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Comment by sgc | Hacker News Reader

That is a simple math + sensor problem, not an AI and drone problem.

https://www.topconpositioning.com/us/en/solutions/technology...

I think it’s more that it’s been shown that a motor at each panel is more expensive than manually rotatable mirrors that are maintained by a smaller set of mirrors. For example, there was a startup a few years back that had robots on a rail system go to each panel and adjust it.

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.

For concentrated solar polar, you need almost constant movement of the mirrors to keep tracking the sun well enough.

So you need independent azimuth+elevation for each mirror.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/09/04/184005/a-robot-t...

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.

It's an interesting idea, but I think you'll be surprised at how fast the sun moves. You can try it yourself. Put up a small mirror that reflects a sun spot on a surface. Clock how fast it moves a centimeter. Multiply that distance with how much further away a central tower would be.

Interesting, do you have any links about this startup ?

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.

Not the startup I was thinking of as I can’t find links for it but same concept:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/09/04/184005/a-robot-t...

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