It’s been a year in the works but I finally got solar trackers online. Over a year ago I purchased an Eco-Worth dual axis tracker (see here). I intended on finally getting the tracker up when an unbelievable deal came my way for a brand new pair of single access trackers. Needless to say I picked them up and decided to stop stalling and get them running.
I have been running some 540W ET bifacial panels and love them. I now have 6 of them and plan on putting 2 on each of the 3 trackers. I built the first tracker and these huge panels just fit! Literally about an inch to spare.
The tracker was pretty easy to build but I needed a base so I decided to use a pallet I happened to have in the garage. It’s not optimal but with a few cinder blocks it will do the job until I move to phase 2 of the project. The tracker generates PV power for my solar system but the controller actually needs its own power. From my first solar project I had a SLA battery as well as small panel. Add to it a Victron 100/20 MPPT that was in inventory and we have a 12V power supply for the tracker’s controller.
I ran this set up for a week and it worked flawlessly. So the following weekend I assembled the second tracker. I had to play around with their locations for a couple of day to prevent them from shading each other. The results are pretty good. They generate more power in the morning and afternoon than they did before. The downside is they are being affected by shading mid morning by trees. At the moment I’m going to live with that until the next phase of the project.
I still have the original dual axis tracker to build and I have 2 more of these panels to go on it. Hopefully it will be online soon. In the meantime my solar system is really performing well. I’ve been able to generate over 24kWh of power in a single day and peaking at 4.65KW of PV generation.
Stay tuned as the solar project is about to expand and really start paying for itself.