Detection of tracker misalignments and estimation of cross-axis slope in photovoltaic plants

•Solar tracking is a crucial task in efficiently harvesting solar power in a PV plant.•Horizontal Single-axis tracking systems require a precise estimation of its axis’ orientation.•This methodology uses available data to accurately estimate the tracker’s orientation.•This methodology estimates height differences in adjacent trackers.•The improve tracking and backtracking strategies increase production by 1%. Photovoltaic (PV) energy production is becoming a more significant part of the energy mix world-wide due to its clean origin, supportive and cost reductions. Therefore, it is increasingly important to develop methodologies to improve efficiency and reduce energy losses. Solar tracking is a way of increasing the irradiance over the PV field and, subsequently, boosting energy production. Both single-axis and double-axis tracking systems (SATS & DATS) are well known methods but both require not only a proper estimation of the sun’s position but also precise knowledge of the tracker’s position and orientation. Several factors (construction, design, configuration) can cause the values used to calculate the optimal tracking to be inaccurate, thus increasing production losses. This paper proposes a methodology to calculate the actual orientation of the trackers’ axis based on the energy production of its associated strings. Additionally, it provides the height differences between adjacent trackers by detecting shading patterns. This information is key to defining more efficient tracking and backtracking strategies the avoid row-to-row shading and, overall increasing energy production. The proposed method is applied to a real 5 MW facility, identifying misalignments of several degrees in most trackers that were causing annual losses (1 %), not only due to inaccurate tracking but also row-to-row shading.