Solarcity Corporation

Gregory Philip Patnude

David Molina

Ryan Lemon Devine

Brian D West

Trevor B Guthrie

PV modules and ballast arm assemblies are mounted onto a torque tube suspended from a support structure. The support structures allows torque tube, and mounted PV modules and ballast arm assemblies, to freely rotate. The ballast arm assembly includes a drive mechanism, an arm and a ballast. The drive mechanism allows the adjustment angle between the PV module and the arm and ballast to be changed. Changing the adjustment angle causes the torque tube, and mounted PV modules, to freely rotate to a different orientation angle in order to balance the moments of PV modules and ballast arm assemblies caused by gravity. The orientation angle can be changed throughout the day by changing the adjustment angle in order for the PV modules to track the sun.

Ballasted tracker drive assembly

Methods and systems for mounting an array of photovoltaic modules atop a rooftop are disclosed. In particular the mounting hardware includes a photovoltaic module tray supported above the rooftop by a number of support structures fastened to the rooftop. The photovoltaic module trays include bottom and sidewalls configured to support and align photovoltaic modules along the rooftop. Since the bottom wall supports the weight of the photovoltaic module, the sidewalls can have a thin form-factor that allows the photovoltaic modules trays to be tightly spaced. In this way, the photovoltaic module tray can occupy very little area on the roof allowing the effective collection area of photovoltaic modules supported by the photovoltaic module trays to be significantly larger than photovoltaic modules using wider photovoltaic module frames.

Growing community of inventors

San Rafael, CA, United States of America

Gregory Philip Patnude