Determining the Accuracy of Solar Trackers

The experiment was measuring the tracker angles of the commercially available, non-algorithm based solar trackers. The results showed that the average accuracy of the azimuth angle of the Zomeworks UTR-020 is 75%, the average accuracy of the azimuth angle of the Wattsun AZ-225 is 88%, and the average accuracy of the elevation angle of the Wattsun AZ-225 is 89%. In addition, the results showed a weak correlation between the accuracy of the azimuth angle of the Zomeworks solar tracker and the Direct Beam Fraction (DBF) percentage, a strong correlation between the accuracy of the azimuth angle of the Wattsun solar tracker and the DBF %, and a moderate correlation between the accuracy of the elevation angle of the Wattsun solar tracker and the DBF%. Moreover, the accuracy of the azimuth angle of the Wattsun AZ-225 solar tracker was always higher than that of the Zomeworks UTR-020 under any DBFs and any Global Horizontal Irradiations (GHIs). The results showed also that there was very weak correlation between the accuracy of the azimuth angle of the Zomeworks solar tracker and the ambient temperature, and weak correlations between the accuracies of the angles of the Wattsun AZ-225 and the ambient temperature as well.