Solar Trackers – Their on-the-ground benefits and challenges – Perspectives from prominent tracker manufacturers

Read an excellent article on the use of solar trackers from this Greentech Media report.

The news report uses perspectives from some of the top (US) solar tracker makers.

While of course, each tracker maker expectedly highlights some of the features from their own trackers, a few common points stand out as common:

  • Use of single-axis for ground-mounted solar power plants is a no-brainer
  • Trackers can increase generation from a solar power plant by 20-30% over fixed mount.
  • There is significant movement towards making trackers more simple and lowering the extent of maintenance required
  • Whether it is centralized or distributed tracking depends on the type of solar power plant.

Solar Mango’s consulting team recently assisted a solar power plant developer to decide on whether or not to go for tracking. After extensively analysing the data, especially additional cost and generation data, we decided to go ahead with solar trackers. Now, while we are fairly certain on the increased output front (the EPC is confident that the Solar Power Plant can generate at least 19 lac units / MW/ year at 21% CUF), we are not so sure on the extent of maintenance required. While the EPC (who also happens to manufacture their own solar mounting and tracking system) says the maintenance requirements are pretty low, we would rather see it to believe it!

 

7 thoughts on “Solar Trackers – Their on-the-ground benefits and challenges – Perspectives from prominent tracker manufacturers

  1. B Vishnudhar Rau

    Dear sir,

    How many Indian solar power plants use trackers?

    I read that it is very few, even though trackers are used in many power plants in USA and in EU.

    please let me know a rough estimate of solar power plants (in MW) in India using trackers

  2. mridul

    Are season trackers useful? In these, you need to change the angle only twice or thrice during a year and so they do not require any maintenance unlike the automated, continuous trackers.

  3. Sahaya kumar

    Should we go for Indian trackers or international brand trackers that have more exposure and are hence likely to be more advanced?

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India Renewable Energy Expert