SkyLine II’s Standardization Design Simplifies Solar Array Layout Design, Lowers Project Cost

Solar energy has been a fast-growing industry around the world since the mid-2000s and the global renewable energy marketplace has been growing at an unprecedented pace. Meanwhile, according to the latest research report published by Fortune Business Insights, the global solar photovoltaic (PV) market size was USD 154.47 Billion in 2021 and the market is expected to grow from USD 199.26 Billion in 2021 To USD 1,000.92 Billion in 2028 at a growth rate of 25.9% in the 2021-2028 periods.

Although the development trend of the solar industry is quite promising, it’s known that the most expensive part of a?solar installation?is the hardware, consisting of?solar panels, collectors, inverters, batteries, and solar trackers. It makes up 25% of the total cost. Generally speaking, when the solar project adopts solar trackers, it’s meant for improving efficiency and increasing energy production. Therefore, for every solar project owner, it’s important to realize the most efficient solar plant at the lowest cost.?

Utility-scale Photo-Voltaic (PV) tracker power plants have traditionally been built with the same tracker mechanism used throughout the plant. PV tracker structures are sized based almost entirely on imposed wind loads, thus the design wind load is the main cost driver for a tracker. In a large PV tracker field, the exterior rows of the array provide a natural wind shielding effect to the interior rows, meaningfully lowering the wind loads the interior trackers are exposed to.

Increasingly, PV tracker manufacturers are moving to different tracker designs for exterior rows vs. interior rows – interior row tracker structures, piles and foundations can all use less material, and the actuation components can be downsized for the lower torque requirements of interior rows. However, it will add complexity to the solar plant layout.

While, Arctech, the world's leading tracking, racking, and BIPV solutions provider, launched its latest horizontal single-axis solar tracking system SkyLine II, the first 1P (one-in-portrait) tracker, which has adopted the standardization design, contributing to increasing the flexibility of solar pant design and reducing the cost or a solar plant.?

Although it is the industry norm that trackers along the perimeter are very different from the edge and far interior tracker within a plant layout. Exterior trackers are commonly equipped with thicker components increasing steel utilization. SkyLine II, however, empowered by a stiff design and more design variables to optimize the outcome, can enable the solar project to adopt only one tracker type, which can simplify the solar array layout design and decrease the project cost as well.

The ratio of interior to exterior rows in a typical plant might be as high as 80:20, meaning that 80% of the tracker plant can use the lighter, lower-cost interior row tracker design. With this approach, the cost of a PV tracker plant can be reduced significantly, improving economics all around.