Is it possible to use a backyard Heliostat for space heating?
I think it's possible, but not really easy to understand (at least for me).
I found some Boston Mass solar data at
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/pubs/redbook/PDFs/MA.PDF
It says that an area of 1 sq meter in my area gets an average of
5.9 KWh per day.
About 4 during the winter and 6 to 8 in summer.
(With 2-axis tracking). The general rule of thumb is about 1 KW per hour.
The array that I'm thinking about would be a 10'x10' rack using 25 2'x'2 mirrors.
100 sq feet.
Or, 9.3 Sq meters Mounted on my old C-band 10.5' dish mount.
If 5.9 KWh x 9.3 sq meters ( or 100 sq feet)= 54.87 KWh per day, then
that's a whopping 1646 KWh a month!
-----
Winter is when this would be used. So 4 KWh x 9.3 = 37.2 KWh per day.
37.2 over a 6 hour time frame is 6.2 KWh (per hour).
6.2 KWh is about 21,155.28 BTUh..
Did I goof up somewhere here? Is it possible to get about 20,000 BTU of
solar heat (reflected into a rear window) from a 10x10 foot mirror array??
If this is really possible, it would be a pretty dang cheap BTUs per dollar..
Comments please:
Cheers,
Rich
PS:
If it works, I would build a larger one like this
