Solar Tracking with Anti-Tracking Support for Ancillary Service

Solar plants can provide ancillary services during the power overproduction periods of time using solar curtailment by using smart inverters. This method, however, has a high toll on equipment longevity since even during normal operation 37% of unscheduled maintenance repairs were inverter-related, 59% of unscheduled maintenance costs were due to inverters. Therefore, we propose the anti-tracking curtailment that can be implemented by the plants that already have tracking systems installed (nearly 80% of new capacity installed in 2018). Anti-tracking could be realized by means of turning the solar panels away from the sun in a closed-loop control manner. Thus, when the signal from the grid is received, the excess energy is not dissipated by the inverters or the solar panels, but energy generation is curtailed by moving solar panels from sun shine, i.e. performing anti-tracking move. All the infrastructure and technology needed to implement tracking/anti-tracking is already available in the grid system.