Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.
Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.
Have you figured out the energy cost vs energy gain?
Do this by estimates or tests.
Perhaps buy some photo diodes with heat-shrink over them to make them more directional to simulate efficiency of PV beamwidth.
Collect some data and make a spreadsheet of energy gain for your weather patterns ( sun, cloud time of day)
-estimate Power lost by not having ideal tracker
- compute energy consumed to move x degrees.
Estimate wind force on PV panel at twister wind speeds.
Calculate torque on tracker arm and PV mechanical mounts, and estimate friction resistance and estimate total energy.
It than you expect to track continuously.
Then come up with efficient algorithm for tracker motor.
A simple servo with multiple photo diodes and comparators may be trivial, but a net gain in energy may not be trivial.
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