As solar power project opportunities expand into new regions and availability of once-ubiquitous flat land becomes increasingly rare, project developers are turning to sites with sloping and undulating terrain. This presents unique risks and challenges for EPCs, which must employ costly, environmentally impactful grading and increased foundation steel, introducing budget and schedule uncertainties which can jeopardize project success.

The “business as usual” approach to dealing with undulating terrain includes careful selection of tracker row locations, performing cut-and-fill grading and increasing foundation pile lengths. While proven, this approach limits system size, increases construction costs and creates schedule risk. Accuracy of cost and schedule estimates for grading activities are a known challenge, due to the possibility of unexpected soil conditions, weather delays and re-vegetation challenges. Plus, the soil disturbance from earthwork can introduce soil erosion issues during the system warranty period.

Working closely with our partners in response to this challenge, Nextracker has developed a new variant of NX Horizon which breaks the paradigm of the “straight-line row” design constraint. Introducing NX Horizon-XTR™, a terrain-following tracker solution which reduces earthwork and steel use by conforming to the existing ups and downs of north-south ground slope undulations. After foundations are installed within terrain-following tolerances, NX Horizon-XTR installs with the same steps and processes as our standard NX Horizon tracker, ensuring lower labor costs and predictable construction schedules.

NX Horizon-XTR has been deployed across 3 GW+ of cumulative projects, with many more projects under construction or in late-stage development in the U.S. and elsewhere. Please find our new NX Horizon-XTR datasheet and see how Nextracker can help ensure successful construction on difficult sites.

Download the datasheet for more information.