Solar tracker sheds light on potential of renewable and clean energy sources

Dubai: A solar tracker has been erected at Knowledge Village and will be fully functional in the coming days, however it will not generate electricity as it is not connected to the grid but it will track the sun.

Donated to TECOM by Swedish company Switchpower, the solar tracker has been assembled to demonstrate how renewable energy like the sun can be used to power buildings.

"In a full scale installation you would have 50 of these trackers feeding into the grid to reduce the energy use of a complex like Knowledge Village," said Andrew Machirant, head of business development and communication at Switchpower.

Energy load

"They generate quite a bit of electricity and will contribute to a building's energy load. These trackers can be scaled to any size and can be made ten times the size, or used on the roofs of buildings in their facades," Machirant told Gulf News from Sweden.

The solar tracker is on a double axis and will be able to follow the sun's movement in any direction. It is 40 square metres and covered in solar cells.

"One tracker can generate 10 megawatt hours of electricity per year (a megawatt is a unit for measuring power that is equivalent to one million watts.) Ideally this tracker will be used to power buildings. It is difficult to say how much this will contribute as we do not know the exact energy load of buildings in the UAE, and it depends on the structure," said Machirant.

The tracker will be three metres above the ground. When rotating the highest point will be five metres high.

This demonstration project is a top priority to Switchpower as it is an important milestone in the deployment of solar photovoltaic technology in the UAE said Machirant. The base frame carries 30 185 watt solar photovoltaic (PV) modules. According to Switchpower covering only 100 kilometres square of the Sahara desert with PV cells would generate enough energy for the whole world.