Mirror Panel Layouts for an Icosahedral Solar Bowl. The Crosbyton Solar Power Project

摘要

This study is concerned with designing mirror panel layouts for a spherical shaped solar bowl. It was carried out as part of the Crosbyton Solar Power Project (CSPP). The CSPP is concerned with the development of a technology for producing electric power from steam generated by reflection of the sun's rays from a fixed mirror solar bowl onto a tracking receiver. In this system, the receiver is cantilevered and pivots about the center of curvature of the mirror. This study describes mathematical techniques for designing the mirror surface. The method is based on an icosahedral breakdown of the surface of a sphere and the resulting bowl is called an icosahedral bowl. As an example, a sixty degree icosahedral bowl is constructed from two sets of fifteen identical spherical triangles. These thirty spherical triangles are called superpanels and are used to support several smaller mirrors. The small mirrors used to cover the surface of the icosahedral bowl are hexagonal in shape. This shape mirror gives extremely good coverage of the bowl surface and minimizes parameters such as total mirror perimeter and gap area between mirrors. In addition, this choice of mirror shape yields the same mirror panel layout on each superpanel. (ERA citation 11:053818)