Make your own Backyard Solar Concentrator
Solar concentrators are essentially just like parabolic satellite dishes lined with mirrors. Regardless of where the sun hits the disc, it’s reflected into a center focal point, generating abundant amounts of power. You can pick up hundreds of tiny mirror tiles on eBay for just a few bucks. So basically, it’s like this power plant in Australia, except in your backyard:
There are two versions of the project. One is the massive 7 foot dish above and the other involves four mini dishes (like the ones sides of houses). Both projects have plenty of excellent information but if you longing for more, view our vast amounts of DIY Green Energy projects:
- How to: Harness Solar and Wind Energy
- Go Green this Winter with DIY Free Heating
- Construct your own 60 Watt Solar Panel
December 9th, 2008
Hi Guys,
I moved all my blogs to a separate blog heading, so you may want to redo the links.
December 9th, 2008
Links have been updated – Thanks for letting us know Mike.
July 9th, 2009
this is a great site lot’s of great stuff state of the art I’m now hooked to your rss
October 26th, 2009
I continually see weird characters on hacknmod.com, this article has a short description, and there are two of them (�). There’s an A with a carrot on top, and a blocked question mark.
October 26th, 2009
We had some issues during a database migration and are working on fixing that problem. Sorry about that.
February 14th, 2010
I saw this 7 inch dish to create power, but what do you put in the middle?? to take out electricity??
February 15th, 2010
Click on the link for more details but basically it heats water which creates steam and turns a turbine. Or, it could heat a peltier plate for example. There are a few different ways.
April 6th, 2010
I use the big dish mostly for cooking food, but making steam or even melting lead are other uses.
If I had a small steam engine or sterling engine, I would be making electricity between meals.