Large-scale Projects
In a solar-thermal power plant, like those of The Solar Project or the PS10 plant in Spain, a wide field of heliostats focuses the sun's power onto a single collector to heat a medium such as water or molten salt. The medium travels through a heat exchanger to heat water, produce steam, and then generate electricity through a steam turbine.
A somewhat different arrangement of heliostats in a field is used at experimental solar furnaces, such as the one at Odeillo, in France. All the heliostat mirrors send accurately parallel beams of light into a large paraboloidal reflector which brings them to a precise focus. The mirrors have to be located close enough to the axis of the paraboloid to reflect sunlight into it along lines parallel to the axis, so the field of heliostats has to be narrow. A closed loop control system is used. Sensors determine if any of the heliostats is slightly misaligned. If so, they send signals to correct it.
It has been proposed that the high temperatures generated could be used to split water producing hydrogen sustainably.
Read more about this topic: Heliostat
Famous quotes containing the words large-scale and/or projects:
“Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)
“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)