Revamping designs

“There’s quite a bit of competition out there; but a lot of tracker companies are coming into the market with the same knockoff product and not a lot of innovation. These guys are trying to be the low cost provider, but don’t have a history, or bankability, and there are performance delivery questions,” says Ron Corio, the CEO of Array Technologies, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
On the other hand, some startups like QBotix, of Menlo Park, California, have recently introduced unprecedented uses of robotics to the labor- and maintenance-challenged solar PV tracker market.
Whether the new entrants to the market are innovative or not, the tighter competition, tempered by continued global economic pressure, has hit pricing hard. “The big challenge is that customers are asking for lower and lower costs,” says Dan Shugar, the CEO of Solaria, based in Fremont, California. “When we can deliver, it moves the needle enough for a lot of projects to happen that wouldn’t otherwise, because they wouldn’t have made margin targets,” he says.
Some of the largest tracker companies have led the way in price cutting. “There is tremendous price pressure on our products, so we recently adjusted our prices to compete better,” Corio notes. DegerEnergie also reduced prices by 20% this year for its trackers. More cuts may be on the way for the tracker industry. “We saw about a 65% reduction in module cost over the past two years, and even though there may have been a 30% to 45% reduction in tracker costs over the last five years, there might still be some big price drops coming for trackers,” reasonsYezin Taha, a renewable energy consultant at Black & Veatch, in San Francisco.

Sources of price reduction

Balance of system costs associated with trackers also should see price cuts, sources suggest. “There are some ingenious ways to save money on trackers coming up in the market; the question is whether they can be implemented soon enough to take advantage of the boom that will continue over the next few years to 2016,” suggests Bob Stojanovic, head of Solar Power North America at ABB, based in San Diego, referring to the date that U.S. federal tax credits for PV are scheduled to end.
Specific suggestions for cost reduction abound. “We’ll continue to see cost cuts in the industry not only in the tracking mechanism, but also in the way that modules are mounted to racking, in the use of modules without frames, and in the use of glass-on-glass modules,” reckons Dan Alcombright, the CEO of Solon, based in Tucson. Taha, of Black & Veatch, adds, “Tracker installation, trenching, cabling and communications have yet to demonstrate massive cost shake ups; future improvements should focus on addressing the complete system as opposed to just installation, communications, etc.,” he says. “Another potential area of cost reduction could come from designing wind load protection more for the outside of the field than the interior,” he notes. “And codes and standards can still evolve, further affecting cost and price,” he concludes.
Another source of price reduction is simplified packaging and logistics. “One of the innovations we are pioneering is a completely pre-engineered palletized tracker. The racking creates the box framework for the tracker, which is nested inside. We provide everything needed for the installation, so they have no parts overhead, and we ship free the same day,” says Andrew Savage, the Director of Communications for AllEarth Renewables, based in Williston, Vermont.
The increased competition is also likely to encourage consolidation in the tracker industry.
“The biggest trend in the tracker industry now is the education of the end user; we are no longer selling single-axis against fixed-tilt, but rather selling our trackers against other companies’ trackers,” says Jay Johnson, a San Francisco-based Vice President for Business Development for Exosun. “We’ll see some additional merger and acquisition activity in the United States, especially by companies which decide to buy a tracker company instead of building one themselves,” he says. Others agree: “There are a number of astronomically-controlled tracker makers out there that may fail or be sold,” says Andreas Schwedhelm, the General Manager of DegerEnergie, based in Horb, Germany.
More vertically-integrated solar companies are likely to cease manufacturing trackers and focus more on their engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) functions. “We manufactured trackers until last year. But as we look at projects in the future, we will be outsourcing single-axis trackers; we are past the tipping point where a third party can now deliver a more bankable, less costly tracker,” observes Alcombright. Solon now has about 30 MW of trackers installed in the United States out of 100 MW of total PV. Worldwide, Solon has installed or sold about 300 MW of PV, he notes, with about the same ratio of tracker installs.

New tracker versions crank out

Given the current market pricing pressure, product differentiation is becoming key. A wide variety of tracker makers are revamping their designs to increase efficiency, decrease part numbers and weight, and to reduce cost. As a result, their installed base numbers are growing.
Exosun released its single-axis Exotrack HZ in Europe a year ago and is debuting it in the United States this year; the company contracted for 120 MW of tracker-based systems in Europe over the past year. IdeemaTec, based in Wallerfing, Germany, released its new safeTrack Horizon single-axis tracker in June, 2012. In September, Menlo Park, California-based QBotix unveiled its new robot-adjusted tracker system. Solaria, based in Fremont, California, also unveiled the latest improvements in its STS-HZ single-axis tracker last fall; the company holds a license for 40 MW worth of IdeemaTec technology under a 2011 deal. And in October, Athens-based Mechatron debuted its new double-axis Atlas tracker, the D170; the company has sold more than 3,000 systems with an energy yield of more than 65 MW.
In February of this year, DegerEnergie, which has sold 50,000 trackers with an estimated total energy yield of 400 MW, unveiled its D series tracker with a new swivel head. “Our greatest differentiator is our sensor tracking system, which follows the brightest spot in the sky, even on overcast days,” says DegerEnergie’s Andreas Schwedhelm. “Fraunhofer ISE tested our system and found that it delivers three to five percent more energy than an astronomically-controlled system,” he notes.
In April of this year, SKF, based in Gothenburg, Sweden, announced its BeyondZero solar linear actuator and solar hub tracker systems. Sentinel Solar, based in Vaughn, Ontario, also has refined its iPhone and iPad tracker control applications this year. In April, SunPower, based in San Jose, California, announced plans for the 579 MW Antelope Valley Solar project in southern California, which will be based on the company’s T0 single-axis trackers. SunPower now has close to 1 GW of trackers installed or under contract, notes CEO Tom Werner. SunPower now also inaugurated the first project using its C7low-concentrating photovoltaic (LCPV) trackers to support parabolic mirrors in April, as well. And Array Technologies, which has over 700 MW of trackers globally and contracts to ship up to 900 MW by the end of the year, will roll out a new version of its DuraTrack this Fall.
Apart from new trackers, Mecasolar also rolled out its galvanized MecaScrew over the past year, which takes the place of a concrete footing for trackers. In March of this year, Mecasolar shipped 3,400 of the screws to a 3 MW single-axis PV plant at Lorca, Murcia province, in Spain. Another tracker base maker, BFTec, based in Philippsthal, Germany, recently introduced its Steel-Root pyramid, available in four- to six-sided bases.

Single-axis trackers for utilities

Since the global price of PV modules has been driven down by Chinese manufacturers, many tracker manufacturers have narrowed their focus to single-axis trackers. “Single-axis has taken over the utility market. We started out with dual-axis trackers on the residential level, but we never believed in a dual-axis for utilities,” says Corio of Array Technologies.
Where sufficient flat land is available, and insolation is strong, single-axis trackers make the most economic sense, many sources agree. “In general, it costs 8 to 10% more to upgrade from a fixed-tilt to a single-axis tracker, with an increased energy yield of 25%. But it costs 20% more to move from a single-axis to a dual-axis tracker, with an energy gain of only 10% to 12%. So there are diminishing returns for the dual-axis investment,” observes Bill Elwell, Vice President, Products Division, for SPG Solar, based in Petaluma, California. SPG now has 15 MW of trackers installed, he notes.
Other tracker manufacturers confirm that a greater percentage of trackers will be included in large projects: “About 30% of our installations are tracker-based, and I expect to see that going forward,” says Solon’s Alcombright. Other solar developers suggest that the share of tracker-based installations for the coming year could range from 50% upwards. “About 50% is a good rule of thumb for the tracker share of installation going forward,” says Ric O’Connell, Director Solar at Black & Veatch, in San Francisco. “Although this year, if solar installations in the United States grow by 3.2 GW, as some suggest, then trackers will be about 1.2 GW of that total,” he reckons. The growth rate to date has been well into double digits, says one source: "Over the last two to three years, the tracker industry has grown significantly, by about 50 percent," calculates Elwell.

Market research firm ENFsolar identified 18 global tracker companies with two or more distributors.

Distribution networks expand

Many tracker companies are expanding their dealer or distribution networks to better compete for local projects. DegerEnergie operates the largest global distribution network and Lorentz operates the second-largest today, according to ENFsolar, a market research firm based in Woking, U.K. With 61 and 47 distributors, respectively, these two companies lead the tracker industry distribution race by far. These German companies are followed by two U.S. companies, Array Technologies and Zomeworks, and by Mecasolar, of Fustiñana, Spain. These three operate 40, 34, and 16 distributorships, respectively, ENF indicates. Zomeworks, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, indicates that there are 19,000 of its trackers installed in the United States. From there, the distribution network field drops to single-digits, according to the ENF count.
Lorentz, based in Hamburg, Germany, and known primarily for its 20 years in the solar water pumping market, has tapped a variety of small distributors in far-flung areas for its Etatrack product. One of the company’s two “premier distribution partners” in the United States is America West Windmill & Solar, based in Abernathy, Texas. “We use the Lorentz tracker systems mainly for off-grid water pumping,” says Eric Macias, Director of Marketing for America West.
Other tracker companies are actively building out their distribution and partnership networks nationally, from a currently more regional presence. AllEarth Renewable’s Savage, for example, says, “What we are doing is finding dealers nationally to sell and install.” AllEarth has sold about 1,500 trackers in the United States thus far.

Warranties and maintenance

As tracker companies enhance their products, they are seeking to offer stronger guarantees, to reduce risk perception. Indeed, the extension of warranty coverage is helping tracker companies become more bankable and thus sell more and faster. “As the tracker industry goes through the ‘virtuous circle,’ increasing economies of scale allow companies to spend more R&D money to further reduce costs,” O’Connell of Black & Veatch says. Today, “some tracker companies offer 10 to 20 years on structures, but only three to five years on control systems, so you have to compare warranties carefully,” says his colleague Taha.
Longer warranties may represent a threshold requirement for growth. “We are the only U.S. tracker manufacturer that has a full 10 year warranty,” claims Savage. “We are filling a niche in the industry where trackers previously underperformed and caused headaches for installers,” he adds. Extending the envelope, Solaria now offers an extra 10 year extension to its basic 10 year warranty. More incremental extensions are likely in the industry, several sources agree. “For large projects – 20 MW or above – you need to be on a lender’s qualified supplier list,” notes Elwell.
Comprehensive accelerated lifetime testing is one way the tracker industry can improve warranties. “When we perform bankability analyses, we make recommendations for accelerated lifetime testing areas that should be pursued further; in that sense we are helping the industry grow in sophistication,” Taha says. SPG Solar recently completed 50-year accelerated lifetime testing for itsversion 3.2 SunSeeker single-axis tracker at its test facility in Sacramento, notes Elwell.
While some tracker companies are providing maintenance for their equipment in the field to help mitigate risk for buyers, other manufacturers say their products are sufficiently proven already, and don’t offer maintenance. “If you build a tracker and have to have a maintenance team keep it running, there is an issue,” says Array Technologies’ Corio. “We have units running in Colorado that are five years old and have had an up-time of 99.99%,” he says. “Some people have a belief that a fixed-tilt design requires less maintenance than a tracker. But if a tracker gives you 22% to 24% more energy gain, the same yield in a fixed-tilt system would require many more PV panels and inverters which can go bad.” Axel Hartung, Vice President Sales & Marketing at IdeemaTec, says, “The IdeemaTec tracking systems are almost free of maintenance, with a failure rate of 0.002% out of 22,000 systems installed worldwide since 2007. Three years ago questions regarding operating expenditure were the exception, today they are more of the rule. The developers of our tracking systems have anticipated this and focused on low-maintenance components.”

Emerging market demand

Tracker companies are increasingly looking at markets beyond their home country, and considering emerging markets as well as the mature economies in Europe and North America. The Japanese market, for example, will be an increasingly targeted transition for many of the EU and U.S. tracker companies. Isofoton, based in Málaga and Madrid, Spain, opened its Japanese subsidiary just a year ago.
As part of the North American market, Mexico is an easy reach for tracker companies with a U.S. presence. Mecasolar only has one tracker project in the United States, a 1.5 MW unit in Madera, California, but it is already planning projects in Mexico, according to Pablo Gonzalez, the commercial manager for Mecasolar USA, in Sacramento. “However, due to cost differentials, we likely will ship trackers from Spain and panels from China to Mexico,” he notes.
Overall, Latin American exports are a time-honored way to temper the volatility of a single market like the United States. “International sales is a big growth area for us; we have one system in Chile now. We’ve been analyzing South America, South Africa and other regional markets and will choose which market to spend money going after,” says Corio.
Elsewhere in the Americas, “the Caribbean markets are really exploding, driven by a couple of factors, among which the most important is the very high price they pay for fuel oil for diesel generators,” says Alcombright. SunEdison won a recent contract for a 1 MW demonstration plant in Brazil with the national oil company Petrobras; the company’s AP90 tracker will be featured. That contract came on the heels of SunEdison’s 100 MW single-axis AP90 tracker project in Chile for CAP, the mining conglomerate, which may be the largest PV project in Latin America to date, notes Dawn Brister, a spokesperson for SunEdison, in Belmont, California.
Beyond the emerging Americas, South Africa in particular has opened up rapidly this year, presenting several companies with major tracker projects. For example, ABB recently won the 75 MW single-axis Kathu PV plant, for which it will supply “an advanced tracking system with a backtracking algorithm that optimizes tracker movement and eliminates shadow on the panels.” Similarly, in March, IdeemaTec delivered 6,000 of its safeTrack Vertec azimuth tracking systems to two PV facilities in South Africa with a combined capacity of 33 MW, as part of the government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Program (REIPPP).
Within the Middle East and North Africa region, “Our partner Total and we are going to put our C7 trackers in Saudi Arabia, which will be a great opportunity for us,” says SunPower’s Werner. Exosun has also built up a large pipeline in the Middle East region, the company notes.
Eastern Europe may also follow the European Union’s PV lead. Deger, for example, completed two PV parks last November in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In Asia, China is both a source of trackers and a potential market. Among the expanding number of Chinese tracker manufacturers, WuXi Haosolar Technology, based in YiXing, Jiangsu, claims to be the largest in the country, and offers both single- and double-axis trackers. Haosolar has built projects as large as 10 MW within China, in Mongolia, and in Slovakia. “We are going to build up our U.S. sales team this year,” says Sophia Sheng, Haosolar’s Overseas Sales Director. “We have installed more than 280 MW of single and dual axis trackers globally,” she notes. Elsewhere in Asia, SmartTrak Solar Systems, based in Hyderabad, India, is broadening its network of solar water pumps in India powered by its dual-axis solar tracking system.

Limits to tracker growth

One limit to tracker market growth is local content restriction. Canada’s Ontario province, for example, has a 60% local content rule in place. “With the local content rule, the panel lamination, racking and inverters essentially have to be made here in Ontario,” says Jason Cohen, a senior account manager for Sentinel Solar, based in Vaughan, Ontario. “We needed a bankable panel provider, so in March we partnered with Jinko Solar to build PV modules at Solgate Solar, under a three-way partnership,” he says. Solgate is based in Woodbridge, Ontario, and manufactures PV panels to meet local content regulations. Sentinel has about 300 dual-axis trackers installed in the province and a contract to supply a 2.3 MW project.
Still, companies like Deger and Mecasolar apparently find Ontario’s limits minimally restrictive. “We have some manufacturing capacity in Ontario, which is an easy place to source steel because of the world-class Hamilton automotive industry,” explains Gonzalez.
While there are no legal local content requirements in the United States, tracker makers with a presence there are also working to achieve high local content for their products because of the prevalence of marketing campaigns stressing domestic quality. Exosun’s Johnson, for example, says, “By 2014 we hope to have a 100% ‘Made in the USA’ product.” Other promising country markets for PV trackers, like Brazil, have long used local content rules to foster a domestic industry to substitute imports. But action by the World Trade Organization is likely to ultimately stifle such regulations; Ontario has already been reprimanded for its local content rules, but the province is said to be dragging its heels with court appeals.
Another limitation to tracker installation growth is residential aesthetic requirements aimed at keeping them out of neighbors’ sight lines. Ontario, for example, “recently established rules for ground-mounted residential tracker installations that has virtually closed the market,” says Cohen.
And inflationary economics also may impact the tracker market as the global economy recovers. “Tracker optimization or design gains could readily be lost in comparison to material price increases. When the global economy recovers, the question is what it will do to the cost of tracked PV,” speculates Stojanovic of ABB.