Mathing with Theo

This week expanded my first heliostat by adding another 8 sq. ft of mirrors (bringing the total to 24 sq. ft) and have also added a second heliostat.  The second sun collector uses 12 1 sq. ft mirrors (mirror tile from Home Depot or Lowes, $10).

I tried to take temperature readings of the second colletor, but ended up frying my thermometer.  Regardless the temperature on the brick gets well over 150 degrees and is unbearably hot (can’t but my hand on it for more than about 1 second).

Overall, the heliostat project is a success and I have determined that the second more circular collector will make a good space heater for the office.  The plan is to put the bricks inside the office window and the mirrors outside.  As the day progresses the brick will heat up and heat up my office.  By the time the sun goes down I’ll be done with work and wont need any more heat.

As for the water heater collector, there will be too many drags on heating efficiency and transfer too and from the house.  I’ve decided that it will likely be better to build a flat panel with small pipes to collect the heat and to move the panel much closer to the house.

Overall, this project has been fun and has really shown me that for a really low cost (<$40 for the second circular collector) one can build a solar powered heater.

In the future I’d like to test what the effect of concentrating the sun on a real PV panel would be.  I’d like to set up two panels  relatively close to each other and test how much more efficient one can make the panel by concentration.  I exepect that a factor of 1.5-2X power will be acheived by focusing 2X the solar area. Perhaps with a third row of mirrors to the circular collector it might be possible to push the efficieny up to 2.5-3X. If this turns out to be the case it will enable the average person to go Solar, bringing down the cost of solar by about half.