VENDOROVERVIEW
reference, earthquake protection (with automatic re-alignment), and low friction turning surfaces for the drive motors, to name a few. Furthermore, Pyron incorporates various elements into the water to retard evaporation and protect against freezing conditions.
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A full-scale prototype is currently under construction in San Diego in partnership with San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). Figure 4 and figure 5 show Pyron Solar team members working on the installation. When fully operational later this year, the resulting 20 kilowatts of solar-generated electricity will be used to help power SDG&E’s Mission Control/Skills Training Center. This new technology has the potential to cut solar power costs significantly as compared with conventional rooftop flat-panel photovoltaic systems.
The savings are due in large part to the use of concentrating optical devices rather than more expensive semi-conductor material; water is used as a passive coolant to disperse the heat generated by the photovoltaic cells, thereby preventing overheating of critical system components and dramatically increasing efficiency.
Figure 7
Pyron utilizes a patented, short focal length, acrylic concentrating lens system for its primary optics as shown in figure 6. It is designed to reflect and refract in order to raise the sunlight concentration to 6,500 suns on a pinpoint of light, which first hits an optical device. This optic captures the sunlight and spreads it evenly on a small solar cell, and the resulting combination of optics and accompanying photovoltaic cells are grouped into modules of eight units.
Figure 8
The modules are essentially troughs that rotate around their longitudinal axis to track the sun in elevation (dual-axis tracking system). Figure 7 describes how the lenses and HE Optics are assembled into modules that rotate on their
longitudinal axes. Figure 8 shows how modules are assembled into a structural ring to form an array that floats and rotates around its vertical axis.
The short focal length design of Pyron allows the entire platform to be close to the ground. Windstorms have proven to be the pitfall of many previous concentrator designs, and the Pyron System eliminates this problem: standing only 16 inches high, it presents an extremely low profile to not only windstorms, but hailstorms and sandstorms as well. Furthermore, the previous problem of vertically arrayed, billboard-sized systems that cast very large shadows is also minimized with the Pyron Solar system, and the short focal length makes tracking more simple and reliable.
Unique cooling method
Competing concentrator PV designs suffer from a very narrow operating window due to wind speed. These air-cooled systems require a certain amount of wind speed to cool efficiently, yet their cantilevered design suffers from wind-loading restrictions that require them to shut down in winds of fairly low velocity; conversely, if the wind speed is too low with these systems they suffer efficiency
www.solar-pv-management.com Issue V 2010
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