> Do you want to do this? eg - will your panel rotate past +/- 90
> degrees as it needs to do for full tracking?

It would rotate 360 horizontally and at least 90 vertically

> When the sun is very low, are you better off pointing the panels
> at it through the local hills, trees, houses etc (no) or would you
> get slightly better results by pointing it at some sky location that
> has at least a glimmer of light in it (yes, but there will still be very
> little energy)

Well, that would depend on the actual placement. Ideally of course
you'd put it in a position with the fewest interruptions

If you were to make a tracker that was totally self-initialising, it would
have on board a level, a compass, GPS, or something like that, so it
could be just plonked down in any reasonable orientation and find its
own bearings. From that point on it would, by learning, determine what
view it has of the sky and whether to use solar tracking based on
calculation or light intensity or both. For example, pause before a known
obstacle, like a chimney, until it's time to fast-forward past the obstacle
to catch the sun again as per the calculation
--=20
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