View Single Post
Old 11-17-17, 04:56 PM   #3
medicdude
Lurking Renovator
 
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: CT USA
Posts: 18
Thanks: 0
Thanked 3 Times in 2 Posts
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by NiHaoMike View Post
For PV, I'd imagine keeping the panels cool might be a problem on a hot day. For solar thermal, it would probably be more economical to just make a bigger collector as opposed to deal with the complexity of keeping the mirrors aligned.
Yeah cooling could be an issue for PV. Using reflected light to boost an existing thermal collector would not (significantly) increase losses to ambient, and could be a big advantage in northern latitudes where the lower light combined with the lower temperature is a huge killer for losses to ambient in a collector-only setup. This all depends on cost of course. Snow coverage could also be an issue, but if you could make portable panels that could just be dropped on the ground in the morning in favorable conditions, and removed at sunset, it could be a very attractive option. Or even just un-buried and replaced again atop the flat snowbank, with a portable design this would be very easy and take a couple minutes tops even after heavy snowfall.

My original interest in this area was for the purposes of solar cooking and other high temperature solar applications; the existing products I've found are pitiful in their longevity, and a semi-permanent heliostat DIY installation should perform much better. I also have some interesting ideas for mechanical linkage to maintain alignment of a linear array parallel to the meridian (longitude line), so you only need one set of XY tracking motors. Although I think I could make individual trackers for each mirror even cheaper than the cost of such a linkage.
medicdude is offline   Reply With Quote