Fearless Solar Tracker - Snowy Sunday Solar Stuff

Sunrise and noon position check, and overall solar production. I plan to run this through the winter. We get heavy snow, winds, and temperatures as low as -20F here, so it will get a good workout.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• solar panel
• solar
• solar tracker
• solar tracking
• sun position
• solar energy
• sun power
• PV
• photovoltaic
• engineering
• minnesota
• tracker
• sun tracker
• sun tracking
• Photovoltaics Solar Energy
• ground mount
• pole mount
• Sun

[wtam69]

Nice and neat setup you now have. I remember when you used to have just one panel.

[Fearlessthinker]

@wtam69 I fear in a year you'll comment that you remember when I only had 6 panels. ;-)

[mjlorton]

Brilliant...how about a sunrise to sunset time lapse of the Fearless Tracker... :)

[Fearlessthinker]

@mjlorton I've never tried to do one of those. That would be cool.  I'll look into it. Thanks.

[EarthshipFreedom]

Great set up!

[electrodacus]

@Fearlessthinker The data there are quite old from the 70 to late 80 also there are some parameters that you need to input one of them is DC to AC derate factor that is 0.77 and depending on your cables and charger or inverter efficiency you can get better.

Also each year is quite different but is a good calculator to be able to size your array.

And of course if the solar panels are not clean (snow, ice) in winter you can get much less.

Hope I will be able soon to build my of grid house.

[Fearlessthinker]

@electrodacus I've actually done at least one video featuring PVWATTS, it's a good general guide but I have talked to actual tracker users and in most areas they do far better than PVWATTS predicts. That is why I think we need to collect our own data sample if we can. If you live where there is fog many mornings, or live near mountains where there are "high horizons" then you can do far worse than PVWATTS predicts too! Thanks.

[electrodacus]

@Fearlessthinker I do not have direct experience as of now but this seems to be the value others come to. See this on-line calculator rredcDOTnrelDOTgov/solar/calcu­lators/PVWATTS/version1/ has data on most locations on the globe is fun to see how it differs over the globe and there is an option for one axis or two axis tracker.

Same thing as for tracker apply for MPPT if is to expensive over PWM then it may be more convenient to get more PV they went down in price quite a lot.