Tracking makes a huge difference (c.40%) because it maintains a perpendicular angle to the sun, sunrise to sunset subject to obstructions obviously.
Hold a piece of paper in front of you.
- Turn it so it is perpendicular to your view - that presents the maximum area.
- Tilt the piece of paper to 45-degrees - that presents a far smaller area.
No point squeezing 2-3% higher efficiency out of panel technology when you can achieve far more by tracking.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Andy Burns saying something like:
However, a steerable mirror in the back garden would do the job - need to be a bloodly long garden, though.
I think something similar has been done for an experimental power station in a desert somewhere. A huge array of relatively small mirrors with fancy computer control steering them so that they all focused the sun onto a heat exchanger to generate steam.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Mike Clarke saying something like:
I think that's the Spanish one - although the technique's used in other installations. Iirc, it's heating sodium.
And you won?t just get this money for a year. You?ll get it for up to
25 years (depending on which technology you install).It will also be index-linked ? so your payments will rise every year along with inflation. And, absolutely best of all, for those of us still reeling from the small print of the Budget, it will be entirely tax-free."
The policy seems very screwy, but it does make photovoltaic cells on the roof quite an attractive idea. Anyone actually got any installed?
*****As posted in previous threads, the main concern should be the length of time that you are relying on successive governments to keep throwing money away to promote 'green agendas'.
25 years is a LONG time in politics. Even enough time for a new generation of nuclear reactors to remove the need for alternative energy sources. This would bugger up not just your own little domestic scheme but also the cost projections for a lot of wind farms. Who knows, someone might even discover new gas and oil reserves.
I read about such a thing waaay back in the 80s, but I don't recall where it was located now. Certainly not new technology or anything, anyway. The fact that they're not everywhere 20-odd years later suggests that there might be issues with that type of setup.
Colrado or the Mojave. Google solar boiler.
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