5/30/13

A Tracking Solar Concentrator for the home experimenter, Electronic Tracking System, page 54, 10/14/99

A TRACKING SOLAR CONCENTRATOR -54ELECTRONIC TRACKING SYSTEM Teton Engineerings electronic solar tracker is a sophisticated device that does far more than just track the sun. You might call it a Function Manager or some other space age name like that. What it does: 1. It must determine when the sunlight is adequate to produce usable energy and then turn on the fluid pump and permit the tracking circuits to work 2. It must track the sun while ignoring transient shadows & lights from fast moving sources such as clouds, shrubbery, birds, autos etc. It must also ignore oscillations of the array caused by wind. 3. It must recognize the end of day and return the array to its home position in anticipation of the next sunrise. 4. It must.protect the system upon command by removing the array from focus and returning to its home position. The commands may come from any number of devices such as temperature limit controls. 5. It must be adaptable to the users choice of drive motors. 6. It should be capable of operating from, and charging a battery if the user chooses this option. In spite of the degree of sophistication, we have chosen to not use state-of-the-art microprocessor techniques but like the rest of the system, the design uses readily available materials. You may elect to upgrade it by substitution of some industrial grade components particularly the motor control relays and switches, although the specified components should result in adequate reliability. As shown in figure 33 all the electronics, relays and manual switches are neatly assembled on an aluminum plate that will be mounted in an appropriate container. The small stuff is laid out on a 3" x 6" circuit board that you can make, or buy or replace with "perf" board. Remotely located is a small module that rides a corner of the mirror array, figure 34. It contains two phototransistors to sense the sun and two mercury switches to sense the physical position of the array. The mercury limit switches were chosen over other types because they are impervious to weather and contact corrosion. An optional thermostat may be mounted near the collector output to protect the system from overheating.

www.ida.net/users/tetonsl/solar/page_54.htm

1/1