Technologies that promote sustainable energy include renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, solar energy, wind energy, wave power, geothermal energy, bioenergy, tidal power and also technologies designed to improve energy efficiency. Costs have fallen dramatically in recent years, and continue to fall. Most of these technologies are either economically competitive or close to being so. Increasingly, effective government policies support investor confidence and these markets are expanding.
Saying that, the systems designed to generate the energy need to be low costs and competitive with the Non-Green systems. There are various encoders required for the sustainable energy systems and their technical specification is unique.
Low and high temperature operation, relatively low resolution
When choosing encoders for PV systems or wind turbines there are few basic technical specifications that need to be considered:
- Small size: with the compact spacing available, all components need to be compact as well.
- Low temperatures and high temperatures: the systems are operated outdoor and in many cases – in high mountains or deserts. These places can have temperatures as low as -40ºC or as high as +85 ºC. Standard encoders would not fit such harsh environments.
- Low resolution: whether controlling the Wind Turbine blades, positioning the PV mirror toward a specific location or focusing a mirror toward the sun, in most cases there is no need for high resolution or high accuracy.
- High reliability: Solar Thermal systems can be used for 30 or 40 years. With very large quantity of encoders used in the field, there is no wish to replace encoders that fail. As such, extreme reliability is a major demand in such technologies.
- Low cost: Solar Thermal field can used dozen of thousands of encoders. In order to have a competitive price for the energy, all system components need to be low costs, as well. With the large amount of encoders in such a field, the encoder price is a major decision factor when choosing a supplier or technology.
Wesense Motion offers high reliability Non-Contact rotary optical and magnetic encoders or IC’s that perfectly fit these technologies demands. We can offer you either packaged encoders (housed encoders), PCB and grating only, or the individual IC’s so you can assemble them on your PCB to reduce weight, space and costs. We can offer you PCB based products that can be integrated into your systems motors or motion systems and we can offer you packaged encoders, either magnetic or optical with any required resolution at a very competitive price. Our encoders are unique in the market as they offer high performance and low costs compared to similar products. From as small as 8mm diameter up to actually any diameter, we can offer any required size and resolution.
