Vikram Solar recently announced the launch of ‘HELITRAC’, a highly advanced solar tracker with robust weather proof mechanism and multimode intelligent operations.The product was showcased at Renewable Energy India Expo, Greater Noida. Set to boost the solar industry by further improving PV efficiencies, ‘HELITRAC’ can change its orientation throughout the day to follow the sun’s path to maximize energy capture.It allows east-west land undulations up to 3-5 degrees. Additionally, its IP65 gears and drives make the system weather proof and robust. The product is touted to be a breakthrough development, as it introduces certain unique features for the first time in India, viz. Link tube with articulated joints, dust avoidance and rain mode.
Highlighting the importance ‘HELITRAC’ Mr Siddhartha Sengupta, President- Engineering, Vikram Solar commented, “In large scale MW projects, utilization of Sun tracking systems is becoming increasingly prevalent as it enables developers to makemaximum utilization of available land by generatingmore electricity even from a shredded down DCcapacity. Our new product- HELITRAC increases performance and PVefficiencies, offering various industry- first features and lowest LCOE. The product has been introduced with a clear aim to cater to the ever growing energy needs in a cost effective way and to serve the energy revolution.”
Mr Sengupta further added, “With the benefits of fast installation and ease of transport, the product is slated to hit the market early in Q1 of 2017-18. Our revolutionary sun tracker will not only increase the solar PV plant generation, but also minimize the plant’s capital cost through its unique features.” ‘HELITRAC’ is bestowed with various features that not only makeit a unique product, but are also advantageous for end consumers. Exhibiting intelligent features like link tube with articulated joints and slew drives, it allows massive field adaptation, reducing land preparation cost. It also has a dust avoidance mode and rain mode that minimizes soiling losses and enables self-cleaning of the modules during rains respectively. With back tracking as another significant feature, the tracker keeps inter-row shading under check.
Direct normal irradiance (DNI) and Diffused horizontal irradiance (DHI) being two components of sunlight, DNI offers the majority of energy. To maximize the collection of Sun’s light, the sun rays have to be perpendicular to the PV modules as long as possible which is practically not possible in case of traditional fixed tilt mounting systems and this led to the invention of sun trackers. As we know that the relative position of sun changes daily from east to west,it is therefore the angle of rotation that matters. The angle of rotation varies from -60° to +60° (East-West direction), but for tropical countries like India, a single axis movement of -45° to +45° (East-West direction) is enough for extracting the maximum gain. The tracking happens as per the astronomical algorithm encrypted in the controller, defining the relative path of sun round the year even considering all seasonal variations. This process of following the trajectory of sun provides with anelectricity generation gain of around 18% to 25%, depending on its location.
