Quote:
Originally Posted by mejunkhound
Just noticed this thread.
Thought at first you were going to coat the surface of the dish with aluminum foil or surplus mirror pieces and build a concentrator, then saw you using it just for one-axis tracking.
If you decide to try a concentrator and 2 axis tracking, the link below is a unit I helped build that could give you some information of the thermal aspects of keeping a concentrator cool.
http://www.stretchedlensarray.com/Papers/SPS600V.pdf |
The reason I wanted to convert my Radio Astronomy dish to solar tracking, (see plot of galactic core).
was mostly just because I had this nice polar TVRO mount.
Didn't want to scrap it. It's got a certain cool factor, if you are a Ham..
2-axis for solar tracking is pretty much a waste of money.
Since you need to inspect the mount every month or two anyways,
why not take an extra 35 seconds to tweak the elevation?
You don't have to take my word for it, just ask people who have been using trackers for a few years.
Since the price of PV is dropping nicely, there is really no need to track the sun.
Just add more PV for the same money/effort and get the same end result.
The best part is no moving parts.
Chance of failure drops to near zero.
Not a lot of maintenance needed on a fixed mount PV array..
If it's on the roof, you might want to try pulling the snow off..
I did that when I had solar hotwater on the roof, many years ago.