Dishing Out Affordable Solar Power and Heat

Energy via, steam turbine and direct by photoelectric percentages ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVB9_3IKIAE

Microchannel cooling is certainly a futuristic advance just waiting for mankind to take advantage. For instance, one could utilize the "waste heat" from this process to drive pyrolytic forward osmosis (ammonium bicarbonate cycle) with heat not absorbed by supercritical carbon dioxide opposing piston engines (that generate even more power, by storing power in a hydraulic accumulator (or series of them). Combine this with recent advances in multi-layered PV (if that can take the heat), and the efficiency goes through the roof, not only that, but energy will be available 24/7 through the storage of energy in hydraulics (or alternatively in thermal compressed air storage, where only the heat is stored, and the air is kept in circulation).

The headline claims it is affordable, yet there is no cost figure anywhere to be found. Installed cost per kW? Who cleans off the mirrors when it snows? Would these foil mirrors even be resistant to really small hail? Nice experiment, might have limited applications where it is too expensive to extend the grid.

I think they showed in the video, a clam shell type hangar that raises up over the "dish" and focal point. Appears to be some sort of inflatable device that folds itself up and lies down when not needed. My guess is that the cover is up any time the sky is overcast, and possibly at night.... Since the mirror are essentially potato chip bags, the material is in fact cheap plastic. I think they use a partial vacuum to pull the reflecting surfaces into shape. I suspect that this could be used on a number of mirror shapes, not just elliptical. I would like to try an aluminized mylar film in a cylindrical mirror arrangement for one of my home project I have been thinking on.

Why stop at sizing it to power several average homes?

Make it small and cheap enough for a single home.

All of these wonderful ideas are like carrots that are just out of reach for the average homeowner.

Is it DIY time? Aluminized Mylar is fairly cheap (space blankets). Creating a little vacuum to form the mirro might be a little tougher, but not if you make a short drum design with a back membrane that is simple a rubber diaphragm with a screw tensioner to pull more or less relative vacuum, thus de-forming the mylar surface into a partial ellipsoid. Should not be too hard to evaluate focusing. Tracking the sun is probably a bit of a challenge to all except amateur astronomers, so change the drum design to a trough mirror design, and don't worry with anything other than azimuth.

Getting the PV materials/cards that can stand the elevated temperature might be an issue, purifying water sufficiently might be another (depending on how this is approached by end user), and there is no way a DIY guy could make the micro-channel plate coolers. BTSO (back to square one). The trough system does not produce as tight a focus, so maybe less sophisticated PV could be used, and the cooling might be facilitated by less developed means.

Well, aside from the size and the tight focus, it's just a glorified aluminum foil hot dog cooker that we made as kids.

The collector and the cooling would be a challenge, but if they were to make the whole thing small enough for an average home, demand and mass production would quickly bring the price down. I think sun tracking software is pretty easy to come by.

We need a Henry Ford in the alternative energy field.

Make the whole thing from recycled beer cans and potato chip bags, along with some cheap Chinese silicon.... a few lazy electrons might just make it over the finish line.

If I had a nickle for every "green" energy system that held the promise of taking me off grid, I could actually afford one.

Nice and neat, probably cooling by heat pipe or thermosyphon.

No. The cooling is being done by ultrapure water in this new design called "Micro-channel cooling". No apparent figures are available at this time on necessary supply pressure, but one must "assume" that with millions of micro-channels for flow, the total impedance to water velocity is low enough to not represent a huge parasitic loss.