This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am and is filed under Home Energy, Home Solar Panels, Home Solar Power, Solar tracking system. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
AN ACTIVE SOLAR TRACKING SYSTEM
This is a four part series on building your own home solar tracking systems. I hope you enjoy the article and find it of some value as your pursue the sustainable living lifestyle that cam be fun to achieve.
In the spirit of fine home-brewing, this tracker uses cheap ubiquitous parts – a windshield wiper motor and a 555 circuit – as the guts for an efficient machine which keeps panels aimed at the sun.
How This Tracker Works:
Driving a threaded shaft attached to the tracker’s underside, the windshield wiper motor is powered by a circuit controlled by two photo transistors which are turned on and off by a shading device.
The photo transistors and shading device are mounted on the face of the tracker and the tracker rotates in the appropriate direction so that the shading device blocks sunlight to both photo transistors.
State B in Figure 1 shows the tracker facing the sun so that both photo transistors are in shade. As the sun progresses across the sky the right hand photo transistor is turned on (state C) and the tracker moves (clockwise in Figure 1) until both photo transistors are in the shade (state B). This CBCBC…BCB pattern ends at night in state B. In the morning the tracker is in state A (it is in the same position, but the sun is on the other side!) and the motor turns on swinging the panels from their night time position until they face the sun.
Tomorrow we’ll discuss the electronic components that make up this incredible little cost effective device.
But as you sit around pondering the feasibility of building one of these your self, you should also, consider the aspect of how to build your own building solar panels to use the tracker on. they are incredibly easy to build yourself, even for the faint of heart. It can make for a fun filled weekend, you might learn a thing or two as you go along and even though you can build a solar panel system all by yourself, you can invite your buddies over for beer and have them help you…it’s amazing what friends might do for a free beer!
Click the link above and learn how you can save a ton of money building your own solar power systems.
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March 11th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Hi there… I really wanted to thank you since you shared your personal points on this site. After reading through all of this post, write about a few of your thoughts about the recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chili, Japan, and Turkey. Many thanks