Page 25 - North American Clean Energy May/June 2019 Issue

Matthew Schneider, chief product o cer at Sunfolding, has over 15 years of product development and product strategy experience. He also co-founded RayTracker, a producer
of single-axis trackers that was acquired by First Solar in 2011. As First Solar’s director of global product development for PV mounting systems, Schneider ran a team that delivered over 3 GW of trackers worldwide. In addition, Schneider has worked at Microsoft and NASA. He holds degrees from St. Olaf College and Stanford University.
Sunfolding /// www.sunfolding.com
Innovation in action
A motor-free, air-driven tracker system was deployed at a wastewater treatment facility in Georgia, on a terraced property with ve separate grades. e facility operator had buried some old settling tanks and other equipment, capped o with a foundation and layer
of soil. e challenge was to leave much of the property undisturbed. Soil grading would have been a time-consuming and expensive proposition.
e solution involved subdividing the site into ve distinct arrays. Some of the arrays tapered o down to
a single string of modules. Shorter piles guaranteed that ground penetrations would not compromise the foundation beneath the soil. e shorter piles also reduced the cost of steel. By running air lines to the air-driven actuators (instead of running electrical conductors, as with motor-driven trackers) there was also less trenching.
Had the installer used motor- driven trackers, each terrace would have had separate motors, with trenching and electrical wire running up and down each slope. Instead, employing a motor-free system allowed for design exibility that translated into a more e cient and economic installation.
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