After 2 years I am finally happy with the design and the recent storms have been a good testing.
Firstly a very big thank you to Fieldlines forum members for their help, and a thank you to DamonHD, Moderator, for putting up with my jottings.
At last Mrs CM has done a link from our Not for Profit web site; -
http://www.echorenovate.com to a page that gives folk the ability to purchase our New booklet-:
http://www.echorenovate.com/new-book---make-a-solar-tracker.php "How to Make a Low cost, simple and robust 1.5kW or a 2kW Double Axis PV Solar Tracker"Its A4 size, 32 Printed pages, 67 colour photos and 8 pages of technical drawings.
This is the first Metric edition of just 30 copies so the £15 cost covers the high print cost and the Post and Packing cost. Hopefully, when I have saved up, we here will have the updated second edition, printed in a higher quantity to reduce the cost.
As regards a Download version, yes we will get there.
But I have to physically go to the printers with the technical drawings (TurboCad) pasted up, and in page order, as the CAD drawings are not easily converted to the correct A3 size, PDF document.
Modern A3 colour copiers can copy my Tech Drawing masters direct to PDF USB stick, so the scale and details are not lost.
This design really came out of necessity, as I wanted about 5kW of Pv on some sort of mounting array that was away from the ground so the sheep could still graze.
The cost of metal and materials for each Tracker was about £600 where a static 2 kW mount was about £350.
I have worked in Engineering most of my life, but building 3off Hugh Piggott 12 footers was a revelation as his simple, robust, and cost effective mechanics were a dream.
So using the same principals of Hugh, I developed a 1.5kw design and a 2kW design of PV tracker. Each has 8 panels, with the 2kW using 250w Mono Yingli panels.
There is no fancy bearings and excessive over engineering, just a reasonable quality 24inch actuator, and Dave from Australia's LED type sensor circuit, that minimizes power use.
I have posted the development of these trackers on :-
http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,20386.0.html
