sbslider
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2020
- Messages
- 6
I have a very small simple system. A single 12V 0.5A panel charging a set of old electric lawnmower lead acid batteries. I use this to power a single night light. i recently added another item to the circuit which consumes power 24 hrs/day, and my little panel doesn't keep up. I'm not super concerned about "fixing" that problem, I'm more interested in seeing how simply I can improve the system I have. My idea is to have a simple circuit driving a motor to rotate the panel from east to west over the course of 12 hours. I know there are TONS of sensor based systems running with arduino or such. Great for folks that want that. I'm theorizing for my simple system I could get a decent boost in energy collected if I could have the panel pointed east in the morning, and at the appropriate time have it start rotating toward the south, then the west. If I understand the data I saw correctly, for where I live (maybe the same for everyone?) the time of day that the sun is due south in the sky varies only +/- 15 minutes over the year. If I have the panel pointing due south in the middle of that spread, the loss of energy collection over the course of the year would be small. I would need to manually change the elevation over the course of the year, but this is fairly simple and not very time consuming. I would plan on optimizing that angle for when the sun is higher in the sky, to make the most of the high irradiance radiation hitting the panel.
So, is my hypothesis close to right, and if so are there simple setups (DIY or otherwise) that would rotate 180 degrees in 12 hours, then reset back to the start each day?
So, is my hypothesis close to right, and if so are there simple setups (DIY or otherwise) that would rotate 180 degrees in 12 hours, then reset back to the start each day?