I have contributed this before but hope it helps. I had a set (6) 250 watt PV on a tracker and (6) 250 watt PV on a fixed roof mount here at the office.
Year round average gain of tracked over fixed 32%, & almost equal differential month to month. I am a total tracker advocate esp. in off grid systems where capturing all the watts possible due to a limited solar window is critical or footprint for the array is limited, trackers rule. That said, I have costed out 3KW grid tie designs where the client wanted a tracker and the materials cost was +$1200 with tracking VS fixed allowing for the offset of additional output on the tracker at 32% less PV required VS a flat 3KW fixed mount on a pole. I have to say the reliability on Wattsun trackers is superb I cannot speak for competitors tracking units. I have used them for 20+ years and todays Wattsun/Array Tech. tracker is bomber stout. Trackers have their place, & with the decreased $/watt on PV its hard to pencil out the rational at times. My next off grid home in ID will be tracked as the space required on a 14° slope was too big a footprint to install a fixed array. One other point was reflectivity: The County required a reflectivity study for fixed arrays to prove the array would not cross a county road, and a tracked array reflects back to the sun. One less hoop to jump through, & a big bonus! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dana Orzel Great Solar Works, Inc - NABCEP # 051112-136 E - d...@solarwork.com - Web - solarwork.com O - 970.626.5253 C - 208.721.7003 "Responsible Technologies for Responsible People since 1988" P Please consider the environment before printing this email. From: RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-boun...@lists.re-wrenches.org] On Behalf Of jay Sent: Sunday, October 04, 2015 9:14 AM To: RE-wrenches Subject: [RE-wrenches] PV Tracker - Best available? I agree that in many places installing a tracker isnt economic, but not everyone does things with cost as the goal. Ive installed trackers because people wanted to see it move. Ive installed trackers for folks who didnt want to adjust for seasons. Yea we can have a long discussion about the economics of all that. But the point is that this is what the customer wanted. And Ive gotten in big trouble in the past for not doing what the customer wanted. So installing a tracker probably isnt going to be as cost effective as fixed, its going to have more MX cost than fixed. But its not wrong. jay peltz power On Oct 3, 2015, at 10:19 PM, Allan Sindelar <al...@sindelarsolar.com> wrote: Bill's point is well made, and equally relevant in heating dominated regions. These typically are northern latitudes, where winter days are shorter, and mountain regions, where severe winter weather keeps people indoors, meaning more lights, more indoor activities and more boiler runtime. The greatest loads occur when the solar resource is the least and tracking gives the least advantage. May I suggest that you sell your client on being smarter than his neighbor with the tracker? Present it well and you could end up with a more productive array and fewer maintenance headaches. Allan Allan Sindelar al...@sindelarsolar.com NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional NABCEP Certified Technical Sales Professional New Mexico EE98J Journeyman Electrician Founder (Retired), Positive Energy, Inc. 505 780-2738 cell
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