Water-Displacement-Based Sun-Tracking System to Control the Orientation of a Cylinder Parabolic Solar Concentrator

In this paper, we propose a low-cost and low-maintenance actuator system to control the guidance of a high-inertia and large cylinder-parabolic solar concentrator. The proposed actuator system is based on the water-displacement between two containers placed at the sides of a cylinder-parabolic solar concentrator. To orient the collecting surface of the solar concentrator perpendicular to sunlight, it is necessary to control the angle of the surface of the solar concentrator, with the proposed low-cost and low-maintenance actuator system. The actuator system was designed, built and implemented to a solar concentrator installed at Tejalpa, Morelos, Mexico.