“The Schletter Group has emerged from its US unit’s bankruptcy earlier this year to begin delivering a new, more stable solar tracker to the North America, Asia, and Australia markets, with one recent sale in Zimbabwe. The company also is installing bifacial solar panels for the first time on its new tracker in Germany, says Christian Salzeder, the new chief sales officer for Schletter in Kirchdorf, Germany.
The new Schletter tracking system stability is provided in part by a patent pending locking mechanism, that better resists the so-called “galloping effect” that wind can produce on long arrays. As a result of the locking mechanism on each post, the tracker is as stable as a fixed-mount solar installation, the company says.
While at rest, it has the properties and durability of a fixed mounting system and is designed to withstand wind speeds of up to 161 mph, Schletter says. According to the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, for a wind to be classified as a Category 1 hurricane, it must have one-minute maximum sustained winds of at least 74 mph. The highest classification in the scale, Category 5, consists of storms with sustained winds over 156 mph.
Each row can be up to 393-ft long and is driven by one centrally-located motor. At 13 ft in width, each row is wide enough to hold either two panels oriented vertically or four horizontally, so that up to 574 square yards of solar array can be installed per row and motor.
The bankruptcy statement continued, “The U.S. subsidiary, Schletter Inc, under its previous management overextended itself by acquiring a number of large scale projects involving a new product (the G-Max fixed tilt product), which it had solely developed in and for the U.S. The cost of carrying through these projects was significantly higher than planned due to the premature launch of the new product. It is this considerable financial burden which ultimately made this step necessary.” “
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Thurston, Charles. W. CleanTechnica 12 January, 2019.