Trackers

Current Limitations

FIG. 3.3 The dirty little secret of traditional tracking arrays: An array dramatically destroys the area efficiency.

The critical limitations that must be overcome in order to make CPV the most efficient and cost effective solar technology are:

Inefficient use of the land area due to poor tracking technology-- see discussion on solar land area;
The use of large amounts of physical resources (steel, concrete, etc…) to construct large-scale mechanical tracking systems.
No physical mechanism to completely eliminate dead space between solar tracking panels.
Technology that steers the large solar panels to the sun instead of steering the light into the solar panels.
Systems that are especially adept to utility-scale power plants. There are simply not enough roofs to allow solar energy to become a distributed energy source given the current average daily consumption of 250 kW.h/day/person in the USA.