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George Ghio
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
Anthony Matonak said:Note to everyone else who isn't into feeding trolls.
It's better to simply NOT reply to trolls as it does no one any good.
Is George here a troll? I'll leave that up to the reader to decide.
NREL's numbers are based on real measurements. The calculations are
extensions from the measurements. For instance, how much money you
save by installed solar PV.
How many sites.
Yes, it has both Measurements and Calculations. Amazing.
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that both
measurements and calculations are required to do a good job.
NREL data is collected in the real world. They are as real as you are
going to get short of recording numbers of your own for several decades.
Even that would be somewhat inaccurate at predicting the future because
the global climate is changing.
No problem with that. The data by extension to your argument is already
suspect due to climate change in the last 50 years.
So the tracker was malfunctioning? Was this the reason why his PV system
was "dead"? Are you proposing that all trackers don't work because you
found one tracker that wasn't working?
No, all the trackers I have seen were not working.
Did you fix the tracker? Was it an expensive repair? Do you expect that
you will need to fix this tracker often? Every month? Every year? Every
decade? Every century?
No. I did not fix it. It is SEP. I know the person who installed it
three months ago. A real cowboy. Treats design as an optional extra.
Yes, you've proved that a broken system doesn't work. Now the question
is how unreliable are trackers? Is the total lifetime cost of a system
with fewer panels and a tracker more or less than that of a system
with more panels and fixed mounts? It seems that you are saying that
since trackers CAN break that they are therefore too unreliable to use.
No, I said thet you have to make a choice. Doing so blindly is stupid.
A tracker with moving parts is subject to wear. Part of the cost.
What if you have more than six panels? The price of two panels out of
12 is 16% and not 33%. Clearly it's only uneconomical when you are
dealing with very small systems and very expensive trackers.
Very good. Except that as you increase the number of panels the size of
the tracker must also increase, along with cost.
A person who is cosidering the use of a tracker must take into account
all the relevant points before the purchase.
If they are beyond the grid, can they do the repairs themselves.
Does a tracker have to cost the same as two panels? Wattsun trackers
retail around $2,000 for 1200 watts of PV. PV can be purchased for
around $4/watt today so $2000 buys 500 watts. If these are 120 watt
panels the tracker would mount 12 of them and cost as much as 4.
If the tracker adds 33% then this array would produce as much as 16
panels. In this case the total cost seems nearly the same with or
without the tracker. Of course, the numbers would favor the tracker
if you didn't purchase it at full retail price. Discounts are common.
Not arguing the point.
Do you have to use a $2,000 Wattsun tracker? Of course not. You can
put together your own tracking mount using a $37 Redrok tracker, a
satellite drive and other commonly available parts. Total cost? I
don't know but it's not likely to be $2,000 and, as I showed above,
anything less makes tracking more affordable than buying more panels.
It's like asking the price of a Rolls Royce, if you have to ask you
can't afford it.
IF you can't build and maintain it yourself then you cant afford it.
Does the fact that this persons system had 6 panels on a tracker mean
that they would have saved money to buy 2 more panels and not have the
worry about repairing a busted tracker? Of course not. You didn't say
how old this system was. Solar PV prices have dropped since this system
was installed. It's quite likely that the tracker was more affordable
at that time than more panels. Since you mentioned that the motors were
still driving the panels then it's also likely the repair was quite
affordable (much less than buying two more panels). For this person,
repairing the broken tracker would then have been more affordable than
getting rid of it and replacing it with more panels.
Nice try. The system is four months old. Problems from day one. The
installer makes promises but never shows up.
Of course one size does not fit all. That's why blanket statements like
"The price of a tracker is around that of two panels." aren't accurate.
After all, what size panel? What size tracker? Which manufacturer?
Clearly, not all trackers cost the same, mount the same number of panels
and there are a wide range of sizes (and costs) for PV panels. One size
statements like that just don't fit all.
Whoop-de-do
The same idea, that trackers don't work or that they are not worth it,
obviously falls into that blanket statement category and is bound to
be incorrect somewhere, sometime.
Yes. But the point is that I had already pointed the poster in the
direction of Duane. My view of trackers is not everybodys.