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WikiSysop: New page: Rick Thomas reply-to rick@wirecomms.com to joseph.dolittle@gmail.com date Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM subject Your Solar Generator, a few thoughts. hide details Sep ...

2008-09-09T14:25:13Z

New page: Rick Thomas <rick@wirecomms.com> reply-to rick@wirecomms.com to joseph.dolittle@gmail.com date Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM subject Your Solar Generator, a few thoughts. hide details Sep ...

New page

Rick Thomas <rick@wirecomms.com>
reply-to rick@wirecomms.com
to joseph.dolittle@gmail.com
date Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM
subject Your Solar Generator, a few thoughts.

hide details Sep 5 (3 days ago)

Reply

Hi I recently came across your site. Your ideas on solar power generation
closely match mine.
In the near future (I hope) I will be moving to the East coast of Spain. I
therefore thought that a solar generator
would be economically viable (Not so in the UK).

My idea is to build a Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector array. About 20
square meters in
size (total size depends on power needed).
Using this to generate steam to power a small steam engine coupled to a
generator, any power that we
don't use will be sold back to the Grid generating extra income. Waste heat
will be used to heat the
house and pool in winter.

Building the array will be simple, however doing something useful with all
the heat generated is a
little more tricky (for me at least).

Here are my first thoughts...

Use oil in the primary collector loop, this will reduce the need for high
pressure pipes to be used.
As a guess the temperature of the oil will go up to between 400 to 600 C
depending on the mirror
area and the amount of insulation I use.

Maybe use a thermal store, i.e. a BIG block of insulated concrete.

Use a heat exchanger built into the boiler to generate the steam.
Use a steam engine, in particular one of these
http://www.greensteamengine.com/index.html coupled to
an alternator to generate the electricity.

The above is just the bare bones idea. Obviously it will need filling out.

The main idea came from the reading about the Liddell site in Australia
See http://solarheatpower.veritel.com.au/mainmenu.html go to projects. The
research section is interesting as well.

I built a small unit, about 1 meter square (6 mirror rows) this summer to
experiment with the concept and play with the tracking System. I used a
satellite actuator to provide the motive power, it worked well at 12V,
plenty of torque.
I started by using a LDR based tracker, although it worked, it didn't seem
to be sensitive enough. I then played with
a green LED based tracker, much more sensitive it tracked perfectly, almost
too sensitive.

I also came up with a way of individually adjusting each mirror row so that
one actuator would move them all in sync,
unfortunately I didn't take any photos of it.

Anyway, enough about my ideas.

My thoughts..
Using oil in the collector probably works out cheaper than installing
pressure pipe.
A steam engine rather than a turbine, as you don't have to gear it down and
it has higher torque. Probably easier to regulate the speed as well.

All the best with your project, I hope it all goes to plan and to budget
<Grin>

By the way, have you seen this stuff..
http://www.reflectechsolar.com/pricing.html

Rick..

Reply

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Rick Thomas on solar - Revision history

WikiSysop at 00:40, 2 February 2009

WikiSysop at 14:41, 15 September 2008

WikiSysop: New page: Rick Thomas reply-to rick@wirecomms.com to joseph.dolittle@gmail.com date Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 2:00 PM subject Your Solar Generator, a few thoughts. hide details Sep ...