Solar Power

Years ago(around 1992 or 93), I had an idea. I had taken an alternative energy sources class, and learned about many of the limitations of the various forms. Most of the "clean" energy sources suffered from high costs. Solar in particular(then and now) was expensive due to the high cost of materials to produce photo-voltaic cells. They also suffered efficiency loss due to clouds and angle of sunlight issues(on a flat array of solar panels, light doesn't shine directly on them except for a limited time of day). I was also interested in astronomy at the time, and had looked up how different telescopes worked. A basic reflector telescope allows starlight and moonlight to enter in at the top, it is reflected by a parabolic mirror at the bottom, and is reflected by a normal flat mirror out the side of the telescope. This is also similar to how a satellite dish works. The parabolic dish reflects the satellite's signal to an antenna, focusing the tenuous power into a single point which in effect amplifies the signal. It occurred to me that you could use the same principal with a solar collector. Instead of using expensive solar cells across a wide area, you could use an array of parabolic mirrors, each of which focused the suns light to a point where a solar cell would be placed. I thought it was a neat idea, but I didn't have a practical way to explore it myself. I had always wondered whether or not it was workable.

Well, it looks like it just might be. Here is an article from last year about a company that plans to make small cheap parabolic solar collectors. They will each rate 250 Watts, and cost around $250 apiece. They've replaced the solar cells altogether with a Stirling heat engine, which is cheaper. I certainly hope it works.

UPDATE: After checking out their site, Energy Innovations, It appears that they will be going with photo-voltaics after all.