> This! Even so my local utility is putting in tracking solar projects. Got to be eco-theatre as well.
They probably did the math, and at that location, the ROI for a single-axis tracker was better than the ROI for fixed panels.
> And they track over the day! not over the year.
This probably means it's a single-axis tracker, which points east in the sunrise and west in the sunset. To track over the year it would need a second (north-south) axis, but the ROI for that probably wasn't better than a single-axis tracker.
> Again, all that mechanism for so little gain.
A single-axis tracker isn't that complicated (and a single axis with a single motor can move a whole row of panels at once), so even if the gain is small, it can be more than enough to pay for the mechanism.
A single-axis tracker isn't expensive, but solar panels have gotten very cheap.
They've gotten so cheap that this Texas company claims that it's cheaper to buy more panels and lay them on the ground rather than using a rack to get them at a better angle.
> They probably did the math, and at that location, the ROI for a single-axis tracker was better than the ROI for fixed panels.
They probably didn't do the math. If they had they would have installed fixed panels. Panels are so dirt cheap that you'd have to come out more than 60% ahead on the cost of the tracker and that's never ever going to happen. Just add more panels.
I have 50 of them now in some pretty bad orientations, ~ 100 KWh on a good day and if I had half that many on trackers it wouldn't even come close. And on bad days the only thing that you want in a solar installation is surface area. Peak performance isn't interesting at all, and tracking at best gives you 20 to 25% more power at the price of the tracking mechanism being much more bulky than panels, panels shading each other when used with trackers so you'll use your space far less efficiently, fragility and finally complexity. Don't use trackers.
The single axis could have been used to tilt toward the sun, instead of always year-round being tilted away from the sun (straight overhead). Got to be a bigger benefit than catching some oblique early morning or late evening rays. Missing out on the core of the power-generating day (11 to 1) by being pointed in the wrong direction is gotta be suicide to efficiency.
They probably did the math, and at that location, the ROI for a single-axis tracker was better than the ROI for fixed panels.
> And they track over the day! not over the year.
This probably means it's a single-axis tracker, which points east in the sunrise and west in the sunset. To track over the year it would need a second (north-south) axis, but the ROI for that probably wasn't better than a single-axis tracker.
> Again, all that mechanism for so little gain.
A single-axis tracker isn't that complicated (and a single axis with a single motor can move a whole row of panels at once), so even if the gain is small, it can be more than enough to pay for the mechanism.