Re: Solar for EV charging (was: Who Elected These People?!)

["PETER VANDERWAL" <peterv@peoplepc.com>]

> I got some halfway decent results using some very odd materials that make
me
> beleive that someone who actually knew what they were doing could get a
> better power to square foot ratio than solar panels, and possibly a
> considerably lower cost for medium to large installations.
>

You can.  Out in front of my work is a prototype solar generator.  It uses a
large (20 to 25 foot) reflective dish with a high tech sterling generator at
the focal point.  It generates 7 to 10 kw and since it tracks the sun it
produces power (though not always full power) from just after sun up to just
before sun down.

It breaks down a lot, but that's because it's a prototype and they are
always messing with it to see what happens.  For example they ran it for a
month or so with half the dish painted out to see how well it worked on half
power.

Anyway, they claim it runs at 30-40% efficiency.

It's really a cool design, there is a wedge cut out of the dish that lets
them completely invert the dish -the support arm fits in the wedge when
inverted- this brings the sterling generator down to about chest height to
make it easy to work on.

Originally they used multiple smaller Mylar reflectors covering the dish.
Each reflector was basically a metal hoop about 2 inches deep with Mylar on
both sides,  they would then pull a vacuum insides the hoop to suck the
Mylar into a dish shape.  Unfortunately they had a lot of problems with the
reflectors leaking.

Now they are using a new type of flexible glass mirror that they can
actually bend into the parabolic shape.  They use something like 50 wedge
shaped mirrors.