Featured in Solar square off – 09-2016

Keeping track of time

Time-of-use savings: Bringing an average of 20% more energy to large-scale plants than those with fixed arrays, the benefits of single and double-axis trackers are even more apparent when state time-of-use charges are taken into account, helping large-scale solar plants to be good citizens of U.S. grids.
By
Charles W. Thurston

Solar trackers have become the preferred mainstream solution for utility-scale installations, based in large part on the broader shoulders the technology fills in on an hourly power curve chart. Now the accelerating utility trend toward time-of-use (TOU) charges is placing even greater focus on those solid tracker shoulders, since TOU rates can readily double in …

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