I think this has been common knowledge for a while now.
The future of solar doesn't track the sun
11–20 of 154 posts
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#12So, a sloped half cone is ideal if you have the space?
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#13We researched this thoroughly in the early 2000s and came to pretty much the same conclusion even back then. For us the main problem was the reliability of the mover. If enough panels face the wrong direction for long enough it is worse than facing the sun in a good enough fixed position all the time. Our angle was to use a simple motor that runs with constant speed and use a special patented gear (called VIAX) to tu…
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Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#14When panels are cheap what about vertical mounting? Less susceptible to hail and snow. And maybe placed north-south, to maximize production in morning and evening when it's needed most.
The article seems to be mostly about grid scale solar. Of course an increasing amount is private or domestic solar installed on e.g. building roofs or wherever there is space.
When cost drops low enough, any surface with any exposure to sunlight is in scope for installing solar on if it can yield more energy than the cost of installing solar on it. It stops being about what is the most efficient and starts being about if the surface is good enough to provide a decent return on investment. Maximizing that ROI is complex but it boils down to getting more value out of the installation than goes in.
Solar doesn't even have to be in panel form. Some office buildings now have windows that double for solar generation. A thin transparent coating does the job. There are roof tiles that double as solar panels. Aptera makes electric cars with integrated solar panels. These are curved glass panels that are manufactured to fit the profile of the roof and hood. It's also possible to print organic solar cells directly on plastic rolls. No glass involved. Or panels. Those are less efficient but you can integrate them on all sorts of surfaces. A lot of that stuff is still emerging technology. But especially organic solar printed on plastic rolls could end up being very cheap to produce. And very light.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#15One cool observation of an grid wide advantage is that single axis really normalize the power curve per panel. There are many reasons way more consistent production would be better. I am curious if just having more fixed panels normalize production at scale
I'm probably not thinking this through, so go easy, but why wouldn't tracked panels also produce a normalized power curve? My assumption behind the question is that they follow the same track as Sol every day, which doesn't vary at least year-to-year.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#16When panels are cheap what about vertical mounting? Less susceptible to hail and snow. And maybe placed north-south, to maximize production in morning and evening when it's needed most.
North South is exactly opposite of what you need, the sun is never north
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#17When panels are cheap what about vertical mounting? Less susceptible to hail and snow. And maybe placed north-south, to maximize production in morning and evening when it's needed most.
The article seems to be mostly about grid scale solar. Of course an increasing amount is private or domestic solar installed on e.g. building roofs or wherever there is space. When cost drops low enough, any surface with any exposure to sunlight is in scope for installing solar on if it can yield more energy than the cost of installing solar on it. It stops being about what is the most efficient and starts being abou…
Grid scale solar benefits from bifacial cells in a vertical orientation just as much as home scale solar - it dramatically improves winter production and extends the production of the spring/fall day a few hours earlier and a few hours later.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#18I thought this might be an article about a solar updraft tower, which also doesn't track the sun, or require solar panels.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#19Looking at the graphs, the tracking arrays may have the added benefit of generating power in the mornings and evenings. If everyone builds non-tracking arrays, power during peak will become almost worthless if solar is a big part of overall generation capacity, so the economics might change even with panels being cheap.
Of course, just building 2x as many permanently tilted panels might also work.
Edit: the article actually addresses this: "[fixed setups] can pack 250% more installed power into the same space when compared to a single-axis array" - so even if only the power in the morning/evening has value, there is little reason to install tracking ones.
Re: The future of solar doesn't track the sun
#20When panels are cheap what about vertical mounting? Less susceptible to hail and snow. And maybe placed north-south, to maximize production in morning and evening when it's needed most.
Balcony Solar is a thing, most of the panels will be vertical in that use case.