31–33 of 33 posts
Anything that moves will one day break. I hesitate to move away from the reliability of a static panel. Adjusting the drip rate in this scheme would also be constant battle of weather, temperature and season. You'd never get it perfect. Compared to a simple solar setup it may be more efficient, but compared to more complex, yet still static, combinations of a panels and a reflectors I don't think the improvements are…
Yes, tracking has got to be super-simple. Flowers do it; maybe one day we'll use them somehow. Flower power. But the efficiency difference is dramatic, especially for monocrystalline. I got full power in the middle of winter near sunet (4pm) by tilting the panel almost vertically. Consider the effect of solar ray incidence on Earth: it's why the tropics are hot and the poles are cold. It's the difference between summ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another mechanical approach that is relatively cheap and doesn't require refilling bottles is to use a closed system of a hydraulic cylinder and two exposed freon tanks, one facing east and one facing west: http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/solar-tracker-zmaz77ndzgo... These mechanical approaches are generally awesome because they hold up well in bad weather. If you wanted to go all out I don't see why you couldn't…
What about an array of photodiodes like this: o o o o X o o o o This is in an enclosed box with a hole over the center. Here, "o" represents a photodiode and "X" represents the center of the hole. When the solar panel is pointed directly at the sun, the sun is at position X and no photodiode is lit up. As the sun changes position, eventually it will light up one of the photodiodes. That completes a circuit which uses…
The cost is in the rotating frame and the motors.