Residential Solar Panel Performance Improvement

based on Optimal Intervals and Optimal Tilt Angle

Morteza Sarailoo1, Student Member, IEEE, Shahrokh Akhlaghi1, Student Member, IEEE, Mandana
Rezaeiahari2, Hossein Sangrody1, Student Member, IEEE,
1
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Binghamton University, State University of New York,
Binghamton, NY 13902, USA {msarail1,sakhlag1, habdoll1}@binghamton.edu
2
Industrial Engineering Department, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY
13902, USA, mrezaei1@binghamton.edu

Abstract—In this paper, daily and yearly performance of a solar
panel for residential usage is improved. To this end, an
optimization problem is proposed and solved to find the optimal
periods for a given number of intervals. It is shown that a
limited number of tilt angle adjustments can significantly
increase the maximum power production of a solar panel if the
intervals are chosen properly. Therefore, this paper proposes a
three steps algorithm to find the optimal period for each
interval. First, the optimal tilt angle for a given interval is
computed by using a Bee Algorithm (BA). Second, an
optimization problem is formed and solved to get new periods
for all intervals, which is guaranteed to have a better
performance than the previous periods. And finally, a stopping
criterion is checked to decide whether the previous step has to
be repeated or the obtained periods are acceptable. The effects
of the initial intervals on the results of the proposed algorithm
are also investigated. The effectiveness of the proposed approach
is studied at the Binghamton area, NY, US. The results show
improvement in the received solar power by using the optimal
intervals.
Index Terms--Solar panel performance, optimal tilt angle,
optimal interval.
I. INTRODUCTION
Implementation of renewable energy resources, such as
solar, geothermal, wind and etc., are growing rapidly due to
much lower impact on environment. The renewable energy
resources are offering clean and domestic source of energy.
Solar energy as a primary source of renewable energy is
becoming increasingly popular due to being a ubiquitous and
immense source of energy which can provide abundant heat
and electric power [1]. Solar panels and solar collectors are
among the most promising renewable energy technologies.
Solar radiation has a great influence on the performance of the
solar panels and solar collectors. The amount of solar radiation
incident on solar panels and solar collectors is significantly
affected by their orientation and tilt angle [2]-[3]. The solar
panels and solar collectors generally are oriented toward the
equator, i.e. toward the south in northern hemisphere and
toward the north in southern hemisphere.
The tilt angle of the solar panels plays an essential rule in
capturing maximum solar radiation. The optimal tilt angle of a
solar panel depends on the daily, monthly and yearly path of
the sun. The accurate determination of the optimal tilt angle is
essential for the maximum energy production for the location
of interest. The optimal tilt angle is calculated by searching for
a tilt angle for which the maximum total radiation during a
specific period of time and a specific location is collected. The
calculation of the optimal tilt angle depends on latitude, solar
radiation characteristics, utilization period, and climatic
condition at the particular site. A simple and secure solution to
capture the maximum daily energy is to use a solar tracking
system. Yet, the trackers are mechanical, their associated
facilities are costly, and they consume energy. A more
practical solution is to find the optimal tilt angles for a specific
number of intervals and manually orient the solar collectors
during each interval. Finding the optimal tilt angle and optimal
duration for an interval can be formulated as optimization
problems, which are challenging to solve.
In recent years, many studies have been conducted on
calculation of the optimal tilt angle of solar panels and solar
collectors in different locations around the world. Saraf and
Hamad [4] studied the relation between the tilt angle and
harvested energy from solar collectors on a flat plate in Iraq by
calculating the harvested energy for various tilt angles. They
concluded that adjusting the tilt angle 8 times a year can
capture the same amount of energy as when the tilt angle is
adjusted daily. Skeiker [5] calculated the optimal tilt angle of
the solar collectors by using a mathematical model in the
Syrian area. It was concluded that adjusting the tilt angle 12
times a year can capture approximately the maximum solar
radiation. Benghanem [6] determined the optimal tilt angle of
the solar collectors in Saudi Arabia to get the maximum solar
radiation. He concluded that, monthly adjustment can achieve
8% more surface radiation in compare with yearly adjustment.
In US, Lave and Kleissl [7] calculated the optimal tilt angle
and the azimuth angle of solar panels. The result showed that a
solar panel with a fixed tilted angle gets 10-25% higher
irradiations with increasing latitude. In Turkey, Bakirci [8]
found that the variation of the optimal tilt angle throughout a
year is between the 0$ and 65$ . In [9], authors determined the

‹,(((
optimal tilt angle of solar panels in Taiwan by using non-
linear time varying particle swarm optimization. Despotovic
and Nedic [10] estimated the optimal tilt angle of a solar panel
to get the maximum total radiation by searching for the values
of slope and orientation. Akhlaghi et. al. [11] calculated the
optimal number of intervals and their corresponding optimal
tilt angles for residential solar panels at different locations in
the US.
As it has been reported by most researchers, the maximum
solar power can be harvested only when the solar panel
includes a tracking system. An alternative, especially for
residential solar panels, is to adjust the tilt angle manually
couple of times during a year. Researchers have suggested
different number of intervals, from 4 to 12 [4]-[6], [11];
however, no one has proposed a systematic algorithm to
optimally divide a year into the suggested number of intervals.
In this paper a novel algorithm is proposed for increasing the
overall and daily output of a solar panel by finding the optimal
periods for a given number of intervals. It is shown that
because a limited number of tilt angle adjustments is sufficient
to achieve a significant improvement, it is not necessary to
implement a continuous solar tracking system. The proposed
novel algorithm is used to find the optimal periods for the
desired number of intervals, iteratively, starting from the
optimal tilt angles for the initial intervals. The optimal tilt
angle for a given interval is computed by using BA. It is
shown that the proposed algorithm is independent of the
selection of initial intervals. The proposed approach is applied
at Binghamton area, NY, US.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
solar model, that captures relation between orientation of a
solar panel and its received solar radiation, is presented in
details. The optimal tilt angle using the BA is formulated and
presented in Section III. In Section IV, the novel approach for
determination of the optimal intervals is presented. The results
of using the proposed algorithm at Binghamton area, NY, US
are presented in Section V. Finally, conclusions are drawn in
Section VI.
II. SOLAR RADIATION MODEL
This section introduces the basic of solar radiation and
model to determine the solar radiation on the surface of solar
panels. The model presented in this section is for northern
hemisphere. The model for southern hemisphere can be
obtained similarly. On average, the solar radiation incident
outside the earth’s atmosphere which is called
“extraterrestrial radiation” is around 1367 W/m2 [6].
A. Solar Geometry
The sun’s position in the sky can be described by zenith
angle ( θ ) which is the angle of the sun relative to a line
vertical to the earth’s surface. The zenith angle can be
calculated as (Shown in Fig. 1):
cos θ = sin ϕ sin δ + cos ϕ cos δ cos ω (1)
where ϕ is the latitude of the location and ω is the hour
angle which is the angle between the longitude of the location
on the earth’s surface and the longitude that is parallel to sun’s
beam. Since the earth revolves every 24 h, therefore ω varies
‹,(((
by 360$ / 24 h = 15$ per hour with morning negative and
afternoon positive. The declination ( δ ) of the sun is the angle
between a plane perpendicular to a line between the sun and
earth and the earth’s axis. It should be noted that the earth’s
axis is tilted around 23.45$ with respect to its orbit around the
sun. The declination angle of the sun can be approximated as.
23.45π § 2π (284 + n) · (2)
δ= sin ¨ ¸
180 © 365 ¹
where n is the nth day of the year [12], for example the January
1st is 1.
α
θ
β
γ
γn ϕ
Fig. 1. Zenith, azimuth and hour angles
The title angle ( β ) of solar panel is the angle between the
surface plane and the horizontal which varies from 0$ to 90$ .
The azimuth angle ( γ ) is the sun’s position with respect to the
north-south axis which varies from −180$ to 180$ .
B. Solar time, local time, sunrise and sunset angles
Solar time refers to the sun’s location relative to the
observer, which is different for various longitudes where the
solar time is calculated. Whereas the local time is same in the
entire time zone. To adjust the solar time, the term (Longsm-
LongLocal)/15 must be added to the local time. Longsm is the
longitude of the standard meridian of the time zone of
observer and LongLocal is the observer longitude in degree.
The sunrise and sunset occur when the sun is at the
horizon when the cosine of zenith angle is zero. From
equation (1) the sunrise ( ωsr ) and sunset ( ωss ) can be
achieved as:
ωsr , ss = cos −1 (− tan ϕ tan δ ) (3)
C. Global, Beam, Diffuse and Reflected Radiation
Global solar radiation can be categorized into direct or
beam radiation (HB), diffuse radiation (HD) and reflect
radiation (HR). Direct or beam solar radiation (HB) is the
incident solar radiation which directly comes from the sun and
reaches the earth’s surface without being considerably
scattered. To calculate the direct beam radiation several
models have been proposed by researchers [7]-[10]. The direct
beam radiation received on inclined surface can be estimated
by following equation.
H B = ( H g − H d ) Rb (4)
where Hg and Hd are the monthly mean daily global radiation
[12] and diffuse radiation on a horizontal surface. Rb is the
ratio of the direct beam radiation between tilted surface and
horizontal surface. Rb for the northern hemisphere (-) and be used for solving the optimization problem (10). In addition,
southern hemisphere (+) can be estimated as follows: because (10) is continuous and it is not possible to implement
cos(ϕ # β ) cos δ sin ωss + ωss sin(ϕ # β ) sin δ (5) such cost function using heuristic algorithms following
Rb = optimization problem is solved instead of (10).
cos ϕ cos δ sin ωss + ωss sin ϕ sin δ
where the ωss is the sunset hour angle for the tilted surface,
Maximize
β
¦ k
H T (k Δt ) (11)

given by equation (3). In this paper, BA is used for solving (11). BA has been
used by many researchers for solving various optimization
Diffuse radiation (HD) is the sunlight radiation which is
problems [17]. Using the BA, a function BA(.) is introduced
scattered by the clouds or particles. Several methods to
for finding the optimal tilt angle of a given interval Si as ȕi,opt=
estimate the ratio of diffuse solar radiation between tilted
BA(Si).
surface and horizontal surface have been proposed in the
literature which can be classified into isotropic and anisotropic The data for solar radiation on different locations are
[5], [12]-[13]. Diffuse radiation can be estimated as: available at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
website. For prediction of the optimal tilt angle, here only an
H D = Rd H d (6)
average of the last 20 years observation data has been used;
To choose between different models, the reader may refer however one can use more advance techniques such as
to [1] for more information. In this paper, the diffuse radiation quantile regression [18]. Fig. 2 Shows the result of using BA
for clear atmosphere is calculated based on Liu and Jordan’s for computation of optimal tilt angle at Binghamton, NY, US
model [10] as: for different intervals, namely daily, monthly, seasonal and
yearly. It can be seen that optimal tilt angle varies significantly
1 + cos( β ) (7) during a year, thus using the yearly or seasonal optimal tilt
Rd =
2 angles will result in smaller harvested power.
Reflected radiation (HR) is reflected from the ground
significantly when the ground is covered by snow. This
radiation only strikes by tilted panels and can be calculated by
[13]:
1 − cos( β ) (8)
HR = Hg ρ
2
where ρ is the ground albedo. If no information is available,
based on the literature it can be assumed to be 0.2 [10]-[14].
According to the aforementioned equations, total radiation
(HT) on the surface of a solar panel normally estimated as:
HT = H B + H D + H R
(9)
1 − cos( β )
= ( H g − H d ) Rb + Rd H d + H g ρ
2
Fig. 2. Optimal tilt angle for different intervals, daily, monthly, seasonal
Based on (9), in order to estimate the global solar radiation and yearly at Binghamton, NY, US.
on tilted surface, the direct and diffuse component of global
radiation are needed. As it will be shown shortly in Section V (Fig. 3), there is a
nonlinear relation between the number of intervals and the
III. OPTIMAL TILT ANGLE COMPUTATION USING BEE aggregated received power during a year, i.e., the increase rate
ALGORITHM of the aggregated power during a year significantly decreases
as the number of intervals increases. In other words, investing
Optimal tilt angle problem can be formulated as a search in an automatic tracking system may not result in a great
for the best tilt angle (ȕ) that can provide the maximum solar advantage over manually adjusting the optimal tilt angle a
radiation (HT) at the surface of a solar panel over a given couple of times during a year.
period of time, as in (10).
t1 (10) IV. PROPOSED APPROACH FOR FINDING THE OPTIMAL
Maximize
β ³t0
H T (t )dt
INTERVALS
It is possible to also add some inequality constraints to As mentioned in introduction, scholars have suggested to
guarantee that during some given intervals total harvested adjust the optimal tilt angle of a solar panel a fixed number of
solar radiation should be greater than a minimum value. times over a year, i.e. 4-12 times, in order to improve the
Because of highly nonlinear relationship between tilt angle (ȕ) performance of solar panels [4]-[6], [11]. Still, the optimal
and the total of the solar radiation over a time interval at the intervals for tilt angle adjustment has NOT been studied yet.
surface of a solar panel (HT), this optimization problem cannot Therefore, this paper proposed a systematic approach to
be directly solved using mathematical programming such as determine the optimal periods for the desired number of
convex optimization. Therefore a heuristic algorithm, such as intervals (N). The proposed approach is summarized in three
particle swarm [15], genetic algorithm [16], or BA [17], has to steps.

‹,(((
Step (0) - Initialization area. It should be noted; this result may change for different
A year is equally divided into the desired number of areas.
intervals N and sets Si0 are formed i = 1,…, N. Set Si0 includes
all days belonging to the ith interval. The optimal tilt angle of
each set βi0,opt is calculated by solving (11) over the period of
the interval, and its corresponding day di0,opt in that interval is
identified.
Step (I) - optimal Intervals
Each day of the year is reassigned to one of the N intervals
in a way to minimize a weighted multi-objective optimization
problem (12).
k
N Mi
Minimize ¦¦ §¨© λ β
i =1 j =1
k −1
i ,opt
−1
− β kj + (1 − λ ) dik,opt − d kj ·¸
¹ Fig. 3. Aggregated solar power during a year as a function of the number
(12) of intervals, at Binghamton, NY, US.
subject to ¦M i
k
i = 365,  Sik = ∅, In addition, Fig. 4 shows the daily solar power over a year
for different intervals, i.e., daily, monthly, seasonal and yearly.
∀d qk ∈ S kp , d qk ≠ f ( S kp ), d qk ≠ g ( S kp ) → d qk−1, d qk+1 ∈ S kp
From this figure, it can be seen that monthly intervals can
Where sets Sik are optimization variables, k represents provide almost the same power as adjusting optimal tilt angle
on a daily basis.
iteration of the algorithm, M ik denotes the total number of the
days in the set Sik , functions f(.) and g(.) determine the first
and last days belonging to the set Sik , and Ȝ is a forgetting
factor which 0 < Ȝ <1, i.e., Ȝ = 0.9995.
Step (II) - Stopping criterion
Recalculate the optimal tilt angle βik,opt for new intervals
k k-1
Sik if |ȕ i,opt - ȕ i,opt| ” İ for all i, or k > kmax stops; otherwise
for each set Sik , obtained from previous step, find the optimal
tilt angle βik,opt and its corresponding day dik,opt in that interval.
Go to step (I).
Remark 1. Here a procedure is proposed to solve the
optimization problem (12). This producer takes advantage of Fig. 4. Daily solar power during a year for different intervlas at
Binghamton, NY, US.
the direct connection between the output of a solar panel and
its tilt angle. When the tilt angle of a solar panel gets closer to 70 70

the optimal tilt angle of a day, the outputs of the solar panel 60 60

also gets closer to its maximum for that day. Thus, following 50 50

procedure is proposed. Starting from dk1=dk-11,opt, find 40 40

Degree

Degree

j=argmini{Ȝ| ȕk-11,opt –BA(dk1)|+(1- Ȝ)| dk-11,opt - dk1 |,…, Ȝ| ȕk- 30 Interval 1

Interval 2
30 Interval 1
Interval 2
1 k k-1 k k-1 k
i,opt –BA(d 1)|+(1- Ȝ)| d i,opt - d 1 |,…, Ȝ| ȕ N,opt –BA(d 1)|+(1-
20 Interval 3 Interval 3
20
Interval 4 Inetrval 4

Ȝ)| dk-1N,opt - dk1|}, and assign dk1 to the set Skj. Set dk2=dk-11,opt 10 10

+1 and repeat the previous procedure until all days of a year 0

0 20 40 60 80 100
0
0 20 40 60 80 100

has been assigned to one of the N sets Sk1,…, SkN.

Iteration Iteration

Fig. 5. Optimal tilt angles of intervals as a function of the algorithm

V. CASE STUDY
In this section to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed
approach, the solar radiation data of Binghamton, NY, US is
used as a case study. Based on simulation studies, the effect of
different number of intervals on the total obtained solar power
in Binghamton area during a year has been studied. Fig. 3
shows the effect of increasing the number of intervals on the
total power using the optimal tilt angle for each interval. From
this figure, it is obvious that, after four intervals there is not
big achievement on the total received power in Binghamton
iteration, left) starting from seasonal intervals, right) starting from
equally divided year into 4 intervals, at Binghamton, NY, US
In order to show the effects of the initial intervals on the
results of the proposed approach, the proposed algorithm has
been applied to two different sets of initial intervals for N = 4;
dividing a year into 4 equal intervals and seasonal intervals.
Fig. 5 shows the optimal tilt angle of each interval as a
function of the algorithm iteration for seasonal intervals and
equally divided initial intervals. In addition, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7
present the daily solar power for both sets of initial intervals
and optimal intervals. It is clear that regardless of the initial
intervals, the daily solar power of the optimal intervals are

‹,(((
almost the same, although the algorithm converges to two finding the optimal periods was applied to the data obtained
different sets of optimal intervals. for Binghamton area, NY, US with 4 desired intervals. It was
p g p

8500 4 1 2 3
shown that regardless of the initial intervals, the proposed
algorithm always results in almost same daily solar power for
8000 the optimal intervals. In addition, it was observed that using
the proposed appraoch with a reasonable number of intervals,
7500
i.e. 3-5, results in almost same solar power as using daily
adjustment of solar panels.
2
W/m

7000

6500 VII. REFERENCES

[1] O. S. Ohunakin, O. O. Akinnawonu, “Assessment of wind energy
6000 potential and the economics of wind power generation in Jos, Plateau
4 1 2 3 State, Nigeria,” Energy for Sustainable Development, vol. 16, pp.78-
5500 83, Mar. 2012;
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Day
Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec [2] A. A. El-Sebaii, F. S. Al-Hazmi, A. A. Al-Ghamdi, S. J. Yaghmour,
“Global, direct and diffuse solar radiation on horizontal and tilted
Fig. 6. Daily solar power for seasonal intervals, blue circles, and optimal surfaces in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,” Applied Energy. Vol. 87, pp. 568-
intervals, red crosses. The blue dashed vertical lines denote the boundery 576, Feb. 2010.
of the seasonal intervals and black dash-dotted vertical lines denote the [3] C. Demain, M. Journée, C. Bertrand, “Evaluation of different models to
boundary of the optimal intervals, at Binghamton, NY, US. estimate the global solar radiation on inclined surfaces,” Renewable
Energy. vol. 50, pp. 710-721, Feb. 2013.
[4] G. R. Saraf, F. A. Hamad, “Optimum tilt angle for a flat plate solar
8500 1 2 3 4 collector,” Energy Conversion and Management. Vol. 28, pp. 185-191,
Dec. 1988.
8000
[5] K. Skeiker, “Optimum tilt angle and orientation for solar collectors in
Syria,” Energy Conversion and Management. Vol. 50, pp. 2439-2448,
7500 Sep. 2009.
[6] M. Benghanem, “Optimization of tilt angle for solar panel: Case study
W/m2

7000
6500
6000
5500 4 1 2 3
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Day
Fig. 7. Daily solar power for equally divided year into 4 intervals, blue
circles, and optimal intervals, red crosses. The blue dashed vertical lines
denote the boundery of the equally divided year into 4 intervals and
black dashed-dot vertical lines denote the boundary of the optimal
intervals, at Binghamton, NY, US.
The results show an improvement in the total recived solar
power in a year after using the optimal intervals instead of the
initial intervals, approximately +20 kW/m2. In addition in Fig.
6 and Fig. 7, it can be seen that optimal intervals provides a
smooth change in the recieved solar power over a year in
comparsion with the results of the initial intervals that contain
niches and sudden drops. Comparing the results in Fig. 6 and
Fig. 7 with the results in Fig. 4 also shows that using 4 optimal
intervals results in almost same behavior and outcome as
using daily intervals.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper a novel approach was proposed to improve
the performance of the residential solar panels by finding the
optimal periods for a desired number of intervals. It was
shown that as the number of intervals increases the rate of the
increase of the overall received solar power significantly
decreases. Thus, for residential solar panels the tilt angle of
the solar panel can be manually adjusted instead of using a
tracking system. The proposed approach in this paper for
for Madinah, Saudi Arabia,” Applied Energy. 88, pp. 1427-33, Apr.
2011.
[7] M. Lave, J. Kleissl, “Optimum fixed orientations and benefits of
tracking for capturing solar radiation in the continental United States,”
Renewable Energy, vol. 36, pp. 1145-1152, Mar. 2011.
[8] K. Bakirci, “General models for optimum tilt angles of solar panels:
4 Turkey case study,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol.
16, pp. 6149-6159, Oct. 2012.
[9] Y. P. Chang, “Optimal the tilt angles for photovoltaic modules in
Taiwan,” International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems,
vol. 32, pp. 956-964, Nov. 2010.
[10] M. Despotovic, V. Nedic, “Comparison of optimum tilt angles of solar
collectors determined at yearly, seasonal and monthly levels,” Energy
Conversion and Management, vol. 97, pp. 121-13, Jun. 2015.
[11] S. Akhlaghi, M. Sarailoo, M. Rezaeiahari, H. A. Sangrody, “Study of
Sufficient Number of Optimal Tilt Angle Adjustment to Maximize
Residential Solar Panels Yield” IEEE Power and Energy Conference at
Illinois (PECI), 2017. Illinois, USA, Feb, 2017.
[12] Beckman W, Duffie J. “Solar engineering of thermal processes,” 3rd.
New York: Wiley and Sons; 1980.
[13] K. Gopinathan, “Solar radiation on inclined surfaces,” Solar Energy
1990; 45.
[14] J. Dave, “Validity of the isotropic distribution approximation in solar
energy estimations,” Solar Energy. vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 331-333, Dec.
1977.
[15] J. Kennedy, "Particle swarm optimization." In Encyclopedia of machine
learning, pp. 760-766. Springer US, 2011.
[16] JJ. Grefenstette, "Optimization of control parameters for genetic
algorithms." IEEE Transactions on systems, man, and cybernetics 16,
no. 1 (1986): 122-128.
[17] M. Sarailoo, Z. Rahmani, and B. Rezaie, "A novel model predictive
control scheme based on bees algorithm in a class of nonlinear systems:
Application to a three tank system." Neurocomputing 152 (2015): 294-
304.
[18] H. Sangrody and N. Zhou, "An Initial Study on Load Forecasting
Considering Economic Factors," 2016 IEEE Power & Energy Society
General Meeting, 2016.

‹,(((