Engineering Commons^™

Photovoltaic Tracker Optimization With Unique Fault Detection And Enhanced Combiner System, Caitlin Nicole Conway

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Renewable energy resources are rapidly becoming extremely important as the world's energy consumption continues to rise. The most popular of these resources is solar energy and more specifically photovoltaic energy. Currently, solar modules on the market are still not highly efficient. In order to increase the productivity of solar energy systems, larger fixed-panel photovoltaic systems or tracking photovoltaic systems are utilized. The major disadvantage of larger photovoltaic systems is the increased space requirements. Therefore, tracking photovoltaic systems are the best alternative to achieve higher solar energy yields.

To date, the only method of monitoring tracking photovoltaic systems is with the …

Optimization Of Solar Cell Arrays Using The Fibonacci Search Algorithm, Felicia Tyyan Farrow

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In our energy hungry world, there is a growing demand to develop creative mechanisms to extract, conserve, and use energy from different resources. The use of solar cells to extract and convert solar energy into electrical energy is a growing and popular field of study because solar energy is clean, free, and renewable. One limitation for photovoltaic (PU) or solar technology is its loss in efficiency and availability as a result of shading or partial shading. Shading or partial shading decreases the total capable output power that the PV system can produce because the array is receiving irradiation from the …

Structural Design Of The 2013 Santa Clara University Solar Decathlon 'Radiant House', Katherine Mckenzie, Mey-Ling Leon

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

The Structural Team for the Santa Clara University Solar Decathlon 2013 Radiant House achieved the task of designing a structurally operative, yet efficient, innovative, and sustainable house that satisfies the needs of everyone from Team Radiant House. The loadings to be considered in the structural design were: dead load, live load, wind load, seismic load, and roof load. The house design implements a classic system of joists, beams, studs, and shear walls to transfer loads to the piers, and finally to the foundations, in combination with a steel framing system to direct loads, increase stiffness and simplify connections for ease …