Design and Dynamics of a Novel Solar Tracker with Parallel Mechanism

This paper proposes a two-axis-decoupled solar tracker based on parallel mechanism. Utilizing Grassmann line geometry, the type design of the two-axis solar tracker is investigated. Then, singularity is studied to obtain the workspace without singularities. By using the virtual work principle, the inverse dynamics is derived to find out the driving torque. Taking Beijing as a sample city where the solar tracker is placed, the motion trajectory of the tracker is planned to collect the maximum solar energy. The position of the mass center of the solar mirror on the platform is optimized to minimize the driving torque. The driving torque of the proposed tracker is compared with that of a conventional serial tracker, which shows that the proposed tracker can greatly reduce the driving torque and the reducers with large reduction ratio are not necessary. Thus, the complexity and power dissipation of the system can be reduced.