Performance Analysis of Adjustable-Tilt Tilted Single-Axis Versus Horizontal Single-Axis Trackers: a Brazilian PV Plant Case Study
Abstract
This study evaluates whether reconfiguring horizontal single-axis trackers (HSATs) into tilted single-axis trackers (TSATs) can enhance plane-of-array (POA) irradiance capture. To this end, three TSATs—annual, seasonal, and monthly adjustable-tilt—are designed, with their tilt angles set to optimal values for corresponding period to their maximum aggregate POA values, derived from hourly POA estimates obtained using an optimal combination of decomposition and transposition models. The relative performance of adjustable-tilt TSATs is then compared with HSAT to quantify potential gains in captured POA irradiance. Numerical simulations are conducted for a PV plant equipped with HSATs in Dracena, Brazil. Ground-truth data are used to identify the optimal combination of decomposition and transposition models from 400 combinations. This combination is applied to determine the optimal tilt angles for adjustable-tilt TSATs, calculate their POA on annual, seasonal, and monthly timescales, and compare the resulting POA values with those of the HSAT across the same periods. Simulation results show that while the annual fixed-tilt TSAT does not consistently outperform the HSAT, the monthly adjustable-tilt TSAT consistently yields higher POA values. All three TSAT configurations exceed HSAT performance during March, April, May, June, July, and September, with the monthly adjustable-tilt TSAT achieving the highest improvement of 25.61% in June.
Keywords
Horizontal single-axis tracker, tilted single-axis tracker, adjustable-tilt tilted single-axis tracker, Plane-of-array irradiance