Sunfolding designs and manufactures simple solar trackers using high volume, low cost manufacturing to create a solar tracking system powered by air. The result is a single-axis tracker that lowers the levelized cost of electricity by making solar power plants easier to design, faster to install, and smoother to operate.
The objectives of this project were to (1) investigate techniques to reduce installation and implementation time and material costs and (2) gather and analyze environmental and operating data to assess manufacturing and system performance. The culmination of the project was a 300-kilowatt demonstration field at Photovoltaics for Utility Scale Applications in Davis, California.
The results demonstrate that the technology has met or exceeded industry standards for tracking accuracy, uptime, and availability. Sunfolding’s single-axis tracker features: a modular design that fits into irregular-shaped sites, enabling flexible site layouts that can add up to 20 percent more capacity on a site and lower fixed costs; and only three components, which reduces installation time by half and lowers maintenance requirements by having 95 percent fewer maintenance locations. Using the air-driven technology rather than traditional trackers, Sunfolding’s team estimates a 20 percent improvement in the levelized cost of electricity and a 26.7 percent increase in the internal rate of return on a 100-megawatt site. By lowering project costs and the levelized cost of electricity, the air-driven tracker improves project profitability for customers and, by extension, lowers the cost of electricity to ratepayers.
