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Forum Index : Solar : heliostats

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isochronic
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Joined: 21/01/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 689
Posted: 07:29pm 03 Sep 2015
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Anyone got a solar concentrator heliostat going ?
 
MacGyver

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Joined: 12/05/2009
Location: United States
Posts: 1329
Posted: 03:19pm 29 Sep 2015
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chronic

Not now, but I've done this in the past and it worked well. It was also VERY dangerous (had small kids at the time) so I took it down.

What I did was arrange about 100 flat-plate, plastic mirrors on an aluminum grid. It was about 10 feet by 10 feet. All of the mirrors were focused on a line (not a point -- there's a reason for this).

I set the heliostat (a used, glass wardrobe mirror on a gimbal) at the same latitude as my house was positioned and made an electric-motor-driven tracker thingie and placed it all due north (I'm in the northern hemisphere) of the mirror concentrator array, which was securely mounted in the south, facing north. The movable mirror faced south and the focused array faced north.

As the earth turned about its axis, giving the illusion that the sun was moving through a semi-circular orbit from east to west, I tracked it and bisected the angle between the sun and the target (not as easy as you might think, by the way). As the day progressed, the heliostat (movable mirror) cast a secondary source (reflection) directly perpendicular to the collector array. Being focused on a line allowed me to use a copper pipe as the focus target.

Without water inside, it would have surely melted something! Anyway, it worked like a champ until a kid touched it one day and it was in the scrap pile by that evening (boss' orders - married).

I have never repeated the experiment, but maybe you could. If you have any kids or animals, which can either walk between the collector mirror and its focus or have the ability to touch that damned pipe, just forget it! HOT is an understatement!


. . . . . MacEdited by MacGyver 2015-10-01
Nothing difficult is ever easy!
Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman,
"Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!"
Copeville, Texas
 
isochronic
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Joined: 21/01/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 689
Posted: 02:18am 11 Oct 2015
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Thanks for the info, sounds like some good ideas there.
Gives a new meaning to "applying some heat to the neighbours" !!
What we need is a small solar barbeque..I'm working on it ..


 
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