Little Solar Panel Adjusting Train-bot
I’ve often (sometimes, rarely) wondered how to adjust a LOT of solar panels or reflectors using only one (or two) motors. If you’ve got a massive solar-array, or at least an array with a lot of nodes… eg: those ones in Spain…
Then you’re probably looking at have to have a tracker on each and every mirror… which may not add up to a whole lot compared to… the land the thing sits on say, but that’s still a lot of non-passive, moving-part components.
If you’re trying to do this at household size, then the cost is (relatively speaking) a whole lot more – with the motors (in terms of maintenance, calibration (etc etc)) costing a whole lot more.
So get a little robot to do it.
Reminds me of Huey, Duey and Louey of Silent Running – who looked after the plants etc. Apparently this method offers a fairly substantial saving cost-wise… although the tracks etc look kindof expensoid. This would be a far more resilient system if the robot wasn’t on a track… but instead worked like swarmed Roombas… ie: a bunch of them semi-working together.
I quite like the idea of moving all of the vitamin parts into a single drone/module though.
One Comment, Comment or Ping
Solar panels
In general, solar energy can be described as the energy that is received from the sunlight and converted by a mechanical source for home use. It’s cheaper and reliable for operations since the sun is readily available. On the other hand, solar panels are the mechanically built materials whose main purpose is to convert solar energy to electrical energy. They are built from an element called silicon. It is the core duty of the silicon element to covert the solar energy to electricity.
Nov 1st, 2012