Flat Facet Parabolic Solar Concentrator With Support Cell for One and More Mirrors

Parabolic dish solar concentrators are very expensive devices with a cost of up to a half of the total cost of a solar power station. The specific technology of parabolic mirror manufacturing makes the decrease of the cost very problematic. Even in mass production the cost of a parabolic mirror is estimated as $500 per square meter. There is another way to make a parabolic concentrator by approximating a parabolic surface with large number of small flat mirrors. We created a small prototype of this type of solar concentrator which contains 24 flat mirrors in the form of equilateral triangles with side length of 50mm. This prototype has special nuts to adjust the positions of the nodes in the points of connections of the apexes. These nuts make it possible to approximate the parabolic shape in an easy and inexpensive way. Key-Words: Solar Concentrator, Flat Mirrors, Recognition System