Abstract
Solar irradiation is a green and sustainable renewable energy source which is largely harnessed
through photovoltaic and thermal cell surfaces. It is one of the fastest growing clean power
technologies with high global growth figures, due to its simplicity, affordability, and
availability, relative to other renewable energy alternatives. In South Africa, rural urban drift
has been on the increase which has contributed to increase in the demand for electric power supply
thereby causing undue strain to national power grids. Ironically, the expansion of power generating
stations lags behind increasing energy demand. Solar power systems is one of the fastest growing
interventions augmenting fossil power and its application is now expanding beyond domestic
utilization to commercial and industrial dependence. Due to continuous change in the position of
the sun together with other salient factors, only a fraction of the suns energy potential is
harnessed. The paper is focused on sharing an optimization option that has effectively addressed a
major gap experienced in conventional solar power system installation as applicable to Light
Emitting Diodes (LED) traffic light systems. The continuous movement of the sun limits maximum sun
light irradiation absorption and solar trackers are practical solutions to this drawback. The high
cost of solar trackers has however been the major limitation to their adoption. The Introduction of
microcontroller based solar tracking systems using Arduino board was found to be cost effective,
and it improved the efficiency of the solar cells significantly. In the study, the maximum Power
Point (MPP) tracking algorithm was designed and developed using multiple-axis servo-motor
feedback tracking system, which increased the
efficiency of the solar panel array by 23.95%.