Energy crisis is one of the most crucial topics in today's world. Conventional energy resources are not only limited and costly, but also the prime cause for environmental pollution. The environmental pollution and rising cost of the fossil fuels have drawn considerable attention to renewable energy sources. Solar energy, being the cleanest and most reliable renewable energy source, is widely utilized in thermal systems to heat water and air. It offers a vas. Energy crisis is one of the most crucial topics in today's world. Conventional energy resources are not only limited and costly, but also the prime cause for environmental pollution. The environmental pollution and rising cost of the fossil fuels have drawn considerable attention to renewable energy sources. Solar energy, being the cleanest and most reliable renewable energy source, is widely utilized in thermal systems to heat water and air. It offers a vast opportunity for public and private organizations to reduce carbon emissions and cut electricity costs. A viable approach to maximizing the solar panel efficiency is solar tracking. This paper, therefore, proposes an automatic microcontroller-based solar tracker with a hybrid algorithm for locating the sun's position. The proposed hybrid solar tracking algorithm combines both sensors and mathematical models to determine the precise sun's position, thereby harnessing optimal solar energy for all weather conditions. Experimental results consistently show that the hybrid solar tracking algorithm can yield higher solar power that the traditional active and chronological algorithms. A webpage was also developed to facilitate real-time monitoring of solar data. As such, the solar tracking process is fully automated, maximizing the collection and management of solar energy for solar thermal systems.••Renewable energySolar energySolar trackerEnergy harnessing algorithms1.Banerjee A., Majumder A., Banerjee A., Sarkar S., and Bosu D., “Harnessing non conventional solar energy through conventional thermal power systems,” International Conference and Workshop on Computing and Communication, pp. 1–7, 2015.Google Scholar2.Jain A., Jain L., and Jain A., “Solar tracker,” Proceedings of the International Conference & Workshop on Emerging Trends in Technology, pp. 1374, 2011.Google Scholar3.Ekins-Daukes N.J., “Solar energy for heat and electricity: the potential for mitigating climate change,” Grantham Institute for Climate Change, briefing paper no. 1, pp. 1–12, 2009.Google Scholar4.M. © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.