Our solar tracker

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by PermaGuinea, Mar 11, 2014.

  1. PermaGuinea

    PermaGuinea Junior Member

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    This is our manually-operated solar tracker - well, actually it was a stalled project that our solar advisor, Richard Henderson from Cooloola Solar, had started before he got busy with installations and he gave us the rig to set up at our place:

    [​IMG]

    The "seasonal tilt" axis is a star picket wired to the frame. It sits on a plinth made of cinder blocks in an H formation with four star pickets driven into the ground and wired together. Wire also holds the axis to the plinth. (It passed its "wind test" in last year's Australia Day cyclone :D)

    It can swing from 49 degrees in winter to -5 degrees in summer. (If we left it at zenith and adjusted four times seasonally, those would be the optimal angles for our latitude - https://www.solarpaneltilt.com/ )

    [​IMG]

    At Richard's suggestion, I added a lever and some boards with bolt holes to set the angle through the day. I just move the lever along till the sun shines on the eastern face of the lever and then set the bolts in the holes on either side of the lever to hold it in place. If I am going away for more than an hour or two I set the angle ahead a few notches so the sun will pass though the panels' "normal" angle (90 degrees to the panels) about midway through my absence.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    It is fun to watch the input figures go up by 20 percent or so just by facing your panels directly at the sun (okay, I admit I am a geek :blush:) and we can now catch a lot of the afternoon sun that we used to miss with the fixed panels because of the angle of the roof of the house.

    This is just one of the improvements we have made to our place over the years.

    Our house is for sale here: https://forums.permaculturenews.org...nd-for-Sale-at-Mothar-Mountain-via-Gympie-QLD
     
  2. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    Very nice. Looks to be easy to convert to a motorized system with the sprocket already in place.
     
  3. PermaGuinea

    PermaGuinea Junior Member

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    Yes, that was Richard's original plan, I think. I am quite happy with a biological servomotor for now - even if the memory _is_ faulty sometimes. :D
     

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