MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
The big issues with on the earth trackers is a) theft b)the wind may have an entirely different idea of where to place your tracker.
The first ten percent and last ten percent of a day's irradiation are not worth the trouble harvest wise IMHO especially Oct - Feb
a) - yes.
b) - yes.
The first 10%... In central Baja my charging starts about 6.30 am in winter, if I'm parked with the "correct" side to South-East. But then, with what little energy I need there, 10% would be negligible. So, - Yes to this one too.
The last 10% - Yes. On a good or average day (same thing) the last 40-60% of irradiation are not important to me because battery is floating since 11 am. Shade from coco palms in Michoacan jungle highlands would be a pain for sure :)
I'm curious why the OP needs tracking (or thinks that he does). In Ca it's easy to install enough wattage on the roof not to need tracking. Sometimes in South West people have "tilting" arrays on the roof, not really "tracking", and even those become rare now that panels are so cheap that you can cover the whole trailer if you want.
Manual tilting-tweaking on the ground is popular with small portable installs for 2 reasons:
1) they are few times smaller than an average permanent roof install (= not enough harvest),
2) easy to tweak on the ground.
I made my permanent 500W roof array tilt-able manually to one side. Wasn't difficult to do but it turned out that I don't need those extra 15-20% of harvest that badly. Climbing the roof and possible wind effects (winds there can be sudden and fierce like Santa Ana winds in SoCal) make it not worth the trouble.
