Concept Interviews for portable solar tracking
Persons Interviewed:
Jacob Cook, Electrical Engineering PhD student at CU Boulder
**Audio recording (found at page bottom) was made in OneNote has a lot of wind noise, so I've added a summary below**
In speaking with Jake, I was able to gather more details on the best methods to go about tracking the sun. Initially I was thinking GPS and either a gyroscope or some type off accelerator would be needed, but Jake informed me I should be able to use PID controls taking feedback from the solar panel itself to track the direction of the sun. This would eliminate a few items in my initial plan, like GPS and possibly an accelerometer and/or astrological data. That is great news for both simplicity of the design and energy consumption from whenever GPS is enabled. Additionally, he pointed me in the right direction for some of the small components I would need for some redundancy options.
Mike Massip, Outside Sales Manager for commercial solar at IES
Mike has been selling commercial PV panels for over eight years now in California and was able to give my insight in various trends and sales figures. The most important of which was noting a slight decline in the growth rate among new solar customers, but starting in 2020 there is a mandate that all residential properties have solar energy installed. Mike also let me know that tracking devices aren't seen except in large utilities or giant industrial commercial facilities, and they're always spread out on the ground far away from any trees. The reason for not seeing them anywhere else is that they just don't add that much of a gain unless working on such a a large scale.
Mike also mentioned that storage is the wave of the future, especially now that batteries are getting smaller. He's seen a sudden boom recently in residential properties buying fully off-grid solar setups complete with on-site storage. The panels he purchases from companies such as LG, Hanwha & Trina have all been making very fast efficiency gains to their panels over the years, with LG being the best of the group with their panels harvesting four times the amount of energy they were able to collect just five years ago! I found that to be pretty interesting to hear.
Interview with Jake Cook
