Sun tracking solar panel mount/kits.. why are they not more common?

[Zwy]

Except, a tracker doesn't take up any more space than just adding more panels.

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vs.

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The rows of tracker have to be spread enough to not shade each other.
They don't capture any more sun than the area you've got, except or maybe the lasts row if it casts a shadow beyond the property line.

Who said anything about shading?

 

[Brucey]

Hmm, I guess I should care about this because it seems I own more dollar value of tracker than PV.
As stock, that is. My Flextronics stock spun off about 25% of its value as Nextracker Inc.
I guess they were building this stuff. Also assembling panels in the US.

Transform Your Solar Plant Performance | Nextracker

Nextracker provides intelligent solar tracker solutions for utility-scale and distributed generation projects to transform PV plant performance. Call now.

www.nextracker.com

Too recent as its own ticker symbol to know how it has performed.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NXT

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FLEX

Knowing this, wonder if I should sell most of the shares.
Or are trackers more cost effective at utility scale?

The smaller solar farms around me seem to be using seesaw trackers. Panels may be cheap as toilet paper but land can still be costly so they must still make sense for some projects.

 

[Hedges]

Who said anything about shading?

Nobody, at least not directly.

But tracking (adjustable tilting) of panels is the topic, and area of land was brought up.
Any array, fixed or tracking, that has multiple rows of tilted panels has to be designed with consideration of shading.


When panels were 20 times more expensive, it could make sense to tilt the panels so they present more area toward the sun all day, rather than being hit at an oblique angle much of the time.

Tilted, in the morning and afternoon, they cast a long shadow. If too close, each row shades the next. To avoid that rows are spaced further apart, could be land area is 2x or more compared to panel area.

If panels are cheap enough, you could completely cover the land. When sun is at an angle such that tracker panels cast a shadow up to but not onto next row of panels, the area presented to sun by tracker would equal large flat array. When panels are horizontal, tracker would present same area to sun as before, less than the flat array would.

Placing panels in rows of inverted "V" spaced apart would be a compromise, fewer panels than covering entire land area, same production as tracker but without complexity.

 

[Zwy]

The reason I am assuming it is done is to maximize yield thru the entire day using a single axis tracker which is not very complicated. Spin the whole row of panels thru the day.

Maximize yield on the minimum footprint at the least cost.

Simple just sometimes works.

 

[MisterSandals]

using a single axis tracker which is not very complicated. Spin the whole row of panels thru the day.

That’s the simple part, anything close to sidereal rate is fine.
But at the end of the day (which changes continually), it needs to reverse back to face east and wait until the sun is perpendicular to the panel surface (how calculated/determined?) and then resume tracking.

Not impossible but not free and easy (correct me if I am wrong).

 

[Zwy]

That’s the simple part, anything close to sidereal rate is fine.
But at the end of the day (which changes continually), it needs to reverse back to face east and wait until the sun is perpendicular to the panel surface (how calculated/determined?) and then resume tracking.

Not impossible but not free and easy (correct me if I am wrong).

One pot on the end of the shaft, the control module knows the position and will revert back to start position when the end of the day comes.

One tracker can control the whole farm. Everything centrally controlled. That is an economy of scale and another reason why single axis trackers are used on large solar farms. The only thing needed at the panel shaft is the DC motor and a pot to shaft rotation. Everything else is controlled thru the network.