Solar Panel Tracking Kit
by Anna Hart
Filed under Solar Panels
Solar panel tracking kits are not new. Solar panel tracking kits are used to turn solar panels throughout the day to follow, or track, the sun as it moves across the sky.
Solar panels, known also as photovoltaic panels, or PV panels, intake sunlight and output electricity. Solar panels can be placed on the house or on the ground near the house.
The goal is always to position solar panels so they will have the greatest access to the sun. The sun moves, though. It moves throughout a given day, and throughout the seasons. That is why solar panel tracking kits are used.
Follow the Sun
Solar panel tracking kits follow the sun, gaining the greatest possible access to sunlight. Most solar panel tracking kits use light dependent resistors (LDR). These LDR find the brightest spot in the sky and follow it. That brightest spot should be the sun.
Unfortunately, the brightest spot in the sky can change constantly as the clouds move in and out. A solar panel tracking kit that uses an LDR tends to move constantly on a cloudy day, seeking a will-o-the-wisp brighter spot. Solar panel tracking kits with LDR tracking are affected by the sun and rain also. UV irradiation makes them lose orientation. Sometimes they become “blind” and stop tracking completely.
New Solar Panel Tracking Kits
New solar panel tracking kits have a tracking controller that eliminates the need for an LDR. These kits use electronic timers that let the solar panel array track the sun according to the time of day.
Each day, such trackers follow the sun across the sky in 6 steps. At night, they “park” in a horizontal position. The 6 daytime steps they take are calculated by a small on-board computer. They depend on hours of daylight. The computer takes a small amount of power from the solar panels, but the solar panel tracking kit maximizes the amount of power produced. The loss is negligible.
Some newer solar panel tracking kits also make provision for the wind so that they are not blown off course.
Manual Solar Panel Tracking
Many view solar panel tracking kits as expensive “toys” they neither need nor want. For them, manual solar panel tracking to fit the seasons is sufficient. Daily tracking is a luxury.
To perform manual solar panel tracking, you will need to adjust your solar panels by hand. The following adjustments are for North America.
* Early in February: manually turn your solar panels so they are at the same angle as the latitude where you live. For example, if you live in Chicago, Illinois, your latitude and the angle at which you would set your solar panels would be 41.54 N.
* Early in May: manually turn your solar panels so that they are at an angle 15 degrees less than your latitude. In Chicago, you would now set your solar panels at 41.54 – 15 = 26.54 N.
* Early in August: manually turn your solar panels back to the same angle as your latitude. This should be the same as the early February setting.
* Early in November: manually set your solar panels to an angle 15 degrees more than your latitude. In Chicago, that would be 41.54 + 15 = 56.54 N.
HELLO, I AM WONDERING WHO IS THE BEST COMPANY IN CALIFORNIA TO CALL ABOUT THE NEW SOLAR TRACKING, WITHOUT LDR, NEED NEW PANNELS W/COMPUTER ASSIST & WIND PROVISION ASSIST, WOULD LIKE TO ORDER MULTIPLE PANNELS THAT COULD BE TIED INTO A FACILITY & ANY EXTRA POWER BE SOLD BACK TO LOCAL COMPANY.
I was cruising through this site and just stopped long enough to read the question posed by Brandon King.
It is very hard to say who the best is at anything and personally speaking I don’t want to take a chance and make a guess. However his question asks
” without LDR” or light dependant resistors. Now ,that, I can speak on. In this day and time the PV array can be controlled mechanically in a one time position and held there pretty easily. Finding that sweet spot for year round direction is not very efficient, to say the least. The best you might expect is 30-40 percent. Since that is directly related to dollars in cost and dollars in lost value you can see that about every 4 years you have lost the price of the original watt/cost and are starting over on the payback cycle. All that said ,solar tracking pays off !
It’s quite possible to write a ladder logic program that will derive an asmuth and elevation for every day of the year and place your panel ,via a stepper motor in exact alignment with the sun. With the cost of Industrial computers (in salvage) dropping out of site a person only needs to find a programmer for his system and a few I/O racks and your off. Using stepper motors with gear boxes and delay on type relays (to cut down on chatter) you can easily build a DIY system for a few hundred dollars . I have already done it. However doing all the design and working out the engineering and programming to maintain the system was not a snap.
Its about a 9 on the electrical scale and a 7 on the structure and a 7 on the mounting/motor system.
Just in case its interesting to you, I used an Omron Sys Mac and Cx_programmer. Controlling the panels are super simple though.
After I did all that I came across a small controller designed by Richard Gideon at phoenix turbine(thats a search hint). I built two ,one for east west one for vertical stabilization. They are small, well thought out and it takes about two after noons to build. Parts are less than 20 bucks all of the internet.. Unfortunatly they do use LDRs in the circuit. They are the sensors for the quad comparator. Its not an array of whoppers all this will fit on a 2×3 perfboard.. Well Brandon if you read this take a look,I hope I changed your mind.IN MY OPINION ITS ONE OF THE BEST..William
All this complexity with computer logic tracking is making a simple problem extremely complicated. I have built my own 25 watt solar tracking panel with a tracking error of less than 1 degree both azimuth and elevation turning around at sunrise shutting down at night. Built with simple tools and one circuit board and 2 150 ma gear head motors.