Design of a 3 Pannel Solar Array mounting system.

After a little thought and a fair amount of Inet research. I have decided to use the same cheap CLS timer used for Big Bertha for mounting the Solar Panels.

Reason mainly Price of material ease of supply cutting drilling etc.

From my research its ideal to have two settings for the angle of the array from Summer to Winter settings. Normal this would mean the panels angled for Summer at Latitude + 15 and Latitude for Winter.



So I thought if I have to make the panels able to move by 15 Degrees I might as well make them so they can track the elevation of the Sun every day by this amount.

They weigh around 40K each panel and will have a foot print of 2.4M square.
So tracking the Sun from East to West is not possible without spending a lot of money doing it..

This weekend I have calculated and designed the array support. Collected 32 lengths of CLS timber then Cut and drilled and painted all the wood components for the First 3 Panel Solar array. Ready to do a Mock Assembly of the array.

.

I will move the sliding part of the triangle by using some U shape butchers bearings sliding on Bar driven on a 1/2 chain with a stepper motor.

The deliverys arrive.. for the system pictures of some of the bits.

Three Solara SM7002-1 brander 175Wp Solar Pannels from Germany (Made in Japan) Ex display bought at a very resonable price. Three un-brander but appear to be much higher Quality 180W Solar Pannels from China bought at an even more resonable price.!! In fact Im much more impresed with the Pannels from China the power tails have double O ring seals, the general finish of the panel looks very much better. I guess only when running the system will I see if there is any real diffrence in functionality tho.



Two Soladin 600 inverters.



A couple of pictures of the Soladin 600 with the cover off.



A another little closer...



Next Jobs designing and building the Suport frame work for the two Solar arrays. Analizing the open Soladin 600 to figure out how to make the RS232 cables for linking to the computer for System monitoring as £49 for a serial lead is just a little too much to pay.

Ooops yes I have taken over Midges Lounge now !!!!