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Comment by jacquesm

Anything requiring tracking is not going to be competitive with regular solar cells for simple mathematical reasons so I suspect this is not quite as breakthrough as the title makes it seem. In a nutshell: if you add the cost of lenses+tracking system you could buy more panels. That increased number of (passive) panels will be more reliable and will produce roughly about as much power as a non-tracking system would. The increased reliability is something very much valued in power generation, it also makes shading calculations and effects much less of a problem.

Depending on how expensive the ground is and what other restrictions apply you're going to be be usually better off by installing a passive system.

I've built a solar system with trackers, 2x8 panels, in the end I wished I'd gone for a stationary setup, the tracking was always troublesome (you need two axis tracking if you're going to utilize tracking to maximum effect, the lens system shown will definitely need two axis) and in the end produced only about 15 to 20% more power on these panels, and cost so much to set up and maintain that I could have bought another 8 panels and a rigid setup for the same money instead.

parent jacquesm 12 years ago

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