RE: [Solar Turbine] Re: open source concentrator design software

[b...@windwavesandsun.com]

Marcin,

I have an arbitrary evaluator which can sweep through a range of configurations in search of an optimal.

This requires a cost model for height,  width and length etc ...

Travis and I would like to visit over this weekend - perhaps we can make this optimization our purpose.

Ben

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Solar Turbine] Re: open source concentrator design software
From: "..." <offonoff...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, September 14, 2009 6:19 pm
To: solar-...@googlegroups.com

Marcin,

I was wondering if you had a specific design.  Like, isn't there some sister group that has a design ready to build that OSE was going to replicate?  testing different design rationale will be more effective than spending days moving individual mirrors around in the simulator and settling upon what seems best (which may just be a local maximum in a muddled design).

But this software isn't really at the stage to be evaluating different designs yet.  In developing this capacity, I thought it would be helpful to have a purposefully designed system, and compare it to a haphazardly designed one.

Marcin asked:

How do we interpret the ray tracing results?

Thats what we are trying to figure out.  I'm thinking that defining an "entrance aperture" (in this case a rectangle defining the square area of the colector array placed a few inches above the mirrors) is the way to go.  Then the collector efficency is the rays that hit the absorber divided by the # of rays that entered the apperature.

concentration ratio would be the area of entrance aperature divided by the area of absorber.

Then concentration ration and collection efficency are the values we have to evaluate different designs.  We then run trough all the angles we expect the sun to be at and get a spreadsheet of performace throughout the days and seasons.

Are there other values we should be gleaning from the simulator?  Are there alternative definitions of these values we should look into implementing?

entrance aperature and efficency code should be done in a couple weeks.

later,

elliot