SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEMS

Yes, but not fixed. A big mirror on top of pole, with the solar panels mounted flat on the ground, would pickup more low angle light than a ground mounted arrangement. The access to more available light at altitude would more than compensate for any reflection losses. The mirror (heliostat) would probably be flat, but might also be curved in order to act as a concentrator. The big benefit is reduced weight aloft. Supporting 600 lbs of panels 30 ft in the air is not easy. However, a mirror would weigh much less. It would still have the same wind loading, but the mirror design could now allow easy feathering to a horizontal position. Ground mounting the panels would also allow easy covering for hail stone protection.

Ooops, that's wrong. The URL above is for a Freon tracker mount. I would guess(tm) about $750 for a simple pole mount: which brings the price back up to $1.75/watt added (for about 3Kw).

Zomeworks is a cheaper tracker than WattSun. It doesn't work well in low light, or where there's sun blockage, but it doesn't matter much because little electricity is produced under these conditions. If the cost of a WattSun is too much, you might consider the cheaper alternative.

On Sun, 25 Oct 2015 10:23:07 -0700, Jeff Liebermann Gave us:

You are wrong ALL US GPS satellites have a slow rate receive function, and there are GPS receivers that have an emergency transmit function and the sat network is monitored for such transmissions. TRBOnet.

That is correct, but as a practical not I liked to point out the cost aspect of that pole tracker.

Not mentioning the fact that the panels also tend to shade each other, except when the system is mounted on a hill side if you're fortunate enough with the direction.

{new lines inserted for clarity}

Euhm... yeah, what I actually meant but maybe contorted in some way, is that for the same collected power as with a pole tracker, your investment in solar panels would be 40% higher. And as the original investmen _in PV_ would be $1/W, but with tracker, that would increase to $1.40/W, if you get what I mean. But you're totally right in your way.

And indeed, I didn't include the mounts in case you'd omit the tracker.

True, and at the time that I was involved with PV those panel inverters were being introduced. Since then I haven't tracked the cost of many small inverters vs one big one. But the gains in terms of avoiding array shading losses are certainly there, as you pointed out.

joe

Hydrogen has lower transport losses, and better storage solutions (intercalation in a solid matrix gets higher density than liquid hydrogen).

Because infrastructure planned for the common good is better than infrastructure that serves a dozen oligarchs? Because 'the market' is susceptible to oscillation? Because we (USA) mandated 'rural electrification' last century, and it worked very well? Because California tried to buy their electricity from 'the market' and was cheated by market manipulations for years?

Amazing. Could you perhaps provide a URL, reference, acronym, link, company name, product, or clue as where I might find a GPS device that transmits back to the GPS constellation? (I'm not talking about airport pseudolites, that do transmit on GPS frequencies). As I understand it, the 406 MHz frequency is strictly for emergencies. The messaging and tracking uplinks usually use cellular data, or Iridium or Globalstar satellites. Certainly, the GPS satellites have uplink control frequencies for use by ground control sites, but I wasn't aware that they were available for consumer use. Details please? This may help:

Planned infrastructure mostly benefits the planners.

Because

The California wounds were self-inflicted. PG&E did fine as a mildly regulated utility, until politicoes had better ideas.

Why would it hunt randomly? Just as it doesn't hunt at night, it can be programmed to not hunt when there is little light.

"Good enough" to be up to an hour and a half off tossing up to 8% of the

further north.

I hope you were talking to yourself?

Jamie

Yes, exactly. I'd prefer it to serve me and my neighbors, than a dozen oligarchs.

In the aftermath, corrective measures were applied, largely OUTSIDE California.

Blaming California is like blaming the market, backstabbing, blaming the victim, and straw man argumentation: all cheesy debate tricks. It's not really useful to have a whipping boy, you STILL need to get the infrastructure planned, engineered, implemented. Canals/railroads/roads and telegraph/telephone/internet and electric power distribution, are all outside what 'the market' can be trusted to handle.

When Edison was trying to sell DC series connection, and Westinghouse was pushing AC parallel, neither one could get funding from investors. That's "the market' at work, deadlocked.

DO they also accept coffee and donuts ?

Jamie

I don't blame the plot of land called "California", I blame the hacks in Sacramento who took a lot of lobbyist money and designed an insane "free market" system and then stood by as it was scammed for gigabucks.

The classic regulated utility was expected to deliver the product and make a reasonable return on capital. Those were the days.

Which is why we still read by whale oil lamps?

...and we have too many choices of antiperspirants, too?

Change the subject, and you're still AlwaysWrong.

AlwaysWrong proves his moniker again.

On Sun, 25 Oct 2015 20:41:48 -0400, krw Gave us:

No I didn't and it is a fixed chain, dumbfuck.

No. That would be you.

On a sunny day (Sun, 25 Oct 2015 11:29:31 -0700) it happened Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

I was wondering if I could use a simple 60$ sat dish positioner to rotate at least east - west.

Those are based on a small DC motor with a worm drive (power and commands via sat coax). I am sure you can make it yourself from a piece of threaded rod and a small DC motor to create huge forces and do that construction for far less than thousands. Can handle a large dish, up to 1 meter diameter IIRC (mine is 87 cm) no wind load problem.

Anyways it moves my dish from far east to far west.... Put it horizontal....

As an aside, I always wanted to take a picture of lighting, but somehow never managed to do that. Then one evening a while back we had a big thunder storm, bang bang no end, and close. After trying with digital camera nothing usable happened. So I said; Oh lord gimme a good shot, plz, I always wanted that, need y'r help. Pointed the security webcam up looking past the dish to where the thunder and lighting came from.

My prayer was heard: Frame 0 (the flash)

Anyways that is the dish rotor (here in normal position) I was referring to.

It will try to point at the currently brightest cloud. Inhibiting it if there is no direct sunlight would be the quick fix (or having it point directly upward to maximise diffuse light capture under no signal).

No. On an equatorial mount you simply have to adjust the declination of the sun with the seasons and start from the horizontal at sunrise - all the correct geometry is taken care of in the sloping axis of rotation.

Tweaking it every couple of months would be plenty good enough. Losses go as cos(pointing error) so for +/-23.5 degrees -18, -9, 0, 9 18 would be a sufficiently good approximation to keep geometry losses under 0.5%.

Hmm It's hard to know what the numbers mean... failures of 1-3 turbines per year out of how many? (I didn't read too deeply.) They mostly look like electrical failures! I agree that off shore sound like a nice idea, until you think of the logistics. I saw numbers somewhere that off shore wind was about twice as expensive as on shore.

George H.