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Factor e Live – Part 6 – Solar Turbine Beginnings

Here is video documentation for making the first two parabolic reflectors for the Solar Turbine project:

The Solar Turbine Convergence is here – Elliot and I are continuing on the next reflector version, and we are picking up Stuart today.

We’d like to note that we ran into a serious snag with using 4′ wide parabolic receivers in an east-west array of reflectors – which is our latest implementation concept. Daily solar motion changes the distance of the solar path to the receiver – such that at best, it appears we can get 2x concentration from parabolic dishes – such that the image size at 9 am or 3 pm will be half the reflector width – or 2 feet here. If you are familiar with this dilemma – helps us – and consider joining the Solar Turbine group. It looks at present that we’ll be returning to 1 foot wide slats instead of these 4 footers. We are going through one design issue after another – which is good. We’ll see how far we’ll get by the end of the Convergence on Sep. 3. We are presently aiming at about 50x concentration.

4 Comments

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