The need to (or not) carefully track the sun for solar

piano tuna has it right. Save yourself an expensive and fickle tracking system or having to work a part time job adjusting panels and just buy more panels.

The panels are the cheapest part of the system. Buy an additional panel. I get 17 amps from 256 watts of flat installed panels on the roof at solar "noon". Purchased in 2005.

My daily harvest varies between 17 amp-hours (Dec 21) and 110 amp-hours (June 21)

Here is my tilting twirler with a 230w in it. It all breaks down and sets up easily to take along, but does take space in the truck or rig.

It has a few choices for tilt and spins on a chair pedestal that came out of an old motor home chair that swivels. I added some bungee cords at the back to stop it from blowing off in gusty winds. I later learned to add a wire along the top above the edge so robins would not perch there and poop down the panel. Don't mention seagulls doing bombing runs.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Install a tracking system then maintain it for a year. Rude, vertical learning curve. When panels were 5x the price it was an option.

I am going to make my own. I had a lot of fun doing this (https://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/29711176.cfm) and want to build a tracker just for the heck of it.

Install a tracking system then maintain it for a year. Rude, vertical learning curve. When panels were 5x the price it was an option.

The pay stations at La Posa LTVAs in Quartzsite have panels on trackers. You may check with someone there as to how well that works.

BFL13 wrote:
It is way better if you can just add a panel to your flat panel array and not have the bother.

Yes, I get that now!

At 49N in May with my 130w panel I measured (doing a test for this)daily AH haul:

Flat-56AH
Tilted to South- 76AH
Tracking- 90AH

Those figures would different farther South where the sun is higher anyway. It is all about how high the sun is anyway, whether it is worth tilting.

the sun goes around from E to W at 15 degrees an hour. You lose on solar if you are off perpendicular by over 10 degrees. You always win with twirling. However, if the mechanical and energy requirements to make the panel move are sucking from what AH the panel is getting in, then it could negate the value.

It is way better if you can just add a panel to your flat panel array and not have the bother.

Do the math. Using those numbers above, flat 56, means two of those flat would be 112, which is more than the 90. You don't even need a second one as big as the first.

56 for the first one, and 28 for the second one, half the size. 56 + 28 = 84

But even that still depends on your location and time of year.

DarkSkySeeker wrote:

time2roll wrote:
Last I read you can about double the harvest with tracking.

Doubling? A 100% increase over doing nothing?

Ninety percent of the information I have read states that you can gain up to 40% by tracking vs non tracking. That does take into consideration energy consumed using an automatic tracking system.

BFL13 wrote:
A contraption for an RVer's panels to twirl and tilt is for when you don't have enough panels flat on the roof to get the needed AH haul.

Good point. I have 2 100AH batteries, and one 120watt panel. I am clearly not the super star of solar charging.