Optimizing solar field design for single axis tracking collectors

The design of single axis tracking solar collectors in a field involves relationships between the field and collector parameters and solar radiation data. In addition, shading and masking affect the collector deployment in the field by decreasing the incident energy on the collector plane. The use of many rows of collectors densely deployed in a given field increases the field incident energy but also increases the shading. Therefore there is an optimal deployment of the collectors in the field yielding, for example, maximum energy, minimum required field area, or other objectives. The present article deals with the optimal design of a solar fields with single axis tracking collectors to obtain: (a) maximum annual incident energy on the collector plane from a given field and (b) finding minimum field area for a given incident annual energy. Two single tracking methods were used in the study: (1) North-South horizontal axis East-West tracking (2) East-West horizontal axis North-South tracking. The optimal results of the two tracking methods were compared to the results obtained for stationary collectors of the same field size.