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Climatebabes The Future of Solar Cooking

Below a steam cooker build in Auroville. Types of solar cookers There are several ways to use solar power for cooking. Here I won't go into the different designs but only the principle differences (imho). 1. Direct mirror concentrator For third world aid there have been projects in which even simple aluminium foil on carboard was enough to concentrate sunlight several times and bring water to a boil. This design could best be made out of a rugged material like… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on December 23, 2009 at 8:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Building CSP at COP15


Meeting Dr. R.K. Pachauri Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The Copenhagen Climate Conference can't be deemed a succes. The US is opposing significant cuts and current targets leave an estimated temperature increa

… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on December 13, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Building a Parabolic Through 2 (Update)

Continued from here..

I found the metal to be costly, and I had a concept of a building kit with costly wooden parts, so I replaced the metal rods with strips of wood. First I had to make sure the uneven parabolic shapes could be connected in a regular way. That required ma… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on December 9, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Building a Parabolic Through 1

(Mirror with coating still on) It is not that hard to build a parabolic trough collector, even not for me not being all that handy with tools. I got started a few days ago and am trying to just make one and figure out optimizations as I go. Step 1. Calculating the Parabolic Shape You can use the formula Y=(X*X)/4*f where Y and X are re… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on December 4, 2009 at 8:30pm — 1 Comment

Climatebabes A Dug Out Parabolic Mirror, Solar Bowl

Here is an example of how easy it can be to construct a parabolic mirror or SolarBowl. You can dig one out of the ground.

The 30 meter diameter construction was actually a so called 'Radar pit' for the dutch radio station Kootwijk. It was filled up in 1960, so it is no longer there. To… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on November 19, 2009 at 4:00pm — No Comments

Climatebabes I have Solar Steam, But Now What?

Say you build a parabolic trough or other type of CSP installation, it's got tubes and after making so much cappuchino's you want to really utilize the steam for power, what can you find on the web. Surprisingly not very much. For some reason a steam turbine has to be big, MW big. Also for some reason trubines are expensive (the reason is clear, they need to be able to stand high rotation speeds. Here I will highlight some options that are available. Infinity Turbines… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on November 17, 2009 at 10:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes The Aquaflector, a Low Cost diy Solar Concentrator

We came across this design. The Aquaflector uses cheap mylar sheets in a fresnel type arrangement. This design heats water, but there are designs that focus light on photovoltiac cells. This design has been implemented by several companies. You can find a discussion of the technolo… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on November 14, 2009 at 11:00am — No Comments

Climatebabes Domestic Heliostats, Easy and Cheap

I wanted to give some attention to a website about Heliostats. Heliostats are a device to keep the sun in a static position (helios=sun). They are used in solar towers on a large scale, but can be used domestically as well. The website www.heliostat.us. Shows you how. It also has software a… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on November 13, 2009 at 5:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Simple DIY Parabolic Trough

This movie made by Greenpowerscience shows how a parabolic trough reflector can make steam. The design is a bit clumsy and the materials are less than optimal, but to get an impression check out the vid. You can easily make a parabolic template by first calculating the shape using the formula you can find here. Then you can copy it onto wood or plastic and make a support for your trough.… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on November 12, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Update on Solar Bowl and Other Development

Hi Concentrated Solar Power Builders,

The focus 'line' in a solar bowl. www.buildingcsp.com Its official, a new domain to reach this ning site. This will allow future migration. Don't forget to visit www.solarbowl.org and… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on November 11, 2009 at 1:00pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Parabolic Trough Collector : Alanod Material Arrived

Hi CSP enthousiast! I am working on several concepts for SCP, one of them is the parabolic trough which I want to promote thru the non profit www.parabolictrough.org website. It will use coated aluminium and be of a free design with parts custom manufactured. Let me know if you have suggestions of wish to participate in the development of the parts (which aim to make the collector as cheap as possible). Also please… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on November 6, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes In Memory of Frank Shuman

You might wonder what such an old picture of such modern technology means. It demonstrates how easily technology is lost. It was taken at the dawn of the 'Oil Era', and becasue of oil, there it stayed..

… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on October 22, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Generic Open Source Parabolic Trough Collector

Many have designed parabolic trough collectors, from NREL to Scania to countless small enterprises. Yet there is not one generic design openly available, on a non profit basis, parts and design, to spur on the green revolution our planet will have to go through due to peak oil and the need to reduce international tensions.

One good example of an open des… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on October 20, 2009 at 5:23pm — No Comments

Climatebabes CSPToday Conference In Sevilla

An Industry Conference CSP Today should be of great interest to many people, especially in the high solar resource countries. It seems to have become the meeting point for the bigger energy companies that see great benefit in building expensive solar plants for centralized e… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on October 17, 2009 at 10:00pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Building CSP News

Hi Building CSP members, there is news, several things: 1. A new website is started called www.solartrough.org and www.parabolictrough.org. It aims to make plans and parts available for construction of solartrough collectors. It has a forum as well. We hope to put up a generic (but good) open and closed design soon. Because we (hope to) service more people we can share investmen… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on October 15, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Building CSP Moved to www.solarbowl.org

Due to our bussy schedule we decided to only maintain one website. You can find us at www.solarbowl.org Continue

Added by Climatebabes on September 22, 2009 at 8:30pm — 1 Comment

Climatebabes Balloon Gore Calculator

To creat an inflatable sphere one needs to calculate the size of the strips it is made up of. We created an excel sheet that does that for you. We can send it to you, just send us a message.

A Gore is a strip of plastic that can be glued together to form a sphere.… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on August 4, 2009 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Solar Steam Cooling

Concentrated solar power can be used to cool with great efficiency. The so called Steam Jet Cooling or Vacuum Chilling process uses steam under pressure to flash evaporate water. This evaporation causes a chilling effect. This refrigiration model is simple and robust, excellent for tropical applications where sunlight is abundand and cooling is needed. It has been used in steam trains in the past. there is a study of its use in combination with concentrated solar thermal powe… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on August 4, 2009 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Climatebabes Examples of Inflatable Solar Concentrators

Last post we showed some prototypes we made and compared it to the Cool Air Solar inflatable PV concentrator. There have been more people working on this type of concept so we thought we would go through the ones we found. Schjeldahl Pioneering

The Pageos beacon was one exam… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on August 2, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments

Climatebabes Making An Inflatable Solar Concentrator

Another way to make a solar concentrator is by using a baloon design. A baloon gets a round shape because it tries to even out the pressure within the membrane. To create a Solar Bowl baloon would be an excellent idea.

Inflatable solar is not new. It is now patented (LOL) techn… Continue

Added by Climatebabes on August 1, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

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