Solar Powered Boat

Abstract

After decades of human growth and activities, the earth’s natural resources began to deplete. Fishermen in urban area sometimes have trouble with the increasing cost of fuel. The route and course for fishing boats are set before they went out to the sea. However, the boats have their limits. They have their extra diesel fuel in storage for an unexpected journey but still the fuel will run out. In this paper, the solar powered boat is developed by considering the solar panel to harvest the solar energy and converted into electrical energy to power up motors and stored in a battery. Moreover, the solar powered boat also implies the usage of sun tracking system which is used to maximize the solar harvesting process. This solar powered boat system sole purpose is to reduce the pollution that is caused by the usage of internal combustion engines such as the diesel engine and petrol engine. The system uses Arduino UNO as a microcontroller to control the system and the movement of servo motor for the sun tracking system. Furthermore, the boat also can be used for night activity such as the squid jigging. The squid jigging process uses power from the storage from the battery and saves energy because the power consumption is reduced with low speed motor for squid jigging. At the end of the study the solar powered boat system is successfully developed and the 0.9 W solar panel is able to generate 3.7 V in 2.5 hours under the direct sunlight which is sufficient for this prototype to be operated. Other than that, the cost of fuel consumption also reduced by the application of solar energy system.