Kinematics debuts ‘maintenance-free’ actuator for solar trackers

Kinematics, a manufacturer of drive systems for solar trackers, shipped the first round of its latest product, the ST Series. Representing years of research, development and engineering, the ST series has a maintenance-free, grease-free dry bearing design that delivers 20 to 50% more holding torque than Kinematics’ HE series. In other words, it’s a smaller drive that can be used in similar applications at prior models.

“Crafted with a deep understanding of the needs of solar tracker customers, the Kinematics ST Series Actuator redefines performance and reliability in the renewable energy sector while providing the lowest cost of ownership for the entire solar plant ecosystem, from installation and commissioning to long-term operations and maintenance,” said Jenn Cangelosi, VP of Sales business development at Kinematics.

The ST Seres integrates with smart technologies for operation and real-time monitoring of the drives.

“We believe the ST series will become the de facto standard for single-axis tracker actuation and set the benchmark for reliability and performance for solar tracker manufacturers, solar EPCs, solar project owners, financiers and O&M providers,” said Adam Plesniak, CTO of Kinematics. “The main challenge was proving an improvement in performance over our HE series drive, which is already a robust, high-volume production drive. The HE series requires more maintenance and has less capacity per drive size than the ST. These challenges were overcome through hours of dedicated development, rigorous testing, and detailed analysis.”

The ST series actuators have undergone dynamic capacity testing, static capacity testing, efficiency maximization testing, temperature and humidity testing, water ingress resistance testing, dust ingress resistance testing, corrosion resistance testing, UV resistance testing and seal integrity testing.

News item from Kinematics