• 제어로봇시스템학회논문지
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• 제17권4호
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• pp.388-396
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• 2011

Sun tracking system is the most important subsystem in parabolic dish type solar thermal power plant, since it determines the amount of thermal energy to be collected, thus affects the efficiency of solar thermal power plant most significantly. Various types of sun tracking systems are currently used. Among them, use of photo sensors to located the sun(which is called sensor type) and use of astronomical algorithm to compute the sun position(which is called program type) are two of the mostly used methods. Recently some uses CCD sensor, like CCD camera, which is called image processing type sun tracking system. This work is concerned with the analysis of sun tracking performance of various types of sun tracking systems currently used in the parabolic dish type solar thermal power plant. We first developed a sun tracking error measurement system. Then, we evaluate the performance of five different types of sun tracking systems, sensor type, program type, hybrid type(use of sensor and computed sun position simultaneously), tracking error compensated program type and image processing type. Experimentally obtained data shows that the tracking error compensated program type sun tracking system is very effective and could provide a good sun tracking performance. Also the data obtained shows that the performance of sensor type sun tracking system is being affected by the cloud significantly, while the performance of a program type sun tracking system is being affected by the sun tracking system's mechanical and installation errors very much. Finally image processing type sun tracking system can provide accurate sun tracking performance, but costs more and requires more computational time.