Quote:
Originally Posted by Angel And The Wolf
OW, Snax! I hate HOAs.
Shortie, tracking for each panel IS expensive and land intensive. To make sense, all panels would have to be on one base, and that base should probably be back yard mounted, rather than roof mounted.
Horizontal (daily) tracking is far more consequential than vertical (seasonal) tracking due to the greater degree of solar movement East to West, than South to North, but a dual tracker can increase daily solar harvesting by 40%, allowing you to use 28% fewer panels for the same solar power harvested: https://www.homepower.com/articles/s...k-or-not-track |
I completely agree with you. The ONLY way tracking makes sense would be to put all of the panels on a single tracker. However the cost simply isn't justified for residential applications. Of the 3 links in that article, I could only find pricing on zomeworks' website. If I use my own array for reference because I'm familiar with those numbers, I could probably get away with a UTRF120 which holds 10 panels. Looking at the data I've collected from my system monitoring, each if my panels produce about 1.5kWh/day. So if they produce 40% more with a tracker that would bump them up to 2.1kWh each. Now the system makes 21kWh/day on a average. Definitely not bad, but that tracker costs $6,852... for just the tracker!! That's more than the cost of my entire 15 panel system which averages 22.5kWh/day. Even if I totally botched the numbers, the question comes out to "is +40% production worth over 300% the cost?". IMHO (which may mean nothing) the only way a tracker makes sense is if you've already run out of roof space and don't have the space for a stationary ground mounted array. OR if you can DIY yourself a tracker on the cheap.
Not sure why I said trackers take up more space in my previous post... Still waking up I guess.