Proposal talk:Solar Panel Trackers

Prefix, applicability, other attributes, and infix

generator:*=* is not strictly necessary if it only apples to the power=generator . They are used to distinguish from the plant:*=* counterpart. But from this, plant:solar:tracking=* may be useful for the entire power=plant at first, before each power=generator is drawn. This could be coordinated with the similarly common generator:solar:modules=* , which has a dozen plant:solar:modules=* for the total. However, this needs to be compared with other generator:*=* , together with the infix *:solar:*=* .

1. Of concern is 20k generator:orientation=* , which has 672 generator:orientation=sun_following . In fact, direction=* can be used for compass directions and angle. orientation=* is usually for relative qualities, not quantities.
2. Which leads us to the 436 power=generator + tilt=* in the UK, with 421 having direction=* . (Please ignore other tilt=* , as I suggested it to barrier=cycle_barrier following light:tilt=* and lamp=tilt ) . This refers to the pitch axis, so to speak. Ideally, *=horizontal_titled and *=titled should be separated, as they are not the same as the axis of rotation. But the differing terminology between panel tilt angle and tilted rotation axis is confusing... It's more like the roll axis of the panel. For comparison, there is the more unclear camera:angle=* (same "tilt" meaning as PTZ cameras) and roof:angle=* for the pitch angle.
3. 2.7k generator:location=* and 30k generator:place=* are directly overlapping with location=* . It's an straightforward issue that can be solved.
4. For the 4.3k generator:model=* and 5.2k generator:manufacturer=* , they may differ between the PV and tracker, So the few generator:solar:module:*=* are reasonable. Besides the 1 generator:solar:module:technology=polycrystalline_silicon , that could be eg *:material=silicon+ *:structure=polycrystalline . But this could use differentiation at the pv cell level, depending on whether it should be *:*:cell:*=* or *:*_cell:*=* .

This culminates in the question of *:solar:*=* from generator:source=solar vs *:photovoltaic:*=* from generator:method=* . Obviously *:modules=* etc don't apply to generator:method=thermal . If they need any infix, the not yet existing *:photovoltaic:*=* might be the best to make them unique. But this is not the case here. And there's even the hybrid of solar photovoltaic-thermal to consider. —— Kovposch (talk) 09:51, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I've updated the proposal to indicate that generator:orientation=sun_following is replaced with generator:solar:tracking=yes. Other values of generator:orientation=* indeed look like they should be replaced with direction=*, though that along with generator:location=* and generator:place=* are out of the scope of this proposal. clay_c (talk) 19:32, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

• this would be a nice to have info, thanks for this proposal and its details.

The only thing i would put a little warning is on the values, to have more consistency i recommend to stick to underscore separators in values and not mixing the values between - and _ as - is usually used to write negative numbers in other tags. Tykayn wiki (talk) 13:31, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Add section in deprecation and migration process

I recommend you add a section on the proposal that describes in detail which tags are deprecated and should be migrated to which new tag. And also your thoughts on how this migration should happen. Having a clear and common understanding of how to clean up the data will be important to speed up the cleanup process. - tordans Tordans (talk) 05:19, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good. Here it is. clay_c (talk) 13:17, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Note of support and a few thoughts

This is mostly just a general note of support from deep in the PV industry, the categorizations and heirarchy make sense to me. A few thoughts - one simple one is that we may want to document the tag as being applicable to relations as well as areas and nodes, larger solar facilities are likely to use relations to cover larger areas. Another is that for data consumers, we may want to recommend that the implied tag for generator:solar:tracking=yes be horizontal, given how much more common they are than other tracking methods globally. Otherwise, thanks for the clear proposal and mechanical edit steps. --Phidauex (talk) 19:59, 30 August 2023 (UTC)