Study Comparison of the Efficiency of a Photovoltaic System with Fixed Panels and with Solar Tracker in the Northwest of Brazil

Abstract

The performance of small photovoltaic (PV) systems connected to the grid in the state of Ceará is analyzed in this study. Three systems were developed, two of them with fixed angles of 18 and 22 degrees and one with a variable angle (solar tracker), which provided different results of generation efficiency, all of them have the same power of 2310 kW installed and are located on a building slab in the city of Fortaleza, in this configuration the systems have the same inputs to compare. The variation in generation efficiency be- tween systems is quite significant, reaching 19% between fixed and 27% when compared the worse fixed system and solar tracker, the higher costs for these types of system with tracker can increase the rate of return on investment turning into 2.9 years, higher than that of the fixed system with an angle of 22, which was 2.38 years.