Adding a sun tracker to your solar array allows the panels to follow the sun throughout the day, maximizing energy production. While commercial trackers are expensive, you can build your own DIY solar tracking system on a budget using inexpensive components. Here’s how.
Key Takeaways
- Sun trackers increase energy output by up to 40%
- DIY builds cost a fraction of commercial systems
- Stepper motors and light sensors automate panel movement
- Ensure structural components are properly engineered
- Program controller to optimize tracking angles
How Sun Trackers Work
Dual-axis tracking systems tilt and rotate solar panels to keep them aligned perpendicular to the sun’s rays as the angle changes throughout the day. This optimized orientation captures the most energy.
Increased Output Over Fixed Arrays
Studies show trackers can increase daily energy production by 25-40% compared to fixed tilt systems by following the sun’s path and reducing reflection.
Step 1 – Choosing Your Tracking Components
For a DIY tracker, use two 12V DC stepper motors to provide movement on each axis. Light sensors feed positioning data to the motor controller circuit board. Sturdy metal framing mounts the panels.
Step 2 – Programming the Controller
The brains of the system are the programmable control board. Code your microcontroller to optimize array angles relative to the sun position based on light sensor input.
Step 3 – Wind and Rain Protection
In inclement weather, homebuilt trackers should be able to return to a flat, horizontal position and stop tracking to avoid wind or water damage.
Conclusion
Building your own sun tracking solar array requires mechanical aptitude and programming skills, but the energy gains of 25-40% can warrant the DIY approach for solar enthusiasts. Just ensure your structural engineering and code are on point.
Hot Take
- Don’t forget to factor in the energy cost of running the tracker motors.
- Code from scratch or leverage open source solar tracking programs.
- Precise construction tolerances are critical – sloppy builds lead to tracking errors.
- Include manual override functions for troubleshooting and emergencies.
hey welcome back to the channel let me show you how we built these dual axis tracking solar panel systems I’m sure I
0:08messed up how I said that but you guys come on we’ll go show you
0:15the reason we installed the self-tracking solar panel system is to gain about 40 percent of extra power
0:22come on as we show you this whole trip
0:28[Music] I’d like to take this time to think HP
0:33Fuller and the fast 2K team for sponsoring this video we use fast2k to
0:38build our projects there’s a link in the description below
0:49[Music]
0:59[Music]
1:12foreign [Music]
1:20so this is the eco-worthy self-tracking solar panel kit and this is what we’re
1:25going to be installing our sun comes up to say we’re south is right this way so the Pat the sun’s
1:33going to come up during the summer and go over like this and in the winter it’s going to come up and go across this big opening so this is a really great place
1:39to put it first off I’m pretty impressed with the build of this this is heavy
1:45this is not like it’s going to have to be to withstand the wind wind loads this is pretty heavily built what our
1:51long-term goal is or what our installation goal is is we have a big piece of steel pipe that we’re going to
1:58get a base this has got an eight and a half inch base by eight and a half inch
2:03we’re going to weld an eight and a half inch piece of heavy Steel on the end of this a pipe and then drill the holes so
2:10it can be mounted to it and then we’re going to take the pipe and then put it in the ground four feet deep so that’s
2:16gonna it’s gonna have a four foot anchor we’re gonna be using fast 2K to hold all this in it should be really interesting
2:43[Music]
3:03[Music]
3:31[Music]
3:38[Music]
3:46foreign
3:57[Music]
4:20[Music]
4:30[Applause]
4:48[Music]
5:03
5:18[Music]
5:31[Music]
5:56[Music]
6:39[Music]
6:45foreign [Music]
7:09foreign
7:16[Music]
9:40[Music] foreign
10:06had to go into putting the solar panels in because you have to think about things like wind uplift and uh side load
10:14as the wind blows on the solar panels it’s really hard to wrap your head around this but the fast 2K is
10:23comparable to concrete and post applications and and just about every application
10:29it’s just it’s just super strong it grips into the ground a little as it
10:35expands it pushes out into the into the soil and then turns completely in Earth like little roots
10:42we found the technical team at advanced2k to be very responsive and and answering our questions and I sent an
10:49email uh talking about what we’re gonna do and I just want to post up the email response that we got back
10:57the tolerance to win load is heavy depending upon the design of the structure and the foundation strong wind
11:03gusts will get underneath and pull the solar panels upward the larger and higher the structure the greater the
11:09wind Force the deeper the post is buried the higher the uplift load it will hold for decks fences and small structures
11:16fast 2K can typically be used directly in replacement of concrete based upon
11:21the solar panel Dimensions post depth and additional controls from the air speed sensor we don’t expect any issues
11:28with wind uplift however for larger structures an engineering assessment should be considered
11:35this product is hyperphobic and will prevent the posts from rusting or corroding
11:47[Music]
12:44foreign [Music]
13:21[Music] is Part B and it’s got three holes here
13:27on the end you want to make sure to make sure the three holes are aimed to the north it’s got each it’s got the
13:33it’s got the which way the post is facing make sure you put the post in correctly this is a big uh the big pen
13:41[Music]
13:48once it gets through got a Carter key
13:54these are seems to be really good quality Carter keys there you are
14:00significantly stronger than anything that I have seen in a while as far as if you’re going to bend them
14:09which is good yeah that’s a that’s impressive right
14:14there so already the hardware is not cheap so this is
14:19this is the sea piece and it sits here in between and it has two of the 10
14:28millimeter pins
14:38Place those pins in and then we’ll put the Carter keys in
14:45all right these pins that come with a kit are too big for this
14:51so I had to put one leg through they’re oversized so it’s not going to
14:57matter but it’s just not gonna it’s just something that’s overlooked it’s just a little little bitty thing
15:02but you’re gonna have to make do with it same thing with that one
15:10yeah so the pins that they send are too big for the pins that go through
15:15here so there’s three screws that mounts this one to this one and it goes something along the lines of
15:22this however there are some holes here and the directions do not say whether
15:28those holes go this way or this way I am making an assumption that they go this
15:33way but I’m not going to tighten the hardware down until I get to that point it should make sense in a minute but
15:39right now with with the directions the way they are it just I don’t know all right
15:46[Laughter]
15:56[Applause]
16:06foreign yeah I’m definitely going to leave this loose until I get to that point where
16:14I feel comfortable then I’ll tighten them all down but right now I just the directions are very vague in this area
16:24the each individual packet so to this point every individual packet had only
16:30the screws for that particular job minus these all the pins came in one
16:36so the next one we’re gonna put on is both of the E it’s E1 and E2 but again the directions are very vague and there
16:43are two mounts here that are put in and it’s not it doesn’t say what if they go
16:49up or down but from the look of the video it looks like they go down so I’m
16:54going to aim them down and then again I’m not going to tighten the hardware up until we get all of the actuators on once we start putting the actuators on
17:00it’ll it’ll it’ll come together make sense uh we’ve got good pictures on on the uh
17:07on this little directions you can actually see and I’m pretty sure I see these these uh raised bolt holes here
17:13and they look like they are facing down
17:18so it switches gears on you so the all the directions to this point are showing
17:24that the uh you’re looking at it from the uh east side and then it switches
17:29gears and now it shows that we’re looking at it from the west side so and then these two
17:36threaded holes will go to the west side [Music]
17:46again we’re not going to tighten anything up until we have got a really really good
17:52understanding
18:07they’re going to use lock nuts and these flat washers on top flat
18:12washers on the bottom a lock washer and then a nut
18:23I really believe we’re in good shape because this makes sense to me the actuator is going to mount here on these
18:28two threaded rods and it’s going to mount to this one on this two threaded rods and that’s going
18:33to cause it to track left and right this way I think we’re in good shape and then the front one
18:40doesn’t really matter we’ll go ahead and put it the same direction but the actuator doesn’t
18:45actually the actuator for up and down goes to this to this so that’s what causes this to go up and down I think
18:52they’re in good shape but we’ll do them both the same just cause
19:04to this point all of the hardware is exceptionally good it’s nothing cheap it’s all everything
19:11about this feels pretty daggum substantial when you take the boxes they’re pretty
19:16heavy and again the hardware is just you know you just don’t see stuff with
19:22good Hardware anymore this is really good Hardware it’s not cheap it has to be in the
19:28weather I believe all these bolts are stainless steel I hope you can hear me after I’m banging
19:35on this thing so you have two actuator kits and I
19:40spent a good bit of time looking for the mounts for this in the box of of
19:46that came with it and the actual mounts are inside the actuator box
19:53which is probably common sense but hey looks like both of these are exactly the
20:00same the picture
20:08is zoomed in to the point you can only see the one here
20:14and it looks like it’s like this so I’m going to make an assumption and
20:20say the other one is like this aimed at this shape again we’re not going to tighten
20:26anything down until we get this uh put together really
20:32it’s very vague
20:42[Laughter]
20:50I’m going to take a chance on this one and tighten these down reason being is because the
20:57of where they’re at it’s gonna be hard to tighten down after the actuator is in place
21:03I’m going to put these snug but I’m not going crazy because
21:10I don’t want this to uh strip out
21:15well made but I think you could strip it out if you went and put the arm on it
21:24so if the there is no picture of this one so I can’t really see it
21:30make the assumption that the long or the taller part is towards the other part
21:35this part is the angle to this part we’ll get it we’ll get a picture of it so the video so you can see what I’m
21:42talking about
22:03so actually the next page does show I call myself looking for the next page does show both pieces and we didn’t get
22:10it right so that’s that’s good and the the little electric motor aims
22:16out away from it on the actuator so we got two pins and two Carter Keys
22:22we’ll just worry about the pins right now this little motor aims out
22:45go ahead and put the Carter Keys through a little Bend so they can’t come out
22:53these are a little softer a lot smaller but I’m going to bend the ends over so
22:59they don’t hang me and bite me
23:10so now we’re putting the side actuator on
23:19these other front and back this one tilts it left to right this one tilts it up and down
23:26so in a combination they help each other they help each other track
23:31so the one that tracks left to right is much longer than the one that tracks
23:39up and down the actuator is a lot longer
23:49I am going to make an assumption that
23:56[Music] this turns has you can rotate it
24:01I’m making that assumption put in the wrong place this goes here
24:08so I made a made an assumption really thinking it through and I went ahead and
24:14mounted this one this actuator on this side and it actually goes over here
24:20and I knew that because I had figured out earlier but it doesn’t really matter
24:26just a matter of unscrewing two screws and moving that little bracket over
24:32I feel pretty good about tightening all the bolts down so we’ll go ahead and do that now
24:52foreign
25:03it’s good to tighten these down but when you’re using your impact driver just remember these are not supported in the
25:09center they don’t have the little spacer between them and you can Crush these so good good and tight but not super tight
25:45so these rails have slots and you can move them in or out and because your
25:50other rails are going to slide up and down on these and are adjustable it’s not terribly important that you get
25:57these exactly in the right place you want them straight so what I’m going to do now is I want to make all of them I’m
26:03going to pull them out all the way to the end and then I’m going to make it straight
26:10foreign too tight because they’re they could
26:17collapse this metal make them generally stay straight there’s nothing really rocket science
26:23about these so there’s a lot of flexibility in this system
26:31and that’s the first one
26:48so I slid this forward as much as I could and again I’m going
26:53to just I’m just going to Snug this one and then I’ll straighten it out [Music]
27:00and again not rocket science but just want it to look good
27:06there’s a huge amount of flexibility in this as far as how you mount the panels
27:13should be no issues at all so if you really want to know if there’s
27:19some issues with this watch the video all the way to the end and you’ll know because I’ll tell you everything I mess
27:25up along the way we get to the end of the video I kind of get a summary of anything I messed up
27:31yeah supposedly [Music]
27:39[Music]
27:47I used a small 12-volt motorcycle battery to move these around just to
27:52make sure everything was moving and working before I went any further it also allows you to be able to work on
28:00it you can move it from side to side and not have to be working at such a high angle we’re installing two mounts with 12 of
28:07these Thunderbolt solar panels from Harbor Freight and we should get around 1200 watts these are each 100 watt
28:14panels so at this point the solo array is
28:22pretty well constructed now we need to put the electronics on it that part is still coming but the directions at this
28:29point will become very vague and the reason they become very vague is because it’s made for multiple different types
28:35of solar panels so each solar manufacturer or each panel manufacturer will make their panels a little bit
28:41different in sizes so at this point you kind of do got to do trial and error to figure out how you’re going to Mount
28:48Your solar panels because the simple fact is every panel manufacturer makes their panels a little bit different
28:54shape size we’re going to be using these uh Thunderbolt solar panels we’ve got these at Harbor Freight they’re 100 watt
29:01they seem to be really good quality and we’ve got some really good reviews off of the internet over them so I’m excited
29:07about these
29:46foreign
30:04so this is a nice time to have a little 12-volt battery so that you can just alternate between the positive and the
30:10negatives to open and close this thing uh what we’re doing now is we’re going to level it out so it’s a little bit
30:16easier to work on and be able to set the across cost ties
30:21up on top it’s got a little motorcycle battery I don’t know really know what it’s just a
30:2712 volt battery [Music] [Applause] [Music] so that’ll be a little bit easier to
30:32work with so the way my panels are going to work they’re actually wide enough to sit on these but then you’re going to hang out
30:39another set of Runners going this way so that you can hang two more panels you
30:44can make six panels on this one set up but again you’re going to have to do your own measurements once you get to
30:51this point it’s basically up to you which style panels that you use
31:01honestly we went through setting these bars uh probably at least three times
31:07because we you can mount the panels in so many different directions that it’s
31:13you know it’s just mind-boggling but it’s once you get your mind wrapped around the first one it’s it starts to
31:19be pretty easy
31:30all right foreign
31:37[Music] types of clamps you have the clamp that
31:44goes on the end this is latches in
31:49like such and that clamps down on the first panel and then you have this clamp which will
31:57go in between panels so that’s that’s the trick to that
32:03so these are the the mounts for the panels you just put them in the track and you rotate them around and then
32:09there’s a little place there for you to put a screw in and that’s what the actual
32:15that’s what these clamps actually clamp down to so these are completely
32:20adjustable and you can move them anywhere you need to true story right here I put all the
32:28panels on and then took all the panels back off because I found a better way of putting them on as I like better
32:35again this system is completely flexible to use multiple different manufacturers panels you just got to be creative and
32:43think about it foreign
32:52[Music]
33:27thank you
33:36well just that one little bit of a Mist there that’s hard the Clay’s hard
33:42him out of breath just two shovels worth and the bugs are
33:48gonna be a rough year for bugs since we didn’t have no real cold weather [Music]
33:59foreign
34:52huh are they coming through no good uh yeah no I’m gonna put six of them
35:15excuse me
35:33[Music]
36:11[Music]
36:42foreign
37:06thing or something this yeah yeah this is a clue it looks at night I want to use the in
37:13the past it is it’s very similar to Plumbing but it’s kind of like outdoorsy stuff it’s
37:21very forgiving
37:26It’s Made for This pipe
37:34I need I need to go back a little further
38:22foreign
39:02foreign [Music] [Applause]
39:07[Music]
39:47[Applause] [Music] [Applause]
39:53[Music]
40:08thank you
40:16but if I do well all I gotta do is just drill another hole over on this side
40:21probably not just have one wire like white water cool out the red wire coming out you just saying
41:11[Music]
41:40thank you
41:49foreign
42:07if you want to know how to pull wire through a conduit really easy I have a video coming out that should come out
42:13roughly a week after this video so I think you’ll enjoy it and it it really
42:19easy and it’s kind of fun to watch
42:55right to a right-handed person or left-handed person can’t work very well
43:20so riding positive okay
43:25okay [Music] it’s a lot easier to run the cable
43:30through this remove remove the little fitting and run the cable through the fitting
43:36and then have the cable Loop out real big so you can work with putting these wires in a little easier and then you
43:43can pull the cable back through really easy and then
43:49screw it up that’s so that’s much easier the only other option would be to take this computer control panel out but that
43:56would be a little more difficult as well so then once you get that let nut locked
44:03push this in a little bit so that the rubber casing of the wire is with that grommet
44:09and when tighten it up it makes a water tight
44:15so water tight or to make that waterproof so this cable goes to the long actuator
44:23so your top if you’re looking at it from the right if this is this is the right this is the left
44:29the top cable is your long actuator the uh second one down goes to your
44:37that’s your power source the third one down is going to your front actuator and
44:43then the the fourth one down is the uh
44:48the wind the wind vane the speed the wind speed sensor so we still have to put that in but the important thing here
44:55is it took me a little bit to figure out the understand the instructions is as you’re looking at this as this is the
45:02right this is the left the for each actuator the positive goes to the left
45:08one please don’t use this wiring as an example either the directions are wrong
45:15or my my interpretation of them are wrong however later on in this video I
45:20give you a detailed how-to so now I’m gonna go ahead and put the speed sensor on here in just a minute
45:45foreign
45:52might be better to put it on the bottom no I’m gonna go down yeah it’s a death top one
46:04[Music] how are you
46:11just fine thank you [Music]
46:21the mechanic shops nowadays you have what they call Parts changers
46:32it’s not doesn’t have to be super strong yesterday we could have showed it
46:38working in the wind but today there’s zero winds like three miles an hour the second Port is for the air sensor
46:44there is marked on the terminal wire g into G
46:49and cable into the in terminal
46:55okay there’s the G and there’s the i n and they are marked
47:00so that makes it pretty easy there’s the eye in I guess that’s i n
47:06yeah well first one is going to be
47:12that tough life gimmo doggy again make sure I got the right one going in the right
47:27all right another tug there we go so now we got that done
47:33I’ll pull the excess wire back through all these are waterproof
47:40so this bottom wire is the sensor for the sun it come pre-wired and the wire
47:46was hanging off and then you have the next one up is this the speed sensor the
47:51next one up is your short actuator the next one up is the power in
47:58positive is going to be on your left side on all of these terminals again wait a little further the video to
48:04get the correct information and then the top one is your long
48:10actuator and once you that’s pretty much how it’s wired now I got this little Loop here maybe you can see that
48:16the it’s got three of them the middle one is G and the top one is i n
48:22there are some extra terminals left at the top there that I forgot to mention but I those are limited switches limiter
48:29limiting switches and this particular system doesn’t have it I would imagine this box works with multiple systems
48:36some of your actuators actually have limiters on it don’t don’t hammer down on these this this plastic
48:45just a snug
48:55I need to leave on enough for these don’t move this portion stays still
49:01this push stays still so I can put all the excess in one bundle here don’t do
49:07this because the bracket Mark D actually does pivot out a great deal so you need
49:12that cable to be flexible so this is the 12 volt wire that tires
49:18the system so this little bitty wire is like maybe 16 gauge I don’t know I got 12 gauge
49:24coming in we don’t ever know so I’m gonna rather have extra but I’m gonna put a I’ll leave about 12 inches of wire
49:32out here one of these wires has writing on it and
49:38that is the wire that we use this positive
49:45this one the wire is
49:53here’s the writing so we know this is going to be the positive
50:06this box is is sealed it’s got a rubber gasket that seals it so I don’t
50:11really worry about the the wire nuts they’re going to be in a dry environment
50:19be ready once we do our testing we can button this box up on these particular wires here these are too long to fit in
50:25this box so we ordered some flexible wise that will we hook these up to in a little bit
50:31I’m just going to hook that battery up for now so we’re going to take this this is the negative and positive wire we’re just
50:38going to temporarily hook up for this little battery as a test so we can test that system out
50:46there’s positive I don’t have any adapters crimp on these temporarily so I’m just
50:52going to split the wire run it through the little hole
50:58again theoretically that that one should
51:04beeping over all right so will you aim at that little
51:09screen and zoom in on that little screen
51:21so be prepared when you turn it on that it goes through it’s full
51:26full range of motion [Music] for calibration
51:31and now we’re going to see if it actually aims towards the sun it looks like it’s going to come back and aim towards the sun on its own
51:37and so far the only thing I’ve done is hooked it up correctly and provided power
51:43Hart’s lost its mind and it’s going to go so it went all the way down again
51:52yeah I haven’t read the directions this far yeah I found in three directions
51:59we can’t just let it sit there and do that all day
52:10it keeps Shining Light in my windows yeah I know
52:28you can get a remote for this oh
52:45that’s probably why it was going nuts because it couldn’t find its so the one
52:50on the inside of the Box the two different directions kind of counteract with each other
52:56so right now we have our North and our East is actually on the uh our north and
53:03south are on the east and west axis axis yeah axis yeah that word and so we got
53:11to go into that box and return on what I’m saying is is when I push West
53:17it goes south when I pushed East it goes north
53:22push North It Goes West so we’re going to have to
53:28really study that for a minute you know that nut yep
53:34notice here the direction of the wire coming out of this this is wrong state
53:39of the you know in I show you all the mistakes so it makes it clear at the end
53:47we get the joy of removing all these and doing this all over again
53:55so that is really the all the directions you get connect the drive Rod cable to
54:01its Port short drive Rod cable goes into third port red cable goes to the left
54:07terminal so the drive there or the the the directions that come with this specifically says which port for this to
54:15go into and but if you look at the actual motherboard in here it says west east
54:21and then north south so they have definitely got the directions are wrong
54:27so look it’s backwards so that says North North is this way
54:34and I have to reverse the wires so let’s talk about the wires real quick the manual is very vague and in my
54:43opinion is wrong I guess there’s a possibility that I read it wrong but everything that it said do is backwards
54:51um this this wire here goes to your front actuator and this is your north south
54:59actuator and for the north south to be correct on
55:04the buttons you have to put the red at the top and the black at the bottom the
55:10next one down is your power in and the way we’ve got this the it shows on
55:15there’s actually a little diagram here so you can’t really get that one wrong it’s positive on the bottom and negative
55:21on the top now you go here this is your this is your uh
55:29East-West East-West actuator and to get it to be the right way red is
55:38the bottom and black is the top so it’s this one’s actually it’s completely wrong every one of these
55:44is wrong every one of these is wired in the wrong place if you do it like the direction says so now when we put this
55:51on I push North it goes north
55:56push South it goes south push East it goes east
56:01push where’s the Goes West so now now it’s correct the next wire down is your little speed
56:07sensor that’s right here and that will that is uh you have to wire
56:14that in as really tiny little wires so you have to get your hands in there the next sensor
56:20down is your light sensor this one and this is already pre-wired so you don’t have to hook this up that’s that’s that’s good because it’s got a lot of
56:26little wires so now I think we’re ready to start our calibration and see what
56:31else is next so this is one of the this is the directions to install it so this is the
56:39the actual manual for installing it and this is the directions for the both of
56:46them say the same thing but one shows you how to install the the parts of the thing and then this shows you how to
56:53install or to run the computer portion of it however it does give you
57:00information on where stuff goes and this particular little manual
57:06shows to put the Sun sensor in the top right corner and on
57:15the this sensor here or this manual here says to put it on the right of the right panels so there’s obviously
57:24discrepancies between the two manuals so we went ahead and used the one that goes with a little computer all right we’re
57:30going to turn it on for the first time with all the wires in the right place and see if it’ll what what happens I
57:37know it I think it’s going to go through some sort of Auto calibration
57:44it’ll go through all the way through the left and right trying to figure out where
57:52where the limits to each of the actuators is that information is also
57:57incorrect this system is pretty unique in how it tracks the sun it completely tracks the sun using the sun sensor it
58:05doesn’t really know exactly where it’s at also in this point of the video the sun
58:11sensor is in the wrong location and it’s giving the computer wrong information so we we’ve played with this and read
58:19directions out of both of the Little Manuals and this switch is a little a
58:24little off you see where the wire comes out at the bottom that has to be facing towards the South
58:29so it says Mount this switch at the easternmost Edge
58:35uh North on the north north of the axis so this is the axis right here but this
58:41north of the axis ideally in the manual it shows the little cord hanging down
58:47like this up at the very top of the side so what we’re going to do now is
58:52re-level it back out and then turn it off turn it back on and let it let you
58:57see it automatically set up I’m going to put some detailed drawings of the of of
59:03this uh how we wired this up because it’s the system seems to be really cool
59:10but the directions are somewhat lacking and you have each each book says
59:15something different if you take this bracket and mount it up there then the switch is
59:21turned the wrong way it literally is turned the wrong way for the Sun and it’ll make the the it’ll make the unit
59:28go look towards the wrong direction all right so I’m gonna push set
59:36[Music] one thing to think about too while we’re
59:43doing all this is the panels are wired up there’s a positive and a negative out right here that are not hooked up these
59:50have 80 you know up to 85 bolts in them and they are dangerous they’re not dangerous in their current current
59:56configuration but just remember why you’re doing wiring especially if you have multiple systems in a row like we
1:00:01do you’re not going to hook up any one of these wires until you have all of
1:00:07your other work done because if you go in there and cut a wire there’s 85 volts
1:00:12there and that’s enough to actually hurt you make your heart stop that kind of hurts you so I got the power hooked up
1:00:18now it’s got a little count down here don’t stand under this so it’s just three two
1:00:23one whatever it’s counting down in like five seconds
1:00:30now it’s going to look for the Sun
1:00:36and you’ll notice it’s fine tuning so every few minutes it will look to see
1:00:42where it’s at and then it’ll self-adjust right now it’s going to get that fine
1:00:47tuning but after it’s fine tuned it will just self-adjust
1:00:53and keep stuffing adjusting until it uh you know every few minutes as the sun moves it’ll move with it so this should
1:01:00get you 40 percent more power 40 percent more that’s a lot
1:01:05so this is the wind meter and we just bought this little bracket here from Lowe’s put a piece of treated lumber on it we still have to tidy up the wires
1:01:12and we’ll do that but you can go into the computer here and set what your wrist level is your risk aversion is for
1:01:20wind so if you want it for 20 miles an hour at say 20 miles an hour your your solar panels will go back into safe mode
1:01:26once safe mode is is they will go back completely flat so the wind is hitting the unit from the side and not cause any
1:01:34stress on the whole unit so I’m not going to tell you what to put yours on you’ll have to you know read the
1:01:39directions as best you can and make a determination what your wrist level is but you can set the wind load
1:01:47so we’re testing this panel out now we’ve got it set on automatic it’s actually aimed at the Sun at the very
1:01:53very best that it can be and what we’re going to do now is uh test now when you’re doing these kind
1:02:00of things you never want to have these plugged up especially if you don’t have the other sections done uh because if
1:02:07you plug this up this will carry voltage down to the other part that you’re working on and can shock you so you
1:02:12never plug the panels in until you’ve actually done not for safety we’re gonna go ahead and
1:02:18check our voltage here so I think let’s see this is the can you
1:02:24bring up higher I’m going to move it around here I believe this is the best postage this is the very best voltage
1:02:31that we’ve ever got uh 61.8485 it keeps
1:02:37so that’s really good voltage very steady
1:02:42very steady [Music]
1:02:59I got that little top piece you gotta slide up now
1:03:11foreign
1:03:39so yes barely well what I’m hoping is is that it’ll keep the batteries charged up enough
1:03:46um like overnight it’s going to charge them back up
1:04:13hey now we’re going to check and see what the voltage with the panels are flat then we’re going to plug the panels
1:04:19in together so we carry the voltage in on the inside we’ll test our voltage there to make sure that the voltage is
1:04:25coming through then we’ll turn on the panels and let them adjust directly towards the Sun and we’ll see how much
1:04:31voltage we pick up from there so right now see we are
1:04:3861 votes as it sets right now we’re going to plug these in
1:04:45this is going to bring the voltage to the inside so we got these plugged in over here already and it’s very important that you are
1:04:52that you don’t have your panels plugged in while you’re working on the other end like you’re putting the ends on the wires because this panel’s put these
1:04:59panels are putting out 60 uh like right now about 61 volts and that’s enough to stop your heart so you always want to
1:05:05make sure that you plug this stuff up last now let’s go to the inside
1:05:12okay now we got the all the everything’s pretty much done got a few little wiring
1:05:18issues to tidy up but we’re going to check the voltage in here now again these are live so be very careful will
1:05:2761.66 volts that’s pretty good now what we’re going to do now is
1:05:34we’re going to plug this into our blue Eddie so the blue Eddie is not permanent we’re putting a actual powerwall here
1:05:40with a all-in-one but the blue 80 is kind of our our testing
1:05:46our testing process so we’re going to plug these together we should see they come on saying solar
1:05:52right here
1:06:00there it went 293 400 volts right now
1:06:07so we’re at 400 and 50
1:06:14475 volts right in there we’re charging up so we’re going to
1:06:20discharge we got the AC on got this little heater that pulls 1500 watts this is a 2000
1:06:26watt continuous system
1:06:34showing right now we’re pulling in 800 900
1:06:410 1100 1200
1:06:48the elements are heating up so there’s probably going to be around a 1300 watt so that’s what it’s really pulled it’s
1:06:53about 1300 watts and right now we’re pulling in 491.
1:06:58so Tanya’s going to swing around and look at the uh the solar panels and
1:07:04we’re going to see when we move the solar panels around directly at the sun do we pick up a lot more amperage coming
1:07:11in so what I have to do now is
1:07:18plug the solar panels in unplug the solar panels into these 12
1:07:23volt batteries we have set up and swing around there and we should see the panel start moving
1:07:29so now both the panels are moving and they’re should go directly towards the Sun
1:07:41it may get a little shading in the evening
1:07:47looks like not looks like we’re gonna late evening we’re gonna get some shade from one to the other but that’s just
1:07:52the way it way it happened so it’s right now it’s 679 the maximum
1:07:58solar that you can put in is 700 and that’s we’re late evening so we’re
1:08:04obviously not got the best Sun of the day but we’re still obviously about 200
1:08:09amps higher than we were prior to the tracking happening so that’s a big win
1:08:15we’ll we’ll do some more testing tomorrow when the sun’s up oh you guys stay tuned for that video one other
1:08:21thing we’ve got going on here this is a this is a gate opener it’s got two 12
1:08:27volt batteries in there and for now we have a trickle charger that will trickle
1:08:32charge the batteries overnight keep these things fully charged until we get our final system on the wall
1:08:38[Music]
1:08:56really [Music]