Moving windows value iteration for effective solar trackingMoving windows value iteration for effective solar tracking Διπλωματική Εργασία Diploma Work 2014-07-152014enSolar trackers have recently become an important asset in energy production industry. The most efficient type is dual axis trackers that follow sun’s movement in horizontal and vertical level based on an astronomical equation. In this thesis we present several variants of a dynamic programming method to calculate the optimal solar tracking strategy of a given tracker. To this end, we first make sure that we appropriately incorporate the physical characteristics of a commercially available PV system in our model. Then we choose a combination of specific dates and weather data, both historic and artificial, to use as datasets for experimentation over typical weather patterns. Our proposed algorithm addresses the problem of system’s positioning as a sequential decision making problem for optimal control. We use a Markov Decision Process (MDP) representation and apply value iteration (VI) with a k-step look ahead functionality over reduced state-space windows, to approximate an optimal solution. The results show that the performance of our approach clearly outperforms that of a typical dual axis tracker.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/Πολυτεχνείο Κρήτης::Σχολή Ηλεκτρονικών Μηχανικών και Μηχανικών ΥπολογιστώνRomaidis_Giorgis-Orfeas_Dip_2014.pdfChania [Greece]Library of TUC2014-07-15application/pdf2.8 MBfree Romaidis Giorgis-Orfeas Ρωμαϊδης Γιωργης-Ορφεας Chalkiadakis Georgios Χαλκιαδακης Γεωργιος Koutroulis Eftychios Κουτρουλης Ευτυχιος Lagoudakis Michael Λαγουδακης Μιχαηλ Technical University of Crete Πολυτεχνείο Κρήτης Sun tracker Value iteration