New Jobs and New Math

The job market seems to be the #1 subject on people’s minds.  And government has a role to play at many levels.  We hope the role is helpful.  But it’s not always so.

The oil industry has known for many years that oil can be extracted from shale rock by heating it.  But in the past, when oil was cheap, this process was too expensive, oil would have to be around $50/barrel to make it profitable.

Well, we hit that and more.  Recent crude pricing has been hanging out at $75 a barrel.  So it’s not surprising that shale oil has been developing in the background.  Shell Oil had fully operational pilot plants, spent the money, applied for the permits.  Shell also announced that the industry would create 10,000 jobs nationwide and capacity to directly reduce a fraction of our oil imports from foreign sources.

The Canadians were sitting on similar resources.  I guess the geology of the Rocky Mountains is the same from Colorado to Canada.  And the Canadians spent the money on pilot plants, applied for the permits and started building plants.

This is pretty big stuff.  Getting tons of rocks crushed, transported, cooked until they release their oil, distilling the oil into a usable form.  Big machinery, lots of equipment.  Lots of work.

The only difference with these two stories is that the Canada has completed its first two plants and is planning on a pipeline to the US where they are going to sell the crude to US refiners.  In the US Interior Secretary Salazar denied the permits to Shell Oil saying that the land use was not consistent with our national goals for the use of the land.

As a former resident of Colorado, I have to say, the land in question is some of the most remote and unusable land anywhere to be found.

So what’s the deal?

Before an election its all about the jobs coming back to the auto workers.  After the election its jobs that are never coming back to automotive sector.

State governments have fallen victim to a similar myth in the green economy.  Alternative energy is reportedly going to bring tens of thousands of new jobs to the economy.  And government officials at the state level are trying to parlay renewable energy projects into increased employment in their states.  And that’s fair.  They should be looking for all the help they can.

But many renewable energy jobs are temporary.   A wind farm project may only employ a few hundred people and after the project is done they have to find a new project.  A new wind turbine manufacturing facility in a state is not like an automotive plant.  The plants are usually manufacturing a sub assembly or part for the wind turbine.  The actual number of people required to build a certain part may be 80-100.  Much of wind turbine machinery content is offshore.

The other “new math” of the job conversation is jobs that are “created or saved” by government intervention.  Well, that’s a tough one to prove.  I surveyed several industries using the Department of Commerce industrial output data.  For many industries the relationship is $220,000-300,000 of sales per employee.  Obviously this number can vary quite a bit.  But to “save or create” 30,000 new jobs takes sales of $7.8 Bil of new products or services.

Somebody has to spend a lot of money.  Which means that somebody also has to earn a lot of money. Government cannot spend to offset a recession.  They can only dig the hole deeper.  New products come from entrepreneurs.  And people who are working buy new products.

We need government to help create new jobs, not destroy them.

Mechatronics and Economics

Recently, I did some industry analysis on jobs and revenue.  How many dollars of sales are required to “create or save” a job in a given industry.  I only looked at a couple of industries and found that it ranged from $219,000 to $275,000 in sales for certain types of processed materials to employ a worker in that industry.

Obviously, this type of metric will vary wildly depending on how highly automated a particular industry is.  The beverage industry is highly automated and doesn’t have a large employee staff to generate finished products.  But interestingly, the companies that build machinery for the beverage industry have fairly high employment because it takes a combination of technically trained skilled workers to make the machinery that makes the beverage products.

The agricultural economy has grown dramatically with the introduction of machinery to assist in the process. Complex machines have been developed for many applications to increase productivity.  The latest round of enhancements are tilling and planting equipment that uses Global Positioning Satellite information to keep the tractors in a straight line and computer plots of the land to maximize the planting area per acre.  Pretty amazing stuff.

In the automotive area, there are some interesting statistics.  In the ten year period from 1998 to 2008 the industry increased its gross output per employee by 33%.  This is a huge statistic and represents the long term impact of automation on the manufacture of vehicles.  The other interesting statistic is that the average internal price of a car today is the same as that ten years ago.  Given that the US industry has pushed it’s quality to compete with the Japanese cars that were perceived as superior to US in quality, this is an amazing feat.

Of greater interest is the comparison of total vehicle shipments.  The most cars and light trucks ever shipped by the US Auto makers was in the year 2000 when we shipped 17.8 million units according to Ward’s Auto which reports on the car industry.  This feat was almost duplicated in 2005 when 17.4 mil units were shipped.

A relatively stable manufacturing base over the years, the US auto industry hit a disastrous slide in 2008 shipping an anemic 13.49 mil units followed by an even worse 2009 when we shipped 10.6 mil cars and trucks.  This was the year in which the Chinese automakers topped the US manufacturing rate for the first time ever.  A point that the Chinese press made with great vigor in spite of the fact that the majority of Chinese automakers are actually joint ventures with foreign companies, the single original Chinese auto maker being in great difficulties due to poor product quality.

The 2009 US auto showing is particularly dismal when you consider the “cash for clunkers” incentive which spent $1.4 billion taxpayer dollars to generate 200,000 additional unit sales.  A small showing in the scheme of things even if the market was 10 million units.

Will the US auto market pick back up? Certainly, but not to the former highs of 2000 and 2005.  2009 shipments were off by 40% from the 2005 high, and that is too much of a gap to be easily recovered.  Especially when unemployment continues to be running in the 10% range and higher.

Is there hope?  Yes.  Serious electric hybrids and battery manufacturing for the US automakers will create tens of thousands of jobs in the next couple of years.  Demand for foreign hybrids has been running at over 400,000 units per year, and will likely increase once there are quality US made products available.

States that pay attention to the needs of the industries they provide locations for are States that will thrive with low unemployment and low deficits.

Semicon 2010

This year’s semiconductor industry gathering, Semicon 2010 is over.  And it was a good show with a lot of technical content targeted at the ongoing effort to achieve ever higher density parts.  The forecast for 2010 and 2011 is for the highest growth levels in a decade.  Certainly, at $295 Billion in projected sales for calendar year 2010, the semiconductor industry is the largest economic activity in the world. And it is just as certainly a more significant economic activity in the US economy than the automotive industry.

Which is saying a lot.

Some of that economic activity is the obvious stuff.  Jobs.  Making things that are important to the industry.  Like all the silicon ingot, water treatment, chip encapsulation compounds, chemical solvents, and gases that are needed.  And all of those feedstocks require people in their respective industries.

There is also the capital equipment market.  Companies that make machines that make chips.  Machines that grow silicon ingots, machines that slice silicon into thin wafers.  Polishing machines that make the surface smooth enough to create the nanometer sized features that become semiconductors.  Wafer probing machines that do functional testing, dicing machines that slice the wafer into the single chips, wire bonding the bare die into lead frames to we can attach the circuits.  Encapsulation, labeling, testing and packaging the final products.

The Semiconductor Industry Machinery business is estimated to be an $11B activity separate from the sale of chips.  The semiconductor equipment market is still the largest target market for motion control products and mechatronics of any market I know of.  At a close second place would be the electronic assembly machinery market  with it’s pick and place, adhesive dispensers and inspection machinery.

Interestingly, the semiconductor industry also provides trickle down technology.  Hard disk drive spindle motors require the exact same 3 phase brushless drive and control as industrial servo motors.  The difference is that the spindle motor is manufactured in quantities of tens of millions of units.  This allows disk drive manufacturers to explore the ultimate boundaries of cost reducing the technology and introducing new techniques to improve performance.  Much of this technology has migrated to the motion control industry in the way of integrated motor control chips.

The semiconductor industry is now made up of two major markets.  Chips and Solar Cells. The solar cell market is counted separately and does not overlap with traditional semiconductor business.  Many of the companies that make semiconductor machinery have extended their capabilities to the solar industry as a way of diversifying into new markets and making up the lost ground that was experienced in the machinery business.

While Solar is still an emerging industry to some extent, it will continue to drive large segments of the economy. Solar photovoltaics and solar hot water drive a lot of jobs in manufacturing and installation of systems.

What we need in the public policy sector is better understanding of the business needs that these industries require.  Generating enough electricity for these industries to thrive is one requirement.  And most states in the US have failed to bring any new capacity on line over the last 30 years. States that recognize these needs and are willing to meet them are going to be the States that prosper with low unemployment and thriving economies.  And that’s where we all want to be.

Intersolar 2010

Intersolar 2010 is one of the larger gatherings of the Solar Energy industry.  I had the opportunity to attend InterSolar 2008 when it was still relatively new.  In the last two years the Solar Energy industry has grown very quickly, chalking up 35% growth in 2009 over 2008 and with similar forecast growth for 2010.  Overall revenue generated from the sale and installation of solar energy systems in the US was estimated at over $2.4 billion.  This is made up of solar panel sales across the residential, commercial and utility customer projects with a mix of technology including some solar hot water systems, some large scale solar concentrator systems and a whole lot of solar panels being installed with racking, inverters, tracking systems, engineering design, contractor labor, etc.

The contrast between InterSolar 2010 and 2008 was very noticeable.  This year’s trade show reflected the growth and sophistication.  Tremendous effort is being put into every aspect of the photovoltaic technology, tandem junction semiconductors that produce the photovoltaic effect at 2 different light frequencies, enhanced surface texturing of the surface glass to improve transmission of light and reduce the problem of incident angle of light, new chemistries like Copper-Indium based photovoltaics which are now “printable” as ink coatings, and ongoing development of thin film silicon, concentrated light focusing on silicon, recycling of the silicon itself, and a host of improvements all targeted at reducing the cost of producing electricity from sunlight.  As you might expect, incredible support from semiconductor equipment makers to provide new equipment to make the technology scalable in production and cost effective in the marketplace.  Solar is the new growth engine in semiconductor equipment.

Solar Panels, like other types of semiconductors, are subject to decreasing cost with increasing volume.  In typical Semiconductor Industry fashion, a lot of capacity has been ramping up since early 2000 which led to a 40% correction (read “drop”) in the price of solar panels during 2009 which played havoc with project bids and created serious difficulties for distributors with inventories or contracts for solar panels at the higher prices of early 2009.  However, now that prices are lower, more demand is expected, and hopefully, companies that had a tough time during 2008-2009 will find business conditions in 2010 and 2011 more favorable.

There is continued optimism that the US solar market will continue to grow at 30%+ per year for the next couple of years, some forecasts are 50% per year and one forecast from Europe suggests 100% growth in the US market next year.  Huge growth forecasts combined with caution on the manufacturing side has created shortages and long lead times for new deliveries.

But we should note, with caution, that this market is largely subsidized by State Renewable Energy Portfolios mandating the alternative energy systems, Utility Company Rebates and Federal Tax Incentives.  Solar energy technology is generally sold on the basis of avoiding future increases in energy costs, not on the basis of eliminating energy costs.

So there is still a big gap in bringing electricity costs down using solar power.  Modern coal plants produce electricity that the utility company can sell at a profit for 6 cents per kilowatt/hour.  By comparison, a 300 watt solar panel will cost at least $1500 installed and functioning.  It can only produce about 756 kilowatt hours per year, and even at 12 cents per kilowatt/hour, won’t break even for about 16 years without government incentives.  So you’re not eliminating your electric bill, you’re prepaying it with a bank loan for a bunch of equipment that doesn’t burn coal.

That’s OK if you can afford it, just don’t make the mistake of thinking you are getting rid of your electric bill.   But be on the lookout for the next breakthroughs in solar.  They are coming.

Electric Car Prequel

The electric car, hybrid or plug in, continues to be an elusive goal.

One model sports optional 2 wheel or 4 wheel in-hub mounted drive motors.  With a large battery pack and a curb weight of 3300 pounds, it’s a bit ponderous.  But it has a 50 mile drive radius and rarely requires any maintenance.  What year will this vehicle be ready?  1899. It’s the Lohner-Porsche.

Recognizing that the weight the battery pack was a major obstacle, Ferdinand Porsche, still working for the Lohner Coachworks, came up with a hybrid model.  The vehicle used a small gasoline engine to power a generator and a single motor mounted on the rear axle of the vehicle. Porsche raced the car himself in the Semmerling competition near Vienna, and with top speeds of 75 miles per hour, won against a very competitive field which included Benz gasoline powered cars.  The 75 mile per hour top speed was unprecedented, especially from an electric hybrid.  The year? 1900!

So all things old are made new again.  If the 2200 pound weight of the Lohner Porsche battery pack could be reduced by 4:1 by using Lithium batteries, then a curb weight around 1500 pounds should be feasible.  The reduced weight of the vehicle leads to significantly greater driving range.  The Smart Car electric model is expected to have a range of 120 miles per charge.  Which, actually, is enough for a lot of vehicle applications.

In wheel drive motors are not my favorite solution, but if the weight can be reduced, then problems relating to suspension dynamics can be managed.  And that’s exactly what the folks at Protean Electric are doing.  They have produced a number of conversion vehicles as demonstrations of their electric motor technology.  And if the motors perform as expected, they will carve out a niche in the plug-in and hybrid electric vehicle world.

There are a couple of important points that need to made here.

#1) based on the “Absolute Value of Technology”, the only thing that matters is the vehicle costs per transportation mile.  That is made up to two components, the purchase price and the expected cost per mile driven.  Admittedly, if you can run an electric vehicle at $.04/mile, it is cost effective to own, even if the car costs more up front, because over the life of the vehicle, the low operating cost will overtake the purchase price.

The IRS deduction for vehicle operation is $.50/mile.  Electric hybrids and especially plug-in electrics are not expected to have any major maintenance costs.  Even if you add insurance, the cost per operating mile will be significantly lower.

But the higher price of the vehicle will be an obstacle from a pure economics standpoint.  For this reason, some manufacturers have considered the option of the local power utility company supplying the battery pack and maintaining it.  Since this is the single largest expense, leasing it to the vehicle owner in the monthly power bill is a good deal.

The second major point to be considered is plug in electrics, even with limited drive range, are the biggest contributor to American energy independence.  These vehicles will directly reduce oil imports every day they are operated.  Because almost none of the electricity in the United States is generated using fuel.  It’s either coal, natural gas or nuclear.

So if we really want to get after the issue of energy independence and stop funding governments that support terrorist activity, the electric car is the path forward.  As are 40+ mpg gasoline cars, and drilling and refining of oil in the US.

Let’s get after it!

$2 Bil more for Solar

The President announced $2 billion dollars will be given to fund solar projects in Colorado, Arizona and Indiana yesterday in a radio address.  The funding will pay for several large solar plants that will add permanent power capacity to the respective states.

One report indicated that the $2 billion would be funded as part of the scheduled $863 billion stimulus fund already appropriate by congress.  Another report indicated that the funds would be provided as loans.  There is a huge difference between the two, and the fact that the various reports are not clear on this point is very curious.

As a sidebar, I guess this is the new style of legislation.  The government passes a law first and decides what it means later.

$400 million is provided as a loan (or loan guarantee) to assist Abound Solar to add 2 major manufacturing facilities and new product lines for the company.  One facility in Indiana will be built from an existing automotive plant that will be re-tooled for solar manufacturing.  The company is expected to add several hundred new production jobs.

Abengoa Solar of Spain, which has operations in the United States will be receiving $1.45 billion, although it is not clear if the money is a loan or a grant.  And while Abengoa has operations in the US and has an excellent reputation as a contractor of large energy projects, it seems very peculiar to be giving money to a foreign entity.

This leads to a couple of really important questions about American energy policy.

From the standpoint of cost effectiveness, if you take the $1.45 billion for Abengoa and divide it by the 1500 projected jobs, the cash cost of each job is over $966,000,  per position.   It would be the same as paying $96,000 to each employee for 10 years.  This has to be the most ineffective use of public funds imaginable.

The other public policy question which has come up before is, why are US taxpayer funds being given to foreign companies?  Major green energy projects in every sector are being built by foreign companies with US government funding.   There needs to be a “Buy American” clause in all this pork barrel spending.  If these are loans, or loan guarantees, how does the government get paid back?

The corollary question for US Energy policy is why should the Federal Government be making loans or guarantees to private companies?

Fiskar Automotive, for example, has secured $500 million in loan guarantees from the DOE for it’s electric car program.  But Tesla Motors raised $2.1 billion in the private financial markets.  Does this constitute a scenario where the Federal Government is creating unfair competitive conditions by providing financial support to companies of their choosing?  And not providing similar funding to other companies.

This is also true on the larger scale.  As the Federal government continues to direct where the majority of US research and development funds will be spent, the process itself disconnects the efforts of the research community from the potential economic benefit that the research should be targeting.

The goal of all research is to produce a benefit.  And the benefit must be weighed in the context of economic utility.  When the development of technology is subjected to bureaucratic decision making, it is dissociated from the decision making process of economic benefit.

This will result in massive waste as limited resources are put into projects with poor return in value.  We appear to have entered a period of time where the process of free market decisions are being circumvented, and everything is to be decided by government.

Because, after all, these folks are professionals at spending your money and they know better than you, or the market, what is most important.

Gears Boxes and Life Expectancy

Gear boxes are a complex subject in their own right.  The equations of motion required to generate gear teeth are pretty complicated.  And the issues associated with gear box reliability are even more complicated.  The parameters of merit are precision and load capability.  But cost is always a factor, and ultimately every system’s performance must be measured within the context of its life expectancy.

One of the most complex parts of the automobile is the transmission, which is a multistage gear reducer that “tunes” the speed range of the engine to the desired speed range of the vehicle at power levels of several hundred horsepower.  What makes this so extraordinary is that the workings are almost entirely automatic.  And the gearbox life expectancy is huge.  I just sold a 15 year old car and it’s transmission system is still working perfectly.

Manufacturing processes associated with gear manufacturing have evolved to help deal with the various demands for performance at lower costs.  The traditional method of gear cutting using machine tools generates accurate parts, but metallurgists found that the grain of the metal cut by machining caused weakening of the gear tooth.  Powder metallurgy had been progressing to the point where it was more cost effective to mold gear profiles in sintered powdered metal and do only finish surfacing with machining processes.  Later improvements in the process include the ability to load higher strength materials where needed in the design to produce higher strength parts at lower cost.

But as load requirements increase, all of the performance issues are magnified.  And unique environmental conditions can play a part as well.  In the current design of horizontal wind turbines, the gear box design is a critical component.  The gear requirement at 2.5 megawatts is certainly a challenge, but adding the need for precision and and durability to survive 25 years of operation make the task incredibly difficult.

There are a couple of subtle aspects to gearbox operation that need to be considered.  One is reversal stress.  How does one calculate reversal stress?  It’s the absolute value of the power, two times the power for simplicity, divided by the time period of the reversal.  This is usually a really big number.  And as the time allowed for the reversal decreases, the number goes up.

It doesn’t matter if the application is a servo motor system on piece of machinery or a gear increaser on a wind turbine.  The situation is the same.  It’s just more expensive when it’s a 30,000 pound reducer that’s 180 feet above the ground on a pole.    But the principles are all the same.

Keeping the machinery running is a tough task regardless of the field.  But monitoring the mechanical systems is key place to start.  Next generation gear boxes will likely include electronics to monitor the loading and condition of the gearbox to prevent catastrophic failures.

Green Energy Myths

The “green revolution” continues to be marked with dis-information.  A lot of the promise of so the called “green” technology is cost reduction, emissions reduction, energy independence or green jobs.  So far, the path has been marked with poor results.

Switching light bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent is supposed to be a great way to reduce electrical costs at home.  I, for one, switched every light in my home two years ago and I can’t see any improvement in my monthly bills.  The only benefit so far, is that I haven’t changed out a light bulb in two years.  I can’t even find any decrease in the cost of heating during the winter, when the waste heat from the lighting in the house would normally have some effect.

Another aspect of cost reduction is return on investment.  Solar cells and horizontal wind turbines have payback periods that are as long as the equipment life expectancy.  Most utility companies with alternative energy portfolios are forecasting the cost of electricity to increase in the near future.  Certainly not what was promised.

The myth of energy independence is based on the energy equivalence of electrical watts and a barrel of oil.  While you can calculate how many watts of electricity are contained in a barrel of oil, there are no alternative energy technologies that displace oil imports.  This is because almost no foreign oil is used in the production of electricity.  Energy independence will only come from more efficient cars, using electric and hybrid cars, and refining crude oil from domestic sources.

US lawmakers are attempting to make emissions “taxable” through a tax and credit policy that is complicated and obscure.  So reducing emissions is supposed to be accelerated through this new category of tax.  But many industry analysts have commented that the new policies will add cost.  (No, I haven’t read the legislation)

And regarding job creation, well, close reading of the American Wind Energy Association’s report shows that a lot of the job numbers are inflated.  In this report employees that install insulation are “green jobs” that are counted in the report.  Also, parts of the appliance manufacturing industry’s employment are counted since some portion of the business is focused on “energy efficient” products.  No specifics are provided with these reports.

There is certainly some job growth currently, but it’s nothing like the claims.  There are jobs being created because the installation of wind and solar systems requires trained people to do this work.  But on the manufacturing side many of the  components are still coming from other countries.  China, for example, is leading the market for solar cell costs.

So far, on any basis that you can evaluate the “Green Revolution”, we’re not seeing any major successes.  That’s what happens when politicians take charge of technology.  This is all stuff that can be addressed in the free market that used to be the was the US did business.

Mechatronics, Mobility, and New Options

The American fascination with mobility, aka the automobile, is going through a lot of change presently.  The introduction of the Segway began a new generation of personal mobility devices.   And the demand for environmentally friendly means of transportation have added unique constraints to all of the vehicle offerings coming to market from both large and small manufacturers.

The direct energy cost per mile or equivalent mpg is one measurement of performance for human mobility.  A fully loaded cost per transportation mile, including vehicle cost, insurance, maintenance, etc., is more consistent with what we really experience.  So there are competing values that each person must consider in the mix of personal mobility.

2 wheeled transportation used to mean bicycles and motorcycles.  But the boundaries are getting fuzzy.  The Seqway puts the two wheels side by side with independent drive motors with a drive train similar to an electric powered wheelchair.   The wheels are independent and capable of operating as an electronic differential permitting these systems to turn in place, a turning radius of zero!  Pretty neat from a maneuverability standpoint.

But the new EN-V from General Motors takes the Segway concept to a 2 passenger vehicle that’s smaller than the Smart Car and designed for short range city mobility.   It’s very compact at 1/6th the footprint of a small car, so parking is not a problem.  And since it’s enclosed, it works in the rain.  The battery powered drive train will reach 24mph maximum speed.  Driving range and equivalent MPG’s have not been announced.

All of the mobility issues are tied up in one formula, namely F=ma.  Force = mass x acceleration.  So as the mass of the vehicle and its design payload, passenger capacity, is reduced, like in a Segway, a motorcycle or the new EN-V, the force needed to move that mass is decreased proportionately.   A 1 or 2 passenger solutions is much easier to deal with than a mini-van that has to have a 400 mile drive range.

In a very extreme response to the mass part of the equation, Honda has demonstrated it’s U3-X electric unicycle, borrowing the balancing concepts of the Segway, but converting the drivetrain to a single wheel system with perpendicular rotating elements where the tread would be so that the unit can move a person from side to side.  (check the video demos on YouTube)  At 22 pounds it is an astounding feat that it can move a person comfortably at 4 mph for 1-2 hours.

The General Motors EV-1 had over 2200 pounds of lead acid batteries in it.  Which made it impractical.  With the improvements of lithium batteries, a 400 pound payload of batteries, which is much more acceptable, makes electric vehicles practical on a technical level.  But due to lithium batteries cost, the Tesla roadster battery pack being well in excess of $10,000, the hybrid solution becomes more cost effective.

By reducing the drive range and acceleration, energy storage requirements are greatly simplified.  The designer can focus on the exact type of mobility sought in a given new product.  This change in thinking is giving rise to a whole new group of design concepts including autonomous drive options as envisioned in         “Minority Report” and the recent DARPA autonomous vehicle challenges.

In crowded urban areas with a highly networked communications infrastructure, new options like the EN-V become much more interesting, more cost effective at many levels, and potentially more safe than today’s smog filled city centers.  And as the supporting technology in battery storage and electric motor technology continue to progress, new solutions and options will continue to be pioneered.

I like new options.

Solar Tracking

Like all things mechatronic, solar tracking is hard to describe.  If we consider the actual motion, it’s two degrees of freedom and both motions are rotary.  The problem is to rotate a flat rectangular panel both about it’s midline, which is azimuth tracking, and rotate it about its baseline, which is elevation.

And the two motions are essentially simultaneous.  Yes, we only see the azimuth motion because it is the daily motion of the panel.  But the angle of elevation has to be mechanically available at the same time so that the annual change of the sun’s angle to the earth can be adjusted.  You could probably get by with this one by going out and mechanically adjusting it 4 times a year, and it would work fine.  It’s just an extra hassle, and if you’re going to bother doing tracking it might as well be good tracking.

Here’s the reason tracking is so important.  The National Renewable Energy Lab says that dual axis tracking can add up to 36% to the energy harvest of photovoltaic panels.  That’s a big number.  It’s a bigger number than anything that is in the lab dealing with the fundamental efficiency of the energy conversion process.

Because tracking the sun has such a big impact on energy harvest, it gets attention.  There are about 20 companies and tracking systems around the world.  There are all kinds of interesting solutions to the mechanical problem.  There ought to be a prize for the best design.  Some of them are really wild.  But all of them have one thing in common.  They all move arrays of panels instead of one panel at a time.

There are two main areas of solar tracking, concentrating solar and photovoltaic panels.  Concentrating solar systems are generally arrays of mirrors that focus the sun’s energy on a target area to produce high temperatures that generate steam and turn a generator.  Large arrays of mirrors all pointed at the same spot require constant adjustment and very high precision in order to get the sun’s energy concentrated on the right spot.

In photovoltaic systems, the panels convert light to electricity directly and need to be perpendicular to the sun.  But accuracy of  +/- 1 degree is acceptable.  So in one sense, it’s not as difficult.  But 2 axes of rotation is a difficult motion problem to solve.  So there are a lot of solutions out there.

I spent some time working on this and there are several really simple solutions that are possible.  And in the process of researching all the possible solutions, we found a wide range of mechanical systems that are available.

Solid Tech Inc. is in the process of developing a cost effective solution that does 2 axis solar track on a single solar panel.  This approach serves commercial flat roof installations and residential applications increasing the total energy harvest and reducing the payback period for the system including the cost of tracking.

Stay tuned for more details.

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