Regular solar power tower
Rooftop solar power tower
I "invented" the mechanical mathematician for making parabolic dish moulds from cob. In the process, I got the idea that research is like a puzzel that needs solving. With the mathematician, I made a tracking solar accumulator (and had to make new low tech trackers for it too) and imagined them on flat rooftops across the world, aimed at solar cells and little heaters above brewing electricity and heat for the buildings all day as the sun shines. But one look, and you see what the wind might do to that idea! Perhaps power towers are the answer. In the power tower situation, you would have central towers, perhaps 6 ft high and arrays of flat mirrors that bounce the heat and light from the sun and redirect it to the tower. An array of perhaps 100 mirrors for each power tower on the roof. each mirror might have a little joystick on its back and be swiveled by a wire or string attached there so that as the sun moves, the light from all the mirrors remains on the power tower. Big companys are working on similar ideas and they will solve it with computer chips and photodiodes. The sun follows a known path across the sky so alternative solutions are possible. I believe that ordinary people like you and me, with few resources can solve it a lot more eligantly and cost effective enough so that people across the world can make use of the device patent free. There are all sorts of senarios. THE CENTRAL TOWER could have a heat absorber/accumulator with pipes through it so that when it is hot enough, water or air is pumped through for a few minutes to collect the heat. A solar cell could swing into the light when electricity production was needed. THE MIRROR ARRAY. This array has to track the sun. I imagine square mirrors, of managable size. Perhaps lightweight alu things. Perhaps each array should all be to the south of each tower, perhaps all to the north, perhaps all around the power tower. Hopefully tracking can be done with a few strings changing the orentation of each mirror all at once. Another idea is to have the arrays themselves move as the sun moves. Perhaps with stationary cams under that change the mirror angle during the day. The cams gradually have to change as the sun goes higher or lower with the seasons. So you might think that this is a huge project? How about only starting with 9 mirrors or 16 mirrors and try to get them functioning? Please lets not leave it all to big companys. If it is open source to begin with, we are not going to make money from it (and anyway, lets face it, patents benefit very few people) but we can help millions of people have better lives. I have not started this project on a practical level yet. Please contribute here to this brainstorming session. I believe it is an area where people have not given enough attention to possible solutions. Several solutions are possible and that includes a cost effective one that we are going to find! Brian White
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