Your Good Ideas, Designs, Inventions - Tell Us About Them

The one I saw worked by tilting the panels rather than rotating fixed panels. When the sun was overhead, it flattened to catch rays as directly as possible. The panels were on poles, well, sorta poles and the mounting bracket at the top reminded me of a ball joint that could swivel in all directions. Just like sunflowers.

My sun oven has an adjustable back leg to tilt but it has to be manually adjusted the same as the direction it faces. Gets to about 365f with just the power of the sun. I think next summer I'll play with parabolic style water heating to supply a heat sink for the green house. Or not. I'll probably get too busy to play with that.

 

What's that saying?

I know a man who can.

He's got his own observatory in his garden.

Ooops, another friend I've just lost.

 

@shiney you are correct. It should not be expensive. All of the items needed exist at reasonable prices, even if they might need to be modified somewhat.

The thing that I am not sure about are solar panels. Not to far away from where I am sitting now, there is a development prototype being constructed that uses solar power but not solar panels. Early tests, in which I was involved pre-retirement showed the system to be 50% more efficient than panels. I cant give many more details due to a confidentiality agreement.

 

@shiney back when I was involved, we never had any problem with heat from the sun, even in Summer.

 

Saw this on "Tomorrow's World" years ago in fact just found this on Wikipedia Odeillo solar furnace - Wikipedia it's in France built in the 60s and still in use.
As for home sun trackers (heliostat) see here Solar tracker system

 

You just need a few mirrors .....




Details here -

 

The solar furnace might get the cold air balloon off the ground.