfer efficiency with the series-parallel structure by adding one switch to the series structure, which reduces the cost, size and the weight. The large signal stability analyses is provided to understand the four main modes of system operation. In order to compare the energy efficiency with a series structure, the simulation is performed. The experimental verifications are performed using a prototype hardware with TMS320F2812 DSP and 200W solar arrays.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.11
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• pp.180-187
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• 2013

The dinger in solar generation is the amount of sunlight which the solar cells absorb. Various types of solar trackers, which rotate themselves in order to make the solar cells face the sun as much as possible, have been developed, and especially the method of tracking with two axes has greatly contributed in increasing the generation amount at work sites. Among theses 2-axis solar trackers, the inclination-dependent 2-axis solar tracker are widely utilized for its advantages of requiring less initial investment and easy maintenance due to a solid structure. However, the drawback is that the generation efficiency is relatively low because of the structural restriction that limits the rotation angle, thus making it less efficient when tracking the sun. This paper proposes a method to increase the generation efficiency of the inclination-dependent 2-axis solar tracker. It also contains the derived equations needed for precise controlling along with a method to keep tracking with the other axis even when one has reached its angle limit. To confirm that the proposed method increases the amount of incidence onto the solar cells, formulas needed for operation on the proposed method and tracking the exact position of the sun are derived, and applying this to the quarterly data of Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute it shows maximum over 11.1% more incidence compared to existing methods.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.354-361
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• 2016

Parallel robots are usually used for performing pick-and-place motion to increase productivity in high-speed environments. The present study proposes a high-speed parallel robot and a control approach to improve the tracking performance for the purpose of handling a solar cell. However, the target processes are not limited to the solar cell-handling field. Therefore, a delta-type parallel manipulator is designed, and a ball joint structure is specifically proposed to increase the allowed angle that would meet the required workspace. A control algorithm considering the synchronization between multiple joints in a closed-chain mechanism is also suggested to improve the tracking performance, where the tracking and synchronization errors are simultaneously considered. In addition, a prototype machine with the proposed ball joint is implemented. A satisfactory tracking performance is achieved by applying the proposed control algorithm, with a cycle time of 0.3 s for a 0.1 kg payload.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.27 no.12
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• pp.1-9
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• 2013

A standalone LED lighting system in using solar energy has been used usually less than 70W of lighting power because of a troublesome installation and maintenance. In this system, as more and more LED lighting power increases, the capacity of photovoltaic panel does proportionally, and to improve the charging efficiency of solar energy, MPPT(Maximum Power Point Tracking) techniques is used frequently, but the solar tracker is not. In this paper, a solar tracker which traces the light of the sun in varying hour to hour is studied to apply to the standalone LED lighting system. This solar tracker consists of twin axis for tracing the azimuth and altitude respectively, and it has a robust structure with safe mode to stand a strong wind. As a result of analysis, generating efficiency of the traced type has improved on the fixed one 28.84% on average.

• Journal of Institute of Convergence Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-4
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• 2018

In this study, design and manufacture of LFR (Linerar Fresnel Reflector) system was performed for solar thermal absorption cooling. The LFR system was designed considering the expansion and convenience to be installed according to the cooling capacity of the applicable building. Twelve LFR modules with a total reflection area of $204m^2$ were installed. The automatic tracking system was applied to track the sun during the daytime.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.397-400
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• 2015

In this paper a solar energy harvesting system with low-cost MPPT control for low duty-cycled sensor nodes is proposed. The targeted applications are environment, structure monitoring sensor nodes that are not required successively to operate, and MPPT(Maximum Power point Tracking) control using simple circuits is low-cost differently than existing MPPT control. The proposed MPPT control is implemented using linear relationship between the open-circuit voltage of a solar cell. The designed MPPT circuit traces the maximum power point by sampling periodically the open circuit voltage of the solar cell and delivers the maximum available power to the load. The proposed circuit is designed in 0.35um CMOS process. The designed chip area is $975um{\times}1025um$ including pads. Measured results show that the designed system can track the MPP voltage by sampling periodically the open circuit voltage of solar cell.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.109.2-109.2
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• 2011

A photovoltaic system is getting the spotlight for a environment-friendly energy source. But its location is limited because a lot of land is necessary for photovoltaic arrays. Nevertheless, its dissemination is rapidly increasing more than 40 % every year and exceeded about 400 MW in 2009. The radical growth of a photovoltaic system aggravated a lack of sites, so that forests and farmland were destroyed. It is demanded to make use of a vacant lot or little piece of land for the way to solve the lack of sites and improve the location requirements for a photovoltaic system. General photovoltaic arrays are consist of a single layer structure and needs enough separation distances to maximize the amount of solar radiation and to eliminate influences by the shadow of other arrays. So that a large amount of land is required for the site. The solar cell arrays with long separation distances can not be placed in a small vacant lot and its site application efficiency is low. This study optimized photovoltaic arrays as multilayered structure with movable sleeves for the efficient photovoltaic in a small site. The existing photovoltaic arrays with a single layer structure were fixed or tracking systems. In this experimental equipment, photovoltaic arrays attached to the multilayers have rectilinear movement and rotary motion using sleeves. Therefore, shadow influences were removed and the generation capacity was improved. On the simulation result, generation increased by about 30% in the same site considering shadow influences and so on.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.33-41
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• 2014

Heliostat field in a tower type solar thermal power plant is the sun tracking mirror system which affects the overall efficiency of solar thermal power plant most significantly while consumes a large amount of energy to operate it. Thus optimal operation of it is very crucial for maximizing the energy collection and, at the same time, for minimizing the operating cost. Heliostat field operational algorithm is the logics to control the heliostat field efficiently so as to optimize the heliostat field optical efficiency and to protect the system from damage as well as to reduce the energy consumption required to operate the field. This work presents the heliostat field operational algorithm developed for the heliostat field of 200kW solar thermal power plant built in Daegu, Korea. We first review the structure of heliostat field control system proposed in the previous work to provide the conceptual framework of how the algorithm developed in this work could be implemented. Then the methodologies to operate the heliostat field properly and efficiently, by defining and explaining the various operation modes, are discussed. A simulation, showing the heat flux distribution collected by the heliostat field at the receiver, is used to show the usefulness of proposed heliostat field operational algorithm.