Dan Shugar, Nextracker CEO, on Solar Trackers in Wind and the Terror of Torsional Galloping

Read the full article published on PV Magazine here

In the final part of our interview, Dan Shugar, goes into detail about a subject Nextracker has studied in depth — static and dynamic evaluation of wind impacts on single-axis trackers. We include video of trackers (and a bridge) caught galloping in the wind.

By Eric Wesoff | January 17, 2020

Dan Shugar, CEO of Nextracker, is one of the old-school players in the rise of solar in the United States — he lives and breathes solar trackers.

Nextracker is the world’s leading tracker vendor, with one-third of the market by shipments in 2018. Other firms claim between 8 percent and 12 percent of the market each, including Array Technologies, PV Hardware, Arctech Solar and Soltec.

According to Wood Mackenzie, the tracker market grew 62 percent in 2019, reaching 23 gigawatts of installations — and the market will grow on average by 11 percent annually from 2019 through 2024.

In the first part of our interview with Shugar, we discussed tracker innovation, bifacial panels and getting acquired by Flex. In this final part of our discussion, we cover the terror of torsional galloping in a solar array.