A solar tracker is a device for orienting a daylighting reflector, solar photovoltaic panel or concentrating solar reflector or lens toward the sun. The sun's position in the sky varies both with the seasons (elevation) and time of day as the sun moves across the sky. Solar powered equipment works best when pointed at or near the sun, so a solar tracker can increase the effectiveness of such equipment over any fixed position, at the cost of additional system complexity. There are many types of solar trackers, of varying costs, sophistication, and performance. One well-known type of solar tracker is the heliostat, a movable mirror that reflects the moving sun to a fixed location, but many other approaches are used as well.

The required accuracy of the solar tracker depends on the application. Concentrators, especially in solar cell applications, require a high degree of accuracy to ensure that the concentrated sunlight is directed precisely to the powered device, which is at (or near) the focal point of the reflector or lens. Typically concentrator systems will not work at all without tracking, so at least single-axis tracking is mandatory. Very large power plants or high temperature materials research facilities using multiple ground-mounted mirrors and an absorber target require very high precision similar to that used for solar telescopes (heliostat).

Non-concentrating applications require less accuracy, and many work without any tracking at all. However, tracking can substantially improve both the amount of total power produced by a system and that produced during critical system demand periods (typically late afternoon in hot climates) The use of trackers in non-concentrating applications is usually an engineering decision based on economics. Compared to photovoltaics, trackers can be inexpensive. This makes them especially effective for photovoltaic systems using high-efficiency (and thus expensive) panels.

For low-temperature solar thermal applications, trackers are not usually used, owing to the high expense of trackers compared to adding more collector area and the more restricted solar angles required for Winter performance, which influence the average year-round system capacity.

Source: Wikipedia (All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License)

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