Yes, you know exactly where the sun is in a global coordinate system.
The problem is that your mirrors are not fixed in that global coordinate system.
You need to continuously re-calibrate the local coordinate system of the mirrors against the global system.
https://www.topconpositioning.com/us/en/solutions/technology...
The reason should be obvious in that the motors are higher maintenance systems so you don’t want to scale with the size of your plant. I imagine drones are being used for a similar purpose: the drones further reduce how many adjusters you need vs rails and the AI is so that the drones can actually adjust the panels.
So you need independent azimuth+elevation for each mirror.
There’s always a performance/cost target you’re trying to hit. Sometimes it’s not about performance at all costs and it’s ok to sacrifice some optimality to get a much cheaper solution.
So while the mirrors are independently adjusted, the there’s a single motor robot on a rail that comes by and custom adjusts each mirror instead of having the mirrors self adjust locally at all times.
You say it's more expensive, do you have a rough estimate of the cost of such a panel (with or without motors) ?
I'm asking because I'm currently working on a small scale automated solar concentrator and I haven't managed to get an idea of how much such a panel costs.
I have only found some sun trackers for photovoltaic panels but they have different angular accuracy requirements than CSP.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/09/04/184005/a-robot-t...