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 |