Finally, an the toughest, in my opinion, is how little net energy budget they have to work with to be economical: they have to require less energy to build, install, and operate than the incremental solar energy they generate over their operation life. They give an approximately 40% production improvement (that's roughly the single/dual axis midpoint. towards the high side), so if you say a 10 yr life with zero maintenance and controlling a single 250w panel you're talking 9 mWh, or $1080 retail electricity value generated. A 40% improvement on that is only $440 worth of energy budget per tracker over a 10 year life.

That glosses over a ton of complexity like if area is amenable to ground vs rooftop, if it's higher latitude, high density panels, stationary panel/tracking mirror, and most importantly having multiple panels per tracker. Zero maintenance/replacement is not realistic, either, since it would cycling dozens of times a day and could be in hurricane/tornado areas.

But given a lower end garage door opener is $150 before installation costs, it gives an idea how tough that would in that price range. Consider that panels are generally engineered to withstand 100+ mph gusts, and this would be a relatively finely tuned machine attached to one or more 18 square foot kites that would be expected to withstand the same conditions.

https://news.energysage.com/solar-trackers-everything-need-k... was a pretty good article I found on it.

I should not that I didn't say it Shockley-Quiesser was a hard cap. I said it was the theoretical limit of a p-n junction cell. I said, "hard cap is insolation".