The present invention includes a heat exchanger reactive to external and internal temperatures for carrying a working fluid, including two pairs of nested pipes; each pair including one pipe with a channel portion and a stress relief portion and a second pipe with just a channel portion, one of said pipes enclosing the other with an interference fit and both pipes having different coefficients of thermal expansion. The first pair of pipes positioned co-axially with and encompassing the second pair. A fluid is positioned in the space defined by the inner surface of outer pair of pipes and the outer surface of inner pair of pipes. The two pipe pairs have positions responsive to the internal and external temperatures in which the space defined by pipe pairs is either minimized or maximized by expansion and contraction of the pipe pairs caused by differences in coefficients of thermal expansion.

A method of seasonally positioning a solar panel to improve energy capture and/or reduce space needed for multiple panel installations. The solar panel is maintained in a fixed horizontal position during a first period of time, such as including summer months, and then follows a tracking procedure during a second period of time, such as including winter months.

A solar tracking system for tracking the orientation of solar energy is disclosed. The solar tracking system may be integrated with solar cells and solar concentrators. The solar tracking system may have a first (22) and second (24) tracker module array that are opposite from another, aligned in substantially identical orientation, and form a tracker module pair array (1000). Tracker module pairs (12, 14; 12, 144) may allow motion relative to one another while maintaining substantially identical orientation. Solar concentrators may be attached to opposing tracker modules of a tracker module pair forming an array of solar concentrators. A base bar array (28) may be coupled to at least one tracker module pair. A transmission may operably rotate the base bar array and the tracker module pair array simultaneously.

A solar tracking system comprises multiple solar panel modules forming a grid of solar panel modules, wherein the multiple solar panel modules are orientatable to a solar source independently of each other; and a control system configured to orient each of the multiple solar panel modules to the solar source independently of each other based on a performance model to optimize an energy output from the grid of solar panel modules, wherein the performance model predicts an energy output from the grid of solar panel modules based on a topography of the area containing the grid of solar panel modules and weather conditions local to each of the solar panel modules.

The invention relates to a method for assessing parameters for controlling a solar tracker including modules which include a table of means for processing solar radiation which is movable on means for connecting to the ground, which includes detecting, for each connection means, spatial coordinates of a point for connection with the table; for each module: i. determining a tilt of the table from the determined spatial coordinates; ii. determining spatial coordinates of a series of reference points of the table from the spatial coordinates and the tilt; determining, for each module, positioning parameters of the table relative to directly adjacent tables, from the spatial coordinates of the reference points; and determining parameters for controlling the tracker from the tilt and the relative positioning parameters of the tables of the tracker.

A sun-tracking solar drive can include hardware and/or be operated in accordance with a method in which angular deviations are compensated for operation including during forward tracking and backtracking. For example, the effects of thermal expansion and mechanical slop associated with certain components can be calculated and used for calculation of target angles that can provide for increased power output and improved shading avoidance.

Concepts of distributed solar energy prediction imaging are described. In one embodiment, a solar forecast system includes a computing environment, a network, and an imaging device. Among other elements, the imaging device can include a wide-angle optical component, an imaging assembly, and a computing device. The computing device of the imaging device can capture an array of images using the imaging assembly, combine the array of images into a combined-resolution image, transform the combined-resolution image into a transformed image based on a calibration transformation matrix associated with the wide-angle optical component, identify and track cloud features in the transformed image, and generate a solar forecast using ray tracing based on the cloud features. The imaging device can also transmit the solar forecast to the computing environment via the network, and the computing environment can fuse solar forecast data from several imaging device into a distributed geographic area forecast.

A central solar receiver (1) is provided having a heat exchanger assembly with walls that form an inlet chamber (2) and a generally juxtaposed outlet chamber (3) connected to each other by way of a multitude of tube assemblies (4). Each tube assembly (4) has an inner tube (6) and an outer tube (7) with the tube assemblies (4) extending away from the inlet and outlet chambers (2, 3). A remote end (8) of the outer tube (7) is closed and the inner tube (6) terminates short of that closed end (8). The interior of each inner tube (6) communicates with one of the inlet and outlet chambers (2, 3) and a space between each of the inner and outer tubes (6, 7) communicates with the other of the inlet and outlet chambers (2, 3) to form a passageway connecting the inlet and outlet chambers (2, 3) by way of the inner tube (6) and the space between the inner and outer tubes (6, 7) with a change in direction of flow of about 180.

Methods and systems are disclosed for automatically determining solar access values, including a method including calculating a ray between a sun position and a structure vertex at a plurality of time periods; comparing a path of the ray to location of points in object point cloud data representative of the size, shape, and location of one or more objects to determine that the object(s) blocks the ray from reaching the vertex, resulting in a shadow over the vertex for at least one of the time periods; determining effects of the shadow over the vertex on the maximum possible irradiance values based on a determined distance and whether the vertex is within an umbra, penumbra, or antumbra of the shadow at at least one of the time periods; and determining irradiance in Watts per time period over the plurality of time periods in which the shadow is over the vertex.

A solar tracker system comprising a plurality of on sun trackers and a plurality of off sun tracker. Each tracker is selectively adjusted to achieve a desired power output of the solar power plant system in an example.