Solar tracker, wow

[ajriding]

Found this. It is worth its own thread.
VIDEO

A simple, near fool-proof way to track the sun.

I have 200 watts on the roof, but if I add a 3rd panel it will be portable, so I will build one of these.

For those not to follow the link, he built a solar mount that has two motors. One up down, the other right left. They are powered by 4 little solar panels, just big enough to run a motor. The panel cast a shadow on all 4 little panels, so when the panel is perfect the motors have no power, but when the sun moves and hits one panel it has power to move the motor. This move the panel until the shadow is cast again and the motor stops.
The opposing panels are wired into one motor and are opposite polarity, so one moves it forward, the other backwards and this lets it go automatically right or left (or up and down). Genius.

[pianotuna]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL9PcGu_xrA

[Lwiddis]

May work well but looks like heck. Why not just a couple more panels on the roof?

[CA_Traveler]

There are many tracker examples in the above controller link including both elevation and azimuth tracking.

[CA_Traveler]

That is indeed very clever and hopefully will be developed into a viable solar panel tracker for use on planet earth.

A solar panel will have a lot of wind force and any support has to be very substantial. The tracker below suggests what can be required for support. The elevation is set manually and the servo at the bottom of the frame provides azimuth tracking. The glass bottle on the frame upper right contains 2 diodes that instruct the servo which way to adjust. At the end of the day the panel will be repositioned for the rising sun.

The tracker below was sized for 2 panels but he found one to be adequate for his purpose with the tracker. The shadow on the panel is from an adjacent rig in the morning. The servo and controller power comes from the rig battery which as I recall adjusts the panel every 5 minutes so the draw is very minimum. The setup is stored flat on the trailer under his ATV.

Here’s a link to the controller with more information. http://www.redrok.com/led3xassm.htm#led3xforsale



Click For Full-Size Image.

[2oldman]

Neat