Third me here on this.
I have a Wattsun AZ 125 at my office and folks love it. The bigger AZ 225 is a stout piece of iron and very reliable in its current incarnation. I have better than 20 - AZ 225 installed out there and no service calls on any of them. High incidence of lightning used to be a problem but does not seem to be much of a problem with basic LA SOV lightning arresters on. I am currently comparing 6 Evergreen 180s on the tracker to 6 - Evergreen 180s on a fixed 50° roof mount at my office that is an Outback grid tie with battery backup for the office. I hope to do a HP article here in the late summer when I have a full 365 days of data. Just looking at it roughly I get 28 to 32% more watt hrs/day from the tracker so far and the snow clears faster from the tracker, granted it is pole mounted and I am too busy to go up on the roof, but that is reality for a lot of roof installations. As Kerry Kalarney with Sundance Solar says, put it where the sun Shines! Dana Orzel Great Solar Works, Inc www.solarwork.com E - [email protected] V - 970.626.5253 F - 970.626.4140 C - 970.209.4076 I'd put my money on solar energy I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle that. Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, March 1931 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Todd Cory Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 2:37 PM To: RE-wrenches Subject: Re: [RE-wrenches] Wattsun AZ-225 reliability and Production I too have some experience with Array Technology (Wattsun) trackers (customer systems and 3 here at home). In the early days there were lots of problems with sensors aging and causing the array to not track properly. Customer service was always (and still is) exceptional. Those early problems have been resolved and now the product is robust. My only minor issue is in low light conditions (like in the winter) the rack will go clear back flat. The work around for here in snow country is that I always add a toggle switch to the vertical actuator. I have the customer shut the power off to the vertical actuator in the winter at a steep angle to keep the snow sliding. Pole mounts work really well in deep snow country and if the site specifics allow, I'll suggest a tracker. Todd P.S. Make sure you remind your customer to grease them at least once a year. Ken Schaal wrote: I'll second Jay's remarks. We had a 4 tracker system from Y2K, that while troublesome, fully demo'd Wattsun's committment to customer service. A year ago we installed 1 of the new and improved design, and it has been flawless. Be sure to get the manual switch for making tracking adjustments and so it can be set flat for windstorms--just for hurricane insurance here in the east. We continue to spec them for those sites with good E to W solar window. With time of use net metering, they really make sense---so long as the durability holds up! Ken Schaal www.commonwealthsolar.com
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