I may not know much about solar...
But I do know that Power comes from Voltage and Current. P = I x E. Now, the fact that he is able to get voltage (E) throughout the day rather than only during the afternoon when the sun is shining more directly on the cells, he is able to get more overall efficiency, though efficiency at any one part of the day will be lower than that 'afternoon sun' positioning.
When you look at smaller plants like spouts, vines and flowers, quite often they rotate to follow the sun through the day in order to get the most light on a limited number of leaves. Big trees, like oaks, maples, etc. can't rotate like that, so they grow bigger and produce a lot more smaller elements to absorb any light that hits them, no matter the time of day. As a result, I can well see this 13-year-old's concept working on a large scale. After all, if you have to always re-aim your panels, you're using (wasting) some of that energy that you're capturing. On the other hand, if you don't rotate them, you're not capturing all the energy you could. Quite honestly, a fixed array is the most inefficient way to collect solar energy--merely the easiest.
Now, by emulating a tree's leaf/branch pattern, you have a minimum of two panels working at maximum efficiency at any one time during the day. The total output power remains constant which completely stabilizes the power curve fed to the grid/batteries throughout the day. If you ask me, the kid's got the right of it and unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a fixed, aimed array is more efficient on a day-long basis, maybe you should go back to school. If you look at the photo of the fixed array included with the article, you can see that not one panel is directly facing the sun and as such is not producing the maximum amount of power it could. Yes, as the sun moves westward the array will develop more power, but you end up with a sine curve that only produces peak power for a couple hours of the day where a parabolic array could produce roughly 70% of that peak power throughout the day.
Yes, I do know something about electricity and electronics; it's been my career and the way I've earned my money for almost 40 years.
