Economics

ECONOMICAL FEATURES

Athough made of aluminium and stainless steel a price of the new tracking support structures is frequently close to that of equivalent fixed ones. The low price enables profitable use of the new tracker with solar PV panels down to 100W of power while best older trackers are profitable with solar PV panels above 1000W.

Price of solar cells represents substantial part of the price of the tracker. As the price of solar panels will decrease, simultaneously will decrease price of the tracker. The tracker will therefore remain profitable also in long prospective even if price of solar panels would be well below 2US$/watt.

The bigger the system the more economical is the tracker. Example of price comparison of fixed and tracking concentrator solar pumping systems with equal pumping capacity (end user prices US$ 2000):

Fixed pumping system	US$	Tracking pumping system	US$
12x120W PV panel	8,400	6x120W PV panel	4,200
2x fixed stand	780	1x tracking stand + concentrator	1,590
1x water pump	1,770	1x water pump	1,770
Total	10,950	Total	7,560