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arXiv · 2504.10765

Minimal Sensing for Orienting a Solar Panel

Jeremy Klotz·Shree K. Nayar
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Abstract

A solar panel harvests the most energy when pointing in the direction that maximizes the total illumination (irradiance) falling on it. Given an arbitrary panel orientation and an arbitrary environmental illumination, we address the problem of finding the direction of maximum total irradiance. We develop a minimal sensing approach where measurements from just four photodetectors are used to iteratively vary the tilt of the panel to maximize the irradiance. Many environments produce irradiance functions with multiple local maxima. As a result, simply measuring the gradient of the irradiance function and applying gradient ascent will not work. We show that a larger, optimized tilt between the detectors and the panel is equivalent to blurring the irradiance function. This has the effect of eliminating local maxima and turning the irradiance function into a unimodal one, whose maximum can be found using gradient ascent. We show that there is a close relationship between our approach and scale space theory. We collected a large dataset of high-dynamic range lighting environments in Manhattan, called UrbanSky. We use this dataset to conduct simulations to verify the robustness of our approach. Next, we simulate the energy harvested using our approach under dynamic illumination. Finally, we built a portable solar panel with four compact detectors and an actuator to conduct experiments in various real-world settings: direct sunlight, cloudy sky, urban settings with occlusions and shadows, and complex indoor lighting. In all cases, we show improvements in harvested energy compared to standard approaches for orienting a solar panel.

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Jeremy Klotz, Shree K. Nayar. 2025-08-11. Minimal Sensing for Orienting a Solar Panel. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2025.113833

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