Saw something wild at a solar farm in Nevada last month

I was driving through the Mojave Desert and stopped at that big solar farm near Primm. Noticed they had these panels mounted on old school tracking systems that follow the sun, but like half of them were just stuck pointing east. An engineer there told me the actuators fail all the time because of dust getting into the gears. Anyone else seen this kind of maintenance issue with solar tracking hardware?

2 comments

2 Comments

diana_bell743h ago

I was out at a solar farm in the desert last year for a different thing and saw the same stuff. Those tracking actuators are made for like perfect weather conditions, not the real world. Dust gets in the gears and they sieze up real quick, it's just a design flaw honestly. The engineers probably know it's gonna happen but the upfront cost of better parts is too high for the companies. I'd bet most of those panels end up just pointing one direction after a few months anyway. Not a huge deal if you ask me, they still make power even if they're not perfect.

the_piper2h ago

Oh man, your comment brings back something a buddy of mine told me. He was out working at a solar farm near Barstow a couple years back and said the same exact thing. The whole time he was there, he said at least half the trackers were already stuck or just grinding away all day. He told me that the dust gets in so bad that the motors just burn out trying to move the panels. By the time he left, the crew had basically given up on fixing them and just locked them in place for good. So yeah, your take on it being a design thing that nobody wants to pay to fix sounds spot on to me.