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This is called a clepsydra (water clock) tracker. A group at New Mexico Tech added water pumps to the technology to take out the need for manual refilling. Wh
by mchannon 11y ago
This is called a clepsydra (water clock) tracker.
A group at New Mexico Tech added water pumps to the technology to take out the need for manual refilling.
What people tend to forget about trackers are they cost money and have to be massive to hold their angles in the wind.
They are also less space-efficient users of land than fixed mounts, which is why standard PV's never tend to use them. It also costs less per watt to buy a second panel and fixed mount than spend the extra on any kind of tracking mount.
- gkop 11y agoAnother issue with trackers in the wind is the failure condition can be catastrophic; an actuating arm smashed through the middle of its little array is not a pretty sight after a wind storm. Presumably this can be engineered around, though. I think the absence of this category of flaw is a distinct advantage to the gravity-powered design of the OP.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sitkack 11y agoAs you said, the price of panels relative to the price of trackers is such that trackers don't make economic or engineering (complexity) sense. I think we we potentially getting there with energy storage as well for off grid installations. Rather than trickle charge a storage system that can supply short bursts of massive power (think running a welder off of solar), purchase more generating capacity and feed it directly into the inverters and use storage for the minimal case. Excess can be shunted into a opportunistic load.