Hi all.
I have recently built 2 new heavy duty mounts for a 2KW tracking grid tie setup, so thought i would post about the build. The wind can get bad here, hence the heavy duty.
I designed the mounts to be driven by two independent linear actuators, one for East-West auto tracking, and one for seasonal adjustment (or future dual axis upgrade)
the tracker i used is from here
http://stores.ebay.com/Richardsfoundry, shipping to the UK only took a few days. there is one tracker per mount, and so far they are tracking together with only minimal tweaking.
the mount is made up of steel pipe for the head unit, box section for the moving parts and flat bar for the various lugs and guides (all minimum of 6mm some 8mm steel), the supports under the panels are 50x50 angle.
The panels measure 1M x 1.5M each, 4 panels per mount, so there is an overall panel footprint of 2m x 3m per mount.
I purchased the proper alu channel to mount directly under the panels, this makes fitting the panels much easier, although it was still hard work, they are well worth the expense.
Here is a rough design i sketched (nothing precision here)
the design has 2 main sections, the Head unit (post cap & pitch assembly 50x70x6mm box section) and the panel mount (50x50x6mm box section).
The panel mount carries the alu channels and transfered the load of the panels to 4x 8mm steel lugs for East-West movement.
The head unit is made from a 30cm length of steel pipe, 8mm thick and approx 14cm diameter.
flat bar plate (8mm) was then welded as a cap on one end.
Two upright steel plates carry the pitch box section, the centre point is offset from the centre of the post, this is mainly to allow the mount to go into the vertical position, for mounting the panels and maintenance.
there are a mixture of in progress pics and greased after pics...
