DIY Solar Tracker || How much solar energy can it save?
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In this project I will show you how to create a solar tracker which like the name implies can follow the movement of the sun throughout the day. And at the end I will show you the energy harvest difference between a solar tracker mounted solar panel and a flat mounted solar panel.
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Please do it again with mppt and over a full day! You have come so far, you might as well go all the way.
Max Maker that's true and he need to prevent the mobile panel to refresh its position all the time.
Max Maker an keep any wires tucked away so no unnecessary shadows 🤔😎👌
Yes, in lots of his videos he gives up too early. That's a shame!
He didn't give up, he just needed to finish the video and publish it. That's just how it works unfortunately...
And different seasons. Because he lives in the northern hemisphere, this time of year the sun shines more straight. That's an advantage for the flat panel. If he try this experiment in autumn or winter, the percentage of increased performance for the moving panel would be much more.
This panel can put out close to 100 watts th-cam.com/users/postUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg when positioned in the appropriate southernly direction, tilted to the optimal angle for your latitude/date, and connected to a higher capacity device than a 500. The built in kickstand angle is a fixed at 50 degrees. Up to 20% more power can be output by selecting the actual date and latitude optimal angle.The 500 will only input 3.5A maximum at 18 volts for 63 watts. Some of the excess power from the panel can be fed into a USB battery bank, charged directly from the panel while also charging a 500. This will allow you to harvest as much as 63 + 15 = 78 watts.If this panel is used to charge a larger device, such as the power station, then its full output potential can be realized.
I'm impressed with the amount of time and energy and thought that you put into this. Thank you for doing such a comprehensive study/test of this.
This is what Im trying to learn these year since Im loving out-of-the-city life
Amazing handwriting bro! I'm also a lefty, looking forward to see more
I have conducted very similar experiment for my grade 12 thesis ... I've left both panels (one with solar tracking and the other fixed at an angle) for 7 seven consecutive days and recorded all essential data in a sd card and a web server. If I recalled properly tbe panels reach a difference of about 40% including the power consumed by the active solar tracker. Nice vid as always
On the flat mount panel you could always use reflectors on two sides to increase morning and evening solar collection
Great project as always, thank you for the extremely interesting subjects you cover. I have considered a similar system but using the solar tracker to reflect sunlight onto a stationary Pv panel. This is a common approach with much older industrial solar installations but I have not seen this alternative approach for low cost domestic consumers to add efficiency to their installations with one exception by an experimenter in North America who demonstrated a mirror tracker along these lines! What is missing is understanding the increased energy efficiency levels you may get from such an approach over the standard fixed installation? I would guess it is a little less than the efficiencies you demonstrated here but may be still viable.
Remember, any shadow on a PV panel or cell can dramatically reduce it's output. Try again making sure there are no shadows (Like from the sensor array and cables). Also, designing in some bearings into the 3D parts would help with rotation stability
didnt know that tip, thx
Dude...you're a legend!! This is too much tech for me to DIY
Brilliant experiment and helpful calculations. Thank you! Great work.
Am I glad that I subscribed with notify enabled. Thank you great Scott.
Photoresistors are also known as Light-dependant resistors (LDR’s), but love the setup. Great vid.
Every word is plural 😂 Amazing work. Love it👌
I had an idea for one of these, but yours is quite a bit better then what I had in mind.
Thanks for making this video!
Really awesome video, to be honest the more videos i watch, the more i become a Great Scott fan. keep up the good work scott.
4:55 Never seen that small 24 cm drillbit
Well, mistakes happen.
Ylläri Pylläri probably mm, don’t blame him, he is a boss.
boss at mistakes hahahaahaa
I wonder what's large then =>
just jokin... sorry if it hurts, i am fan of his engineering skills, he and martin Kobler are favorite Germans of mine
Thoight I would share...
Last year I build a wheeled stand to rotate solar panels east to west (but left them at a constant vertical angle). Over a one day run with a stationary panel vs a mobile pannel, I got a 32% increase in energy.
Awesome build :)
make a pair of black abs pistons and resevoirs ... moutn a resevoir to each side (top and bottom to for all axis) ... and have the left resevoir move the right hand piston and the right move the left hand one ... same idea if you add a top and bottom ... top moves bottom bottom moves top ... then you dont need to use any power to move the panels and the sun will reset them as long at there is light .... over knight the panels will reset to mid point and be ready to adjust in the predawn light as the first light of sun starts warming it up .. so instead of waiting till 8 or 9 am to get sun you have it as day break
and have it until it is dark out .... increased collection time automatic tracking with minimal maintenance and an added advantage you could add a piston overheat valve that would send excess heated water into your own hot water and limit how much power you have to waste heating up water to st in your hot water tank
@@0623kaboom do you have some link, which describes this setup in more detail? Thanks!
@@skythe83 I think he's describing a hydraulic system which uses heat from the sun to operate? Very interesting notion but I imagine it would take a lot of fiddling, and some sort of compensation for ambient temperature
Hi scott.
Ich wollte dir danken, dass du dieses Projekt mit uns geteilt hast.
Ich selbst habe diesen tracker gebaut und selbst programmiert und nehme diesen als Schularbeit.
Vielen danke nochmal
Hugely impressive technique and skills - well done.
Great project, as always. I do wonder if the code would have been simpler if you had rotated the part with the 4 photo resistors 45 degrees, so that you just had one up/down and one left/right. Just a thought...
Great experiment I would love to see the same experiment run all day long but include the power needed for the servos as a draw on the battery that it was charging. See if it could make a full 24 hour cycle
Awesome and very well thought out experiment. I think it would show some very valuable information if conducted for a continuous year. I would expect upward of 30% or more improvement of energy collection through the seasons. In my own tests on solar energy collection, tracker v. stationery, the total effective energy collection in hours per day of the tracker is very appreciable. In the long run, this has a tremendous effect on the overall efficiency of the system. Of course, the complexity of the system is increased, along with expense. But, proper engineering and the idea that you only have to buy the system once, offset this in light of the greatly increased performance.
This is one of the most brilliant thing's i've ever seen.
GreatScott I am happy you sleep better now
lol 🤣🤣🤣
Spoiler alert!!!
Me to
Also dead-reconing with a clock and a year-long table. Use GPS or ntp. I can make a table given GPS location and a time interval.
I thought about that too. You know where the sun is at any given point in time. One thought though this system you don't need to know your location and time precisely or even at all. Also in my case I have some trees that shade part of the day. Clouds might also vary the best angle to point the array at. This overall is such a simple way to get to a solution. Not sure how practical it is with full sized panels. But very cool approach.
I mean, I just finished transcribing the NOAA solar calculator in a fork of Dusk2Dawn by DMKishi. No table necessary, just an RTC, and it calculates solar elevation and azimuth on the spot.
Loved this vid. A friend wanted to build a tracking system for their solar array and this is one of the videos I used to show/argue that this is not the best way forward. Basically solar panels are cheap and getting cheaper. So the gain in output from a tracker has to be compared with the cost of just adding more panels. Factor in a 20 plus year life for panels and a tracker whilst more efficient is much more expensive than just adding 20% more panels. But this is such a cool video.
Your handwriting makes me happy
most of us would just clamp a multi meter to it and tilt it by hand. please keep up your awsome overkill!
20% power loss > 100% power loss from panels getting stolen.
😂
Hi Scout. I like your videos and yet wonder what is your education type that you are so good at building those fully functional electronic devices!
I’ve been contemplating on doing the same experiment and the benefits of cooling could well turn out to be more of an advantage here in Australia where we have house roofs covered in dark red tiles that get so hot in the summer that you cannot walk on them with bare feet. Another advantage is that if the panels stay cooler the may last longer..
You did this very well, good job.
Until you get the solar right, is it allowed to paint the roof tiles white with an outdoor-rated paint? That way some of the heat is reflected away instead of being absorbed
Yes that’s possible.
As far as the tracking goes, practically speaking, a long time ago with an actual panel, I used four photoresistors, two power transistors, two relays, two motors, and a 60-second timer. Cheap and simple and it ran off a large capacitor attached to the panel. Rather than an "always on" tracking system, it just updates the position once per minute.
Since the sun's position can be accurately known from any fixed time and location, you don't need a feedback loop at all. You just need to program in the date and time and a table that has the location of the sun relative to the tracker at any given time throughout the year. Update the position every few minutes or every hour, and I think you would have a much better efficiency than a static panel and minimal power consumption. Maybe sync the clock with an external reference every so often to avoid drift over time.
Yes the tilt is depending on your local Position. There are Internettools to determines the perfect positioning to some degree
Q
Should have used cheap worm geared motor and H bridge instead of servo.That way,you can make the microcontroller go to sleep without any problem.Also,there won't be any actives in the motor consuming power
Suraj Grewal yes, far better in every way, including immunity to wind force on the panel, which is significant in a practical installation. Non-worm servos would be flailing.
Suraj Grewal Yes, that would be a great idea. I might have to do that, the L298N duel H bridges are cheap (drive both X,Y motors), and I have some heavily geared down RC motors that would work great for this. I just need to make a 3d printed worm drive, maybe use a screw or something for part of it.
Now I've got my creative gears whirling, thanks!
or gone to solar heat and black abs resevoir connected to pistons and let the sun do the setting of his panels and not waste power moving the panels at all .. added benefit he can also use the resevoirs to assist in making hot water for his home ... yet another benefit ....
he has no need to power any form of solar tracker ... just use a solar heater system
Yeah, Ave recently talked of something similar, a piston filled with wax.when it melts, the piston expands.
DC geared motor + window comparator + H bridge driver would be enough for tracking sun without MCU.
With this you could build an efficient gemasolar energy production. With the right calculation you could always optimize the sunlight radiation to the stored salt. The only disadvantage is that it costs more since it needs lots of items to start with. BTW your project is really good for a start!
Thanks, I have been thinking about this for some time, both with a solar panel and solar heater to power and heat my growing tunnels. Now I just need to scale it up to the size I need.
Man, i just finished up Building my own solarpaneltracker a couple weeks ago, for a school project. Aswell as testing how much more efficient the thing was compared to a reguler setup. I had very good results (50% better) enjoyed every bit of the build. Properly couldn´t have done it without your videos. You give us all inspiration my man.
You properly wont do a follow up video, but if you a interested i could send you my stl files. My design is pretty sturdy for the size and has great movement.
Keep up the good work
David Bay Pedersen Do you have it on Thingiverse? I'm thinking about making one with worm drives and L298N duel H bridge (run both motors). I probably won't make the same as yours, but I always like getting inspiration from other's ideas.
Infrared sensors and animal spotting?
Jake Garrett i Dont at the moment, but sure i just need to set up an account, i think it takes a Day or to before a Can upload files.
Not gonna Lie the thing isn’t perfekt. One part do need a bit of love taking of the support, Never thought of contributing it so when i made it work never updated the file. This could be much different depending on the printer, my printer at the time had som problems with support Being tough. It was expected. All the trouble did make It more appealing to look at, so in my books its okay. Will post More details on thingiverse.
As for motor controll i used brushed dc motors that are in a servobody. Do NOT recommend. It made everything tedious later. Use servos!
If you are thinking about doing something like this, DO it. It is not that complicated. And you Will have great reactions :))
Lou Fazio no infrared sensors or animal spotting, not the point of the project
want a better one ... use the suns ability to heat fluids and have it do the work without wasting electricity ... basic hydraulics ... 4 black resevoirs (top, bottom, left and right) .... each resevoir when heated moves a piston on the opposite side to adjust the panel ... so left moves right top moves bottom etc ... any excess heated fluid (say water) can be used to heat the hot water tank and reduce power needs to do that as well ...
a basic hydraulic system like that costs less ... needs less maintenance ... and functions better than any powered system ever would
.
another added bonus you will learn about hydraulics, specific heat capacity ... trajectory and astronomy and mechanical engineering and design ... and solar power ...and the best part efficiency .... just building it and basic monitoring and your project will almost write itself
That solar tracker must be freaking out at night xD
tbh that version is crap it has to have power when all he had to do was install 4 lil home made cylinders on it and have the fluid in them heat and expand to push the panel in line with the heat and keep the panel facing the sun ... but nope he would rather take the miliamps and micro volts he has in short supply and waste most of them making something to follow the sun with power ... instead of following the shade BEHIND the panel
@@0623kaboom That doesn't work. The directional movement has to be controlled by the intensity vector of solar radiation not by the extent to which something heats up in the sun
It would follow the brightest area in the sky, probably the moon, or just stay in place if all sides are equally dark
It's all the programming matter. You can change the code, so that the tracker goes into sleep mode, when all photoresistors are in dark, and nothing weird will happen.
@@stuartzhang6431 Lol this is genius. The simple solution is not always easy to come up with.
nice project. (Your English is excellent btw). Recently there was a study done in Sweden where they mounted the solar panels perpendicular to the ground and over a year acheived 30% more power realized, due to it being such a northern latitude. So, it's a good thing people keep trying to understand best position and that it can vary by location.
very cool! I have been planning to build something similar for my greenhouse solar collection for my raspberry pi and automated controls. I might have to incorporate some of this into my design. Thanks for sharing!
It's great if you keep adjusting it every morning! it will track the sun to the west till it set, but when the sun rises again from the east, it won't work because there is not enough solar energy for the servers to work because the panel is still facing the west
so maybe you have to connect a battery
I think you still need to drive the servers manually, because it won't be able to track as none of the 4 photoresistors got direct sunlight on it if the panel is facing the other way! maybe I'm wrong
Yes, but all you need is a battery back-up, a real time clock (you can actually do this in the code with a reference time input on startup) and some extra programming. You can then (at some point in the night, say 1 am where it's going to be dark at any time of year) set the panel position to a pre-set direction that is going to be at least towards the rising sun. Probably also a good idea to set a minimum light level and persistence before moving the panel so it isn't thrown off by nearby light sources like car headlights shining on it .
Edit: Or you could seek every hour. So a timer runs every hour when there's no light which moves the panel through its full range and re-positions it to the highest light level position.
yup true ... if he went with a solar heater to move the panels instead pre dawn sunlight would readjust the panels in the predawn light and yup move his panels without needing to waste any power moving the panel array around ....
we built that in technology subject at school but the one you made is much better that the crap we built xd
This takes me back 40 years to the early days of my career working on military Radar. This is exactly how a monopulse tracking radar works. A 4 quadrant comparator horn keeps that radar on track by constantly measuring how much microwave radio signal is in each quadrant of the horn and correcting accordingly.
@MrAvant123 Thank you for doing that!
Radar, starting from nearly nothing at the beginning of WWII, radar quickly became both quite capable and quite essential. Radars fundamentally like those -- and likewise the ones that you worked with -- are still keeping us safe from adversaries, mistakes, and just plain banging into things on foggy days. More recent developments like Doppler, phased array, and synthetic aperture radar do great things as well, but from start to finish the whole endeavor depends on knowing the signal direction.
Really enjoyed this video, thank you for taking the time to make it
A solar tracker is called a heliostat fyi. Cheers! Love the vid
tbh a heliostat isnt really a tracker either ... it is a comparator and is used for comparing the light between the separated planes .. because of this it makes a great tracker because it can then be set to adjust to point at the most direct point to the source ... but it was NOT made to track the sun first ... it started as a heat seeker guidance system ...
That's a *lot* of work to go through without verifying the two Chinese-made panels have the *exact* output beforehand.
or you could say fuck that ... and use the heat from the sun to heat fluid in a pipe on each side of the panel and the expansion of the fluid moves the panel into line with the sun .. same for top and bottom and he save that power he wasted with his tracker ... and has a reliable power friendly green solution instead of his botched power saver waster circuit
I was thinking the same effing thing, but instead about only doing a two-and-a-half-hour test. It's like he literally made this and was like I do not want to do this anymore.
Nice experiment, but none of this is needed. We know where the sun is every minute of the day. Its not going to dart about like your flashlight, its TOTALLY predictable for centuries into the future,. Just wire up your panel to a motor that rotates once every 24hours and set it on a polar axis. Job done. No sensors, no programming, no servos, no Aduino, nothing much to go wrong. If your 25% gain in performance is worth paying for, then motorise, otherwise leave it stationary.
Obviously, you won't rotate 360 degree constantly, that would just twist your connection cables. It needs to be like a car windscreen wiper where the motor spins constantly in one direction, but the mechanism swings the blade to and fro across an agreed arc. East to West in the day, and West to East overnight. Simple.
@Shadan Rikan There are several reasons why, including that it will be pointing west in the morning and may take several hours to move to thee east. Its also out in all weathers so is going to be unreliable and the sensors will need cleaning. Car headlights and street lights will have the thing hunting about all night wasting some of the electricity generated in the day. No, its a technical answer that can't work in a practical situation, sorry.
0623kaboom
Have you made or seen a working model of this design?
I'm very impressed with the amount of effort you put into this small (micro?) project. But. It seems overly complicated and far beyond the average DIY ability. I built my own dual-tracker system based on two very large 250w 24v 8a panels, MPPT charger, solar-specific 12v battery banks, 2000w pure sine wave inverters and transfer switch which powered a great deal of my 4000 SF two-story home. Similar to yours, it used small rectangular solar cells (not photo-receptors) mounted on the articulated aluminum frame holding the panels. The weather-proof computer that powered the entire system permitted some tweeking, but not enough for me - so I had to actually cover a portion of the tracking cells to make it function more precisely. It produced more energy on a daily basis than I could use and my battery banks were always full. However, my system was big, used large long-throw linear actuators to move the heavy panels and quite expensive when all was said and done. All of that said, I could have done almost as well to simply mount the large panels at a 37° stationary angle pointed due south here in Arizona. I'm fully aware of the advantages of a tracking system, but Arizona has a huge advantage in available sunlight and a stationary system here does very well while being more economically affordable.
YES! Keep at these projects👍🏻👍🏻
Very interesting! If you ever expand on this, I wonder what would happen if you put a mirror on the solar tracker instead, and set it up so that it was always reflecting sunlight onto the flat solar panel. Would this boost the panel's output when the sun is at a low angle? Would you get more than the panel's rated output at midday, when you have double the amount of sunlight shining onto the panel?
it would.
You should add a tube to the middle of your light baffle for a another sensor to measure sky cover
a ball creating a shade would be for sky cover, the tube imitating a pyrheliometer is for direct-normal irradiation :)
No way! That sensor is so smartly conceived! My mind just went boom!
Génial, merci pour votre travail !
You never seem to disappoint.
Alright brother, you got me hooked. I’m Subscribing. I can feel my brain creating new wrinkles. 🤯
Usually people asked to rate comment and subscribe but this guy doesn't. I subscribed anyway because he is very good at what he does
@@sentient1705 it's because people forget about it.
I never bored when waching your videos.
Since very few people can afford a full solar tracker for all of their panels, most just settle for some optimal but permanent angle. People usually use more power in the summer, but the lower angle in the winter lets the atmosphere steal some of your power, so you could do worse than choosing a position directly in between the summer and winter sun angles. Another option, used a lot by those in extreme latitudes, is a single axis mount that you adjust manually. You change it spring and fall to the best angle for the next six months. Not a lot of gain, but the mount is pretty cheap and it's not much work to change it, since you should probably be checking your mounts at least once a year anyway.
It would be nice it put about 3kw of panels on something like that! I have been. Gathering parts. I have a actuator from a old sat dish. I don't know if it is strong enough to hold and move the weight! I only need a speed of around 1 inch per few seconds. A foot per hour! It would take a while to reset! If I could make it slow enough. I wouldn't need a controller. Just let it move at sun speed. Then reset when there is no sun. And wait for sun to start again. More research I guess! Great video!
Gears
JAMES! Since the 70's
You have to build for bad weather. A large panel is going to require some serious engineering to allow a small pivot axis and the strength to control that sail in a serous wind storm. You might look into what is used for the solar farms here in the California desert. The cheapest solution would probably be a rear axel from a small rear wheel drive car, as that could be rigged to give you a dual 90 degree rotational axis... but who wants a car axel on their roof, not to mention you will need to add a truss or two in your attic to support such a structure.. Personally it seems like too much of an engineering project for such a small return. However, if your looking to turn something larger, you can usually find the motor and gear box from an old power wheels type kids toy. You know, the little battery powered cars for toddlers. Those come with decent size gear boxes and a 775 type motor. The earliest models from the 90's come with the largest motors and gears. I pulled a couple out of the trash. People around where I live often throw these things out when their kids get older. You can also find the motors/gearboxes on ebay. Still, I wouldn't trust plastic geared anything in a storm on my roof. You know that panel is going to sail right into a neighbor's new car the first time there's a big storm... probably the most expensive car it can find too.
-Jake
Jake Mitch yes. Gear it like a clock! Literally! Only go 6-8 hours and start over.
Upcycle Electronics I was thinking of pairing up the panels. On their own piviot. And connect with linkages. Like louvered shutters. Or the vents in a car . that a little lever that moves each louver. Or solar panels in my case. I am off grid. And need to get all the power I can while I can get it. The sun is behind a hill and trees until 10:30 or near 11 am. And going behind the trees again around 5 in the evening. I may just try a pair of panels and manually track the sun. To see if it's worth it. By manually I mean a slow motor and timer. And keep checking every hour or two that it is on target! A few degrees every 15 min. Should be close. Or maybe build a simple tracker with whe small solar panels and MOSFETs go turn in the motor. The majority of the panels are going to be basically the roof of a car shed. To keep most of the rain and sun off the card and what ever is under it. I have electric wheel chair motors and gear boxes. They can go really slow and still have loads of power. With a pwm controller. And they are 24v matching my battery bank voltage? Thanks for making me really think about it . you made some really good points!
If your only looking for a single pivot axis use two sealed containers on each side of the panel/mechanism with a fluid that evaporates connected across the middle. Build a mechanism based on a balanced pivot seesaw. The fluid should evaporate in the morning from one side and condense into the other container changing the balance weight and tilting the panel. Then you just need a low voltage comparator and relay circuit to open a valve and send all of the fluid back to the start when the panel(s) output drops to zero, or you could use a dedicated low power timer, or build a valve that uses the temperature differential of the night to reset a valve.
Notice 'fluid' probably doesn't mean water. I doubt you'll get water to transfer fast enough, with enough volume. You'd probably need a solvent like alcohol to get it to transfer quickly through evaporation alone with high enough quantity. This setup won't work in the wind but if your 'surrounded by trees' you probably don't have a lot of wind to deal with regularly anyways.
I always dreamed of building a truely off grid setup. I wanted to build a setup that separates the oxygen from hydrogen in a water electrolysis/Browns gas rig. You can't compress or store HHO as it is spontaneously explosive, but if you separate the oxygen you can compress and store hydrogen.
Batteries are a short term storage mechanism. Solar panels are also limited by their service life. I wanted a concave mirror or lens focused on a boiler that powers a steam cylinder. Every mechanical part including a steam engine can be made using aluminum castings that can be made with a home foundry and machined using hobby level machine tools. This setup would then drive a small brushed motor/generator. You can actually cast your own replacement sleeve bearings and make your own carbon brush contacts to keep a brushed motor going for ages as well. An off grid solar panel might last you 10-15 years tops, and batteries will last you 2-4 years of daily cycling. Those need to be replaced. A HHO/steam/generator setup could last several decades with a good periodic service routine. Then you'd have a combustible fuel source and mechanical energy source. I always wanted to move somewhere remote and try something like that...before I became partially disabled... ya know the 'build a log cabin in the woods' kinda dream a lot of 20 somethings have. The ideal energy source would be a setup built on a property with a creek that can power a water wheel, but that's getting away from your solar panel aspersions. With solar panels my main concern would be keeping them clean and protected from UV damage. There's probably a 15%-30% deficiency just from a dirty panel. Plus, of the few used panels I've seen up close and delt with, they seem to have lots of UV damage from the various types of plastics used to coat or cover them. If the panel turns yellow or hazy after a few years that probably has a large impact on how well the panel works. Mitigating that problem is probably more cost effective than anything else.
Personally, I dreamed of a mechanical system I could service as opposed to a substrate (panel) I couldn't reproduce myself. I watched a ton of videos from myfordboy on YT about hobby casting and miniature steam engines along with videos from many many others, I also have all of the David Gingery books about how to build your own machine tools from scratch, although I just got a little lathe/mill combo instead. I was super interested in that stuff back before getting hurt (bicycle ride to work vs car in 2014). If a person had a few fresnel lenses from a few old projection big screen TV's, a 20lb foundry casting setup that could run off waste engine oil (engine oil setup - means you could get hot enough for casting iron too), and a considerable amount of raw materials from things like cast car wheels/scraped aluminum heads, etc., a person could build a setup that gets them power off grid for decades and service it, at least in theory.
Anyways...sorry for the TL;DR, ya just reminded me of long lost dreams and fun stuff I wanted to do, and I figured I'd drop some of my favorite source references in their too,... if you happen to have a similar interest ;)
-Jake
*Scott, try to design the axis of movement like a telescope equatorial mount, and just need 1 axis to track the sun, regards from Argentina*
Raúl Almagro That was my first thought too. At that point one can even drive the mechanism with a basic timer.
The suns arc is moving up and down troughout the year. You would need to adjust for that manually every week or so. With a telescope equatorial mount you observe the stars just for one evening and it works great for that.
With an equatorial mount you can just manually adjust for the earth axis tilt depending on the time of year. Or even put it on a geared motor that automatically advances the angle once a day/week. The suns arc changes so slow though that it's accurate enough for months at a time even when doing manual adjustments.
Two or four adjustments per year are all that are necessary (10° off axis makes for barely measurable loss of energy generated)
But how much more effective will an equatorial vs alt, Azimut mount be in reality? I understand the mechanical benefits .
I've got an HEQ5 pro mount my self.
The tracker should also automatically find the best position for overcast conditions which is close to horizontal to capture the maximum of white sky radiation. In practice, it's not necessary to go horizontal as the effective aperture angle of the panel is probably something like 120° so as long as trees, etc aren't within that horizon, you're OK.
To save energy on the positioner, keep in mind that the sun moves across the sky at 15° per hour so position update every 5 minutes is more than sufficient, given the plausible cosine variation. Keep monitoring power output and the bridge of photoresistors but don't be hasty in response.
There are optimum fixed panel orientations calculable for specific locations. One should compare the potential energy harvest from those orientations to to the fully or partial tracking ones. Results will vary depending on local conditions.
Well done man. You are really skilled.
In later revisions, you only need three phototransistors and if you place them as close as possible to the dividers, it will increase sensitivity.
Need 4... Needs to track up, down, and left, right. Sun goes side to side daily. But it also goes up or down during the year.
@@MrPhotographer77 might be underrated as a comment
Really nice work, dude! 😀
MC's Creations he is the best
How wonderful it is! Thank you very much for the video!
I've had a solar panel system for close to twenty years. I had a solar tracker (zomeworks) based on freon movement. However, getting the system to work with a snow load on the panels and balancing with weights did not work very well. The system also lost freon which just made it inoperable. I finally just used a manual rope system to move the panels. If I had to do it all over again, I would use standard mounting.
Power companies in the future will pay you more money for selling your energy at different times of the day. There is plenty of electricity during peak solar times. It is early morning and late afternoon that are the areas where more energy is needed. Therefore, point 25% of your panels E-SE, 50% directly S, and 25% pointing SW-W. In early morning everyone is using coffee pots and maybe using an electric hot water heater to take a shower. In late afternoon, everyone comes home and turns on their A/C. This is why solar "wing" energy is most valuable. This is also why electric companies are using natural gas fired peaking plants, especially in the afternoon.
Your electric car can also be very useful to the power company as you can use your EV car battery to sell energy to the grid.
So think about a solar system. Say the average home cost $250K. Take 10% of that price (i.e. $25K) and put that into a solar system. Now you can power your house, charge your EV, and sell excess to the grid. The payback time is very short. Google "solar edge EV charger" to get some ideas.
Bottom line for trackers is don't use them and just make a static solar array that is closer to the Sun's direction in December and don't worry about losing a little energy in July. For most of us at mid latitudes that would be somewhere around 15 degrees from the horizon. Just use your insolation tables and figure out you solstice angles. Now orientate your panels to a compromise between those two angles with it closer to the winter solstice angle.
Hi, very clever build! I wonder if you can use your mini sun tracker to control a larger sun tracker, maybe the larger tracker can be set up to mimic the smaller one?
This video is a catalyst for thought. The rest is up to us!
Look up Wax motors..they use HEAT to start and stop..
Use abit of NON-TECH that uses sun light, heat, when an item gets warm it Pushes the panel, until its protected by the panel.. 1 on each side can move it back and forth.
Using single pane glass, with protect them fron nature, as well as adding more heat in a closed area. oils and waxes, work well for this..Low eneergy, and HOGHJ torq..
YES I've always wanted to do one of theses awesome
Terrific work. The only (tiny) improvement I can think of would be to compare the two solar panels on flat surfaces to be certain they both have identical output strength. I'd like to believe they would be very similar, but . . . it's an easy test. Just disable the tracker. This would also test the accuracy of the two loggers. You don't really need to know that both systems are accurate, just that they both give identical results. All that's left is to log the energy used by the tracker mechanism. Thank you for your excellent video.
Pretty cool! It would be cheaper to just do some calculations including your latitude so the arduino knows where to point the panel without any sensors but what you did is more interesting anyway
I'm interest in this. Can you pls point to me a source to read more on that?
@@tawiahlot9926 There are many sun position algorithms out there with varying accuracy so there have to be papers about them. It's definitely not a simple topic but there is even an arduino library for it. I highly recommend that you read about how the sun moves in the sky, why the tilted axis of the earth affects this movement and why we have different seasons. It's a very interesting topic. A youtube video called "Patterns of the Sun" should be a nice starting point.
@@charimuvilla8693 thank you very much
Can you do a tutorial on making a PCB for this which can be made with JLCPCB?
simple ... make it hydraulic ... and you lose the power drop of the all the components ... and the need for electric circuit tracking and go to radiation heating and hydraulic expansion ...
Solar tracker plastic holder concept is very innovative and simple as well. nice idea..!
Fantastic. loved the light sensor solution, even though way beyond my electronic skills ^^
It is better to track voltage and current from the solar panel itself and program a maximization function in the arduino. Less parts and a direct measure of the desired output.
That was my first thought as well. Since the actual track of the sun is no secrect, the search space is rather small and even an arduino should be able to handle it...
Just scrolling down looking for a comment like this, it took a lot more scrolling than I had expected
Unfortunately you're then subject to temporal noise and instability. This was definitely simpler to get working for an experiment. Another issue is that you need to explore 4 or at least 3 rotation directions whenever there's a decrease in the readings, and also periodically if there isn't, because for example the sun has moved but also the occlusion reduced and more light is available, so just because you found the position that gave you the highest reading a while ago, doesn't mean the position is still optimal. The direct comparison of 4 sensors (3 would suffice) is inherently stable, the worst that can happen is that you have a constant bias towards one of the sensors due to sensitivity differences.
If you had to do this for real, you need to also take into account that moving the solar panel consumes energy, so ideally you want to move the rig with a pre-planned motion rather than hunting for light, and you also want to eliminate the inefficiency due to sensor bias and the panel thus being off-angle. So you could indeed have the solar panel as your sensor, but you would only calibrate it once with clear sky to find the true relative position of the sun, then you get a real time clock, get sun movement formulas depending on geographic coordinates, and calculate the rotation of the rig relative to the sun trajectory, and then just follow the trajectory automatically. You can also eschew the sensing altogether and get a shadow rig that will allow you to find the optimal orientation by shadow length of a perpendicular object on the panel, input the correction manually, and have the motion system take over based on formulas from there.
Siana Gearz, commercial sun followers do just this. They usually only rotate in one axis, as the sun follows a very predictable and straight path. As a bonus, some of them put the panel in horizontal state to get the maximum diffuse light when the day is cloudy and the production is low.
Fundamentally two-axis control is better than single-axis, because the sun changes angle during the year. However it is understandable that this adds a lot of complexity and cost, and might not be worth it for a small gain in energy output.
At the end it can be seen that a shadow casted by the LDR cross covers the cells of the solar panel, this dramatically reduces the output.
Like I said in the video, the movement of the servos is limited. That is why such a shadow could exist.
The shadow cast by the ldr would become insignificant once this system is scaled up in size to domestic supply panels.
Except you wouldn't scale it up to size, this system is not how actual sun tracking systems work - they just follow a planned path based on real time clock, this helps eliminate hunting. This is just a quick and dirty setup to demonstrate the advantage of sun tracking in principle.
@GreatScott: B.S. Your placement of the LDR blind is a bad design...has nothing to do with servo movement. You could have easily offset the blind for zero shadowing.
It doesn't matter - no shadow should be cast under any scenario.
Excellent. I wish you would do an all day experiment. and an all week experiment. Also should have an experiment to collect data during seasonal changes. All in all, yours was an excellent start to understanding the value of a solar tracking system to optimize power collection. It got me thinking.
was just looking for a pcb provider, saw this notification and left my search. Convenient add is convenient :D
" ha ha ha! Let me show you it's features!"
You need a full year to measure the loss correctly. In the summer, the sun is higher in the sky than the winter, giving your flat panel more energy. Your largest losses will be in the winter, when the sun stays closer the horizon all day.
What, are you crazy?
You're comparing a flat solar cell to a tracked one.
One hour will easily give a close approximation.
And in the winter, the tracked one will 179 x out of 180 give a better return compared to the static, flat panel. That other 1 of 180 times it will simply equal it.
You should stay away from solar. Watch and learn something: th-cam.com/video/0esRftZ3qdw/w-d-xo.html
LOL, 1) You're claim about needing 1 year to ascertain measurement results is ludicrous. Do you not know how science and math work? Do you think every engineer on the planet needs to spend a day, month, year on comparison measurements to come to a decision as to when one path is more efficient than another? Hint, no, they don't. In this instance, without having to wait for a year, it is possible through the magic of science and math to figure out loss/gain to a close approximation. www.solarpaneltilt.com/
2) The 179/180 times example was for those with basic math competentcy. Flat plane is generally regarded as 180'. So seeing as a tracked panel will always outperform a non-tracked one, the only time a non-tracked one will even equal a tracked one is that 1' out of 180' when both non-tracked and tracked happen to coincidentally be at the same angle.
The rest of your original comment is pretty obvious. You're statment that someone needs a full year to waste to measure efficiency/comparison is daft for the purposes of simply making a decision on which one is a better path.
I didn't say you needed a year to decide which was better. I said you needed a year to TELL HOW MUCH BETTER ONE WAS THAN THE OTHER. Learn2Read.
I understand math is hard. However, using it allows many of us to not have to wait a year to get accurate to nth decimal. Musk is shooting multiple rockets off a year, and he doesn't need to wait a year when someone gives him a slightly different destination, needed trajectory, final parking orbit.
Fucking math, how does it work? knowyourmeme.com/memes/miracles-fucking-magnets-how-do-they-work
Teşekkürler hocam proje için. Sıradaki yapılacaklar listesine ekledim.
Thanks, I was wondering about this for RV roof-mounted panels.
A real man doesn't need libraries to control servos, he does it himself.
yshwgth knowledge is cumulative, no need to explore america again.
depends on if you want to play around or just get sht done :D
:D
A real man does whatever he wants, and does not focus on what people say "a real man" does. ;)
Why reinvent the wheel ?
since you also live in germany: there is a man called "electro guggenmoos" he has built a sun tracking house that rotates with it.
Have an impression here: th-cam.com/video/uYWxQlMQSN4/w-d-xo.html
great project works perfectly...thanx for the project
This is helpful - I'm sorting out how to build set of tracking bases for my 3.75kw array.
Bitte machen sie ein Video, wo sie mit ein ESP-8266 ein WLAN-Repeater bauen.
mfg GegenDatenbegrenzung
wif hot glu
Great video, and very well executed but you forgot one thing. Once the Sun sets in the West it will rise in the East (opposite from which it will be pointing) Your programming needs to account for this and return to the opposite direction to start its tracking for the next morning.
loved this - looking at urban off grid solutions right now so got some value from this thank you!!
dont use power to track the sun .. use hydraulics .. and the suns ability to heat a fluid ... more efficient all around ...
4 pistons 4 black resevoirs ... some hose and clamps .. and of course your pintle mount for your panel array ...
.
each resevoir mounts slightly beyond the edge of the panel array so it is mostly shaded (unless you plan on using pressure valves to also heat hot water and keep the system topped up) ... each resevoir feeds the piston to the opposite side .. top feeds bottom left feeds right ...
simple cheap effective and no more maintenance than washing your panels and greasing you mount 2 or 3 times a year
0623kaboom funny you replied this - I came across rotating base homes also to track sun not only for the solar mounted roof system but for keeping the sun in the right rooms or desired rooms . There are many design options right knowing the art of the possible is something we are keen to understand
The sun is falling from the east to the west. Why not set the trajectory?
自由生活 they actually do that in real life application, but for the experiment this worked fine...
At each different location, at each different time, the sun's tilt angle is regular, assuming it does not take into account the possible deviation of the Earth's rotation axis.But it is the standard way of doing things. However, the use of light-sensitive resistors is indeed relatively simple.
+自由生活
There is professional systems that rely on mechanical system on both horizontal and vertical movement. From what I have read they are actually more accurate in the long run then any light-sensitive resistors where a simple thing that bird poo can make things really bad.
Yes, I just want to express this.~~
gerard dekort the math seems quite complex for a low power solar panel.
You might use more power doing the math than just using the photo resistor method.
Also, to account for the issue of the photoresistors being covered.
The system could detect large differences between resistor values and could do several things to still be an effective panel.
Such as using some preset angles based off time of day.
For example, if its before 11 point east, if it's between 11 and 1 point up, if it's after 1 point west.
While this would be less effective but would still likely be more effective than sitting flat.
Don't use hot glue, it melts with the sun's heat.
This was done just as an experiment...
what I was thinking too, I learned that from experience
Reminds me of the time I took apart some type of solar radio and tried to make a phone charger out of it. I glued both solar panels and an LM705 with hot glue. But it didn't work anyway so it didn't matter that it would've melted in the sun!
It does? In my experience it doesn't budge much below 100°C. I guess they are all different formulations. I'd be more concerned about his PLA prints, because those can start to lose shape at 60°C.
Silicon the best,..
From my experience as well, flat panels make approx. 30% less than angled panels during clear, sunny days and about 5% less during overcast days. Darker, overcast days usually don't produce any power...
MPPT controllers vs non-MPPT is another 25-30% efficiency.
If you use a Polar Mount, you only need one servo.If you wish to maximise output through the year, you need to repoint it about once/month.
Hi
Now you just need a rocket engine, and you can create a laser guided missile.
You would get so much views.
TrolololGames A laser guided missile that rides straight into the sun, at least
Wowthatsfail The experiment would be just interesting, a real missile is way more complicated (r/woooosh ? I don't have a lot of humor with this)
You need an interference filter to block out all other light except that of the specific wavelength of the LASER for your Seeker head.
In addition you could make it more complex with modulated coded signals and even with frequency (wavelength ) hopping
The early AIM-9 Sidewinder was simple as hell. To filter out the sun/clouds/water reflections you would use a spinning reticle - half is 50% translucent, the other half is a "chopper" with alternating opaque and transparent like a dartboard - which is a simple mechanical solution. The "chopper" would intermittently make the engine exhaust disappear which gives you the base "ambient light" that produces no movement. The 50% translucent half tells you when the target appears and disappears meaning in which direction you need to pitch or yaw. Because like in a pizza slice the chopper becomes wider with greater radius, the frequency at which the signal changes tells you the angle of the adjustment you need to make.
To prevent the missile from locking into something else while it's "looking" directly at the exhaust (a bright spot at the center of the reticle would show a constant signal and confuse the exhaust signal with "ambient light"), you'd use a mirror to offset the incoming light by a few degrees so that the image is always "chopped" even when the missile is looking straight at the exhaust.
Obviously the missile can't roll on it's axis (or else the pitch and yaw corrections will be incorrect if the missile rolls), so the tail fins have rollerons that counter the rolling movement.
Titanium Rain Thanks! that was very interesting!
amazingly beautiful project thanks
Really good work.
I worked alongside various installers of photovoltaic systems (I work for a distributor of electricity here in Italy) and I saw many 1MW plants (one megawatt!) Activated, someone of 5 MW and one of 15MW.
Except for two sun-tracking plants, all others complex were fixed (on the ground or on the roof) and all inclined (35-45 degrees: the exact angle I do not remember).
Listening to the opinions of the installers, the tracking type was counterproductive due to the higher cost of installation, maintenance and greater area needed to install the panels compared to the increase in production, said that from tests done the increase in production was about 10 % and the increase in land consumption came to be about 4.5 hectares versus 2.5 hectares per MW for a properly oriented and inclined fixed plant.
One of the two tracking systems (single-axis: fixed inclination and east-west rotation) was built by installing the inclined panels on rotating platforms driven by electric motors moving rubber wheels. During the winter, due to poor maintenance and thanks to the formation of thin ice on metal structures, the rubber wheels slides and the panels move from the correct trajectory and decrease their performance! Now, if one were to look at the orientation of the platforms, he might think that our planet is illuminated by more than one Sun!
then you would appreciate this ...
.
save them money on the tracker plants .. use HYDRAULICS and solar heating to move the panels and track the sun ... 4 piston per array 4 black resevoirs ... as a resevoir heats up it expands the fluid ... the fluid moves the piston attached to the oppisite side and adjusts the panel to put it back inline with the sun and balance it so all the pistons are at the exact same temp ...
.
if water is not used as the fluid ... but some form of antifreeze or glycol .. that fluid can also be used when it gains excessive heat with an automatic overheating pressure valve and an under pressure valve .. to dump excess heat to a heat exchanger (hot water tank) and top back up with normalised fluid ...
no power, no fancy electronics ... limited maintenance and most efficient system to track the sun .....on an industrial scale it would cut costs about 30% just from the waste of using some of the solar power to track the sun ... and every system could use it and not truly effect the cost of the overall system ... more bang for the buck
What happens when it is cloudy? Would your proposed system spend all of its time searching for the best sunlight?
ce neblock Yes :)
He can make piece of code that will avoid it
Kamil Maciej hmm...that would be hard. You have to determine if it is cloudy or just low light and regardless, you'd need to make sure that your movement doesn't cost more energy that it is worth.
This could be solved by adding code that says , if the 4 photoresistors are of the same value, do not move.
My Code:
/*pr means photo resistor*/
if((pr1==pr2&&pr2==pr3&&pr3==pr4)==0)
{
//code that moves solar panel
}
Easy to add
Uhm. You realize that the suns movement is pretty... regular? You don't need complicated following. A simple track mechanism in combination with a properly geared motor is perfectly fine.
Hmmmm maybe. But this was fun to do.
I know someone who investigated it experimentally and found that putting it on a timer is the most efficient. Maybe GreatScott can confirm for us?
Imrahil you can use this invention in other applications tho for example you can track movements at night if you reverse the settings. stuff like that. This isn't a bad idea at all.
This is much cooler though
Set Kat no, the floor doesn't have to be flat.
You just have to have a mechanism to turn unlevel to level.
Many super simple solutions exist for this.
Infact I have two in the room I'm sitting in right now.
Point your panels south and hook up a vom and at peak sunlight you angle your panel for the best voltage and your done. Works great and seasonally you’ll make adjustments
I understand your concern about having the panels stolen, but being that handy with electronics, I bet you can make a nifty system to prevent anyone going to your roof unnoticed.
Anyway - impressive work, thanks for sharing.
Cheers