Help & Advice with Sun Chaser Project

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Mad Professor

Senior Member
Good Day All.

I would like your help and advice with a project that I am looking into making.

My old man is into all his free power, via wind gen's, solar pannels ect.

At my last count he had 6 Solar Panels mounted on poles, so that he can manualy adjust the solar pannels to look direclty at the sun.

The bigest solar pannel is aprox 100x50cm, and aprox 7-8kgs.

I would like to know what would be invold to make somthing that will make the solar pannels chase the sun across the sky.

At this point in time, this is purly an idea, nothing has been put on paper, or any extra hardware brought yet.

Thanks for your time.
 
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moxhamj

New Member
Controller - picaxe, 4 light sensors (LDRs with shading), power mosfets to drive relays, reverse relays. That is the easy bit. The hard bit is the mechanicals - you need some sort of motor with lots of torque and capable of handling wind loads. And you need to decide if you have two motors tilting the panel, or one rotating and one tilting (eg same as radio dishes). I've been designing these on the back of an envelope for some years and have yet to find a motor for the right price. I'd be interested if you have a cost effective solution as there are lots of antenna tracking motors but I'm not sure if the added solar power pays off the motor in under 10 years.
 
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manuka

Senior Member
I'll agree with Dr-A. IMHO it's usually cheaper overall to just mount extra PVs & orientate them fixed for morning/noon/afternoon. Larger "no moving parts" PVs are now around US$5 a Watt ( allow ~US$500 for a 100 Watter) & are easily DIY installed & maintained.

In contrast the cost of installing RELIABLE sun-tracking mechanicals can be VERY significant, especially if in a high wind region, & they may be an neighbourhood eyesore. Don't underestimate the weather ,UV light damage to exposed plastics & of course cable flexing wear & tear. I've even seen simple but sturdy solar angle seasonal adjust PV mounts damaged by the wind stresses- you can't beat attaching solar PVs FIRMLY to a roof, where of course they become almost invisible too. Stan
 
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