Solar panel tower update
A little more research helped
to guide us towards a system that will allow the angle of the solar
panel tower to change for
different times of the year. More complex systems have a new position
for each month, but we might settle for a new angle for each season to
keep it simple.
What will be more challenging
is changing the position during the day. We've considered using a heavy
duty swivel so it can turn from the East to West.
Once it's all put together we
can either move the swivel by hand at different times of the day or
figure out a motorized option.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Let me get this straight; you think a mechanism to set a single degree of freedom ("DOF") once per month is to complicated, but you are at the same time contemplating a two-DOF system, which has to be moved several times a day to be effective. WTH?
You should be aware that a 2-DOF system is much more complicated and experiences more concentrated loads, requiring a significantly more solid construction. Do not underestimate the force of the wind acting on a flat panel!
While a 2-DOF tracking system would undoubtably optimize the power intake, it is non-trivial to build. I think you'd be able to find schematics for controllers using four photo-diodes online. But you'd need electric motors and mechanical transmissions to translate the controller input to movement. Now whether you'd find something like that difficult depends on your level of knowlegde and skill. I can think of several possibilities. A chain drive is a relatively easy one to build, IMO. Mail me is you want details. Keep in mind that even when it isn't moving, the mechanism should be able to keep the panels steady even if there is substantial wind.
On the other hand, a mechanical solution like you suggested would certainly be possible, IMO. Using weights hanging on a rope that is wound on a drum as a source of power for the mechanism, like the mechanism of a weight-driven clock. A pendulum could be used as a speed governor, just as in a clock. Such a mechanisn could rotate the solar panels from east to west. Coupled with a guide to point it the right amount up depending on the east/west position is possible.
Since you don't have a metalworking shop at hand, AFAIK, you'd probably have to make the movement out of wood. Now, it is possible to build gears out of wood. See e.g. "woodworking for engineers". But building the pendulum governor is tricky, because it needs to pick up just enough energy from the mechanism during each stroke to keep going. There are however plans for wooden clocks available on the internet.