Why Solar? – Solar trackers

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Why Solar? – Solar trackers Spain
All our Villa systems include a solar tracker. The efficiency of all other systems can be increased by adding a solar tracker. Mounting your panels this way enables good capture of energy on cloudy days. The panels are facing the sun at its optimum position whenever it appears. It is on these difficult days that the tracker can massively outperform stationary panels.

Tried and tested German made ETATRACK Lorentz trackers come complete with DC motor which powers the turning action and works directly off the solar panels. The onboard computer seeks the solar panel area which generates the most electricity turns the mast in that direction.

Personal Note: When we went ‘green’ we came to live in the Buixcarro mountains in Valencia (who we are) and in our first October we experienced the ‘gota fria’ an incredibly intense electrical storm with up 12 inches of rainfall within a couple of hours. In late summer the cold winds come from the north and meet the wet warm winds rising from the Mediterranean.

We had an incredibly wet and stormy October. This was the first and toughest test of our solar power system. We had installed the Villa Deluxe system intending to run entirely off solar power without a generator (see Size Matters).


Two things we noticed were

  • Our solar electric system produces 2kw an hour and in the height of summer we generate over 20kw of solar power a dayIt had to be almost pitch black before the Sanyo solar panels stopped producing electricity. They picked up every little bit of solar energy that was available.
  • Amidst the gloom we would get the occasional shaft of sunlight for just a short spell. With the tracker always locked on to the sun we captured that solar energy.
We were amazed. Our solar electric system produces 2kw an hour and in the height of summer we generate over 20kw of solar power a day, masses more than we need BUT even in these conditions we averaged 4.5kwof solar power a day which was plenty for our needs.

Personal note 2: We are looking for an electric car to use up this extra power in the summertime and like all our other electrical devices we’ll be able to run it absolutely FREE on our free solar renewable energy.