My Solar Project Completed
 

Hi guys I'm new to this forum and I have just finished my project. I've been following Xringer and his project. Ive come up with an idea that uses old car parts for the tracker

Here are some more pics

Hello and welcome to the site. We'd love to hear more about your setup and how its working out for you.

Yes, more info!!!!

Solar Tracker
 

Well I started out making some homemade panels as kind of an experiment because I replaced the old windows in my house and had a bunch of storm windows left. I had 3 panels made. after my first one flopped ergo no encapsulate. I had them stationary initially feeding 2 batteries to my garage. I wanted this system to be an extreme emergency backup cause of maybe the inability to get gas for the generator. This system is off grid and I don't intend to connect to the grid since everything is mostly homemade and not UL approved. I then wanted to track the sun so I found 2 auto window motors and took the motor out of the second one and cut the worm gear of the armature and then coupled the 2 gear boxes together. I then got a starter gear and a flywheel. I bolted a front rotor to the fly wheel and put a spindle into a pipe and installed the bearings. I spring loaded the motor drive so that I can disconnect very easily. The thing runs so smooth and the torgue is so great I could not hold the frame from rotating. 180 degree rotation takes about 25 min. so when the sun is out there is no overshoot. Runs pretty accurate. I got the tracker circuit from MTM Scientific and dont have any problems with it. It has the 3 amp relays on the board but my motor only takes 1 amp. I put 2 sets of limits on the frame. One for the circuit board and one set directly for the motor circuit as a backup in case something failed on the circuit board. All the panels are fused with a disconnect. The batteries have 250 fuses on the pos posts with a 250 amp breaker going to the pure sine inverter. The charge controller is a 30 amp PWM. The control box has 30 amp fuses going to the batt. from the controller. I am using the load on my controller to power the tracking circuit and motor fused at 4 amp and I have a manual control switch fused at 3 amp for east and west so I dont have to go outside when the sun is not out. There is also a solar panel disconnect in the control box. I also have 3 more stationary panels facing south so on a bright sunny day I am cranking out 25 amps. Each panel puts out 19 volts and 67 watts in full sun. Here is also a pic of the battery compartment. If there are any specific questions feel free to ask.

What're you using the power for besides a backup?

I'm using the excess power to run my work bench in the cellar, TV, Drill press soldering station and recharging drill batteries and whatever I can run depending on the SOC of the batteries

Do you have any more pics of the motors-to-worm gear? I think I might be able to accomplish the same thing.
Thanks.

OK here are the pics you asked for. The first picture shows the motor and the 2 gear boxes mounted 90 deg apart, the second picture shows the second gear box meshing with an idler gear with a starter gear brazed to it. The third shows the whole gear assy spring loaded to the flywheel. Real easy disconnect there. The fourth is a little fuzzy but it shows a coupler with set screws to connect the 2 together. The fifth shows the whole assy. You need to be able to do a little metal work to do the combo but it sure does work smooth. Hope this helps. Any more ? feel free to ask

Here is also a link to a video on youtube of the whole system

Solar Tracker - YouTube