An active tracker uses motors to direct the panel toward the sun by relying on a sensing
circuit to detect light intensity. There are two main ways to mount a solar panel for tracking;
single axis and dual axis. Single axis trackers usually use a polar mount for maximum solar
efficiency. Polar trackers have one axis aligned to be roughly parallel to the axis of rotation of
the earth around the north and south poles. When compared to a fixed mount, a single axis
tracker increases the output by approximately 30% [1].The second way is a two axis mount
where one axis is a vertical pivot and the second axis is the horizontal. By using a combination
of the two axes, the panel can always be pointed directly at the sun. This method increases the
output by approximately 36% compared to stationary panels [1]. As the gain from a dual axis
tracking system is not a significant improvement over a single axis tracker, this project will focus
on a single axis horizontal angle tracking with a manually adjusted vertical angle.