Build your own Solar Power Concentrator with solar panels in a satellite dish.
We will design, build and test these solar panels and record our progress in this blog. We will document our process in a Solar Power Concentrator instruction manual and we plan on making Solar Panel modules, Thermal Control modules, Position Control units and other modules necessary that have been tested, verified and available for purchase. All of the other parts required should be available locally from your neighbors or a hardware store.
The cost of this Solar Power Concentrator should be much less than a conventional solar collector to generate the equivalent amount of electricity. We are documenting our costs in this manual.
We are documenting our progress on this blog and generating an instruction manual on how to build a Solar Power Concentrator. The first version is available now in the Products section of this blog. We will update this blog at least once a month and send out a news letter monthly so that you can get the latest updates to the instruction manual and progress reports. The Solar Power Concentrator instruction manual is available now on our blog at no cost to those who sign up for our monthly news letter.
We found 6 satellite antennas with in 5 miles of our home. I obtained permission to remove a satellite dish from a persons yard and made a schedule with them to come back the next Saturday to remove the antennae.
I got a crew of three people, my son, our neighbor and myself. We hooked up a small trailer to our truck, and got the following equipment, electric grinder, 2 ladders, 2 x 8 board 10 ft long, 3 ropes of 25 ft length. We set up the ladders on each side of antennae just short of where the dish will hit the ground and placed a 2×8 board about 5 ft up on rungs of the ladders so that the dish will not hit the ground and bend. We attached the 3 ropes to the top of the pole where it attaches to the dish. One rope was stretched out front to direct the direction of tilt and fall of the antennae. We attached two ropes at the top of the pole also but directed them to the back to restrain the rate of fall.
I cut the pole off at the ground level by placing a small cut in the front of the pole at ground level and in the direction we wanted it to fall. Make sure to cut through the pole so that you have a long gap along the front side of the pole. Now I made a cut on the back side of the pole, have one person on the front rope to pull the pole down in the direction you want it to fall, have the second person at the another rope at the back of the pole to restrain the rate of fall. I continued to cut the pole off at the ground level being careful to not to cut one side faster than the other so that there is some iron between the back cut and the front cut on both sides of the pole. As the pole starts to tip or fall stop cutting and help the back person slow the rate of fall.
PS as the pole falls the back two persons loose leverage and the pole falls where it wants to. We hit the edge of a metal shed and bent the shed a little. Fortunately we were able to straighten the shed roof and door out enough so that it still functioned. The board across the ladder rungs caught the pole and kept the dish from hitting the ground.
Next time we will construct a tripod frame and make a tripod with the pole, by placing three 2×6 by 10 ft boards in a triangle. Attach the three 2×6 boards at the top with a bolt and a small pipe around the bolt to keep the poles apart. Set up the tripod so it is on the back side of the pole. That way we can run the back ropes over the pipe to give you more leverage, and you can control the rate of fall of the pole as the pole is slowly lowered to the ground.
We loaded the antennae and pole onto our trailer and hauled them home. I made a small 4 ft by 4 ft by 2 ft high wooden post frame to hold the antennae. We cleaned the screen of the antennae with TSP solution and covered the inside of the antennae frame with a 4 oz fiber glass covering. Once we get a solid cover attached to the inside of the antennae, we will paint a sub coat that will adhere to the fiber glass and then we can coat that with a silver reflecting surfaces.
The antennae is divided into 12 pie shaped pieces. I calculated and measured exactly how wide and long the fiber glass should be to cover the antennae. I purchased the fiberglass from a local store plus resin and hardener to adhere the fiberglass to the antennae. We cut the fiberglass into triangles the right size to fit around the antennae. We then mixed 1/12 of the resin and hardener into a plastic quart pail and stuffed a pre-cut slice of fiberglass cloth into the quart pail of resin to get it thoroughly soak. We stretched the fiberglass onto the antennae and used small 2″ wide paint brushes to smooth the fiberglass onto the antennae. What we quickly found out is that the fiberglass shrinks when you spread it out onto the antennae surface. To make a long story short (pun intended), we were short about two sections of being able to cover the whole surface area of the antennae.
Next time we will cut the fiberglass cloth into 12 sections to fit only 1/12 of the surface area at a time and we will cut the cloth at least 10 to 20% larger then the intended surface area to be covered. You can easily measure the correct size with a tape measure as it will curve to the shape of the antennae and most of the metal ones are built with 12 sections. I have seen some antennae that look to be made from fiberglass already which would eliminate this step of the process. The 4 oz fiberglass when cured actually became porous so we will have to add a second layer of fiberglass to this first layer to get a solid surface.
One of our main concerns with this solar concentrator is how to keep it cool. I have calculated that the sun light will be concentrated about 80 to 1. This will make the solar generator quite efficient but it will also have a lot of heat to dissipate as only 12% to 15% of the sun light is used to generate electricity. We have two plans, the first plan is to mount cooling fins on the back side of the collector and force air across it to keep it cool. The second plan is to make a water cooled radiator that will be attached to the bottom of the collector to cool it.
With this in mined we dug a five foot diameter hole in the ground five foot deep. We purchase 200 feet of the cooling hose that is designed to be buried in the cement of a driveway to keep your drive way from icing up in the winter time. We also purchased a 14 inch diameter by 4 foot long cardboard tube that is designed to pour cement into for a footing. We placed this tube in the center of the 5 x 5 ft hole. This hose comes in 25 foot rolls and 100 foot rolls. We got one red 100 foot roll and one blue 100 foot roll. We also got a splice kit to splice these two rolls together.
We placed the blue hose at the bottom of this 5 x 5 ft hole making about 3 turns from the out side edge to tube in the center and then covered this section of the hose with about 6 inches of dirt. We then unrolled another 3 turns of the blue hose from the center tube out to the edge of the hole and again covered this section with 6 inches of dirt. We did this about 6 times and had all 200 foot of hose buried in the ground around the tube. We had already spliced the blue hose to the red hose to make 200 feet of hose.
Hi Brutus – thanks for answering my Yahoo Answers question. I am checking out your site and have a couple of recommendations. First is photos. People nowadays want photos whenever you are describing a process. Check out the other solar energy web pages and you can see many photos (I googled around for satellite dish solar ovens the other day; check those out). Videos is even better but photos are fine (even lousy ones are better than none).
Also, your Products section is password protected; I guess maybe you will unprotect that later when you sell your guidebook. Anyway, good luck on your project! Sounds exciting!
Hi zipfly
Thank you for your comments om my blog. I will look into adding more photos and maybe some video.
The guide book is free, when you sign up for our newsletter you can click here to sign up and get the password.
I will make that more clear as well.
Again thank you for your comments.
Brutus
Tripod frame
We purchased eight 2×4 by 8′ boards to make a tripod frame structure to lift the pole and satellite dish. We laid three of the 2×4s together with the 4″ sides together and made a mark about 2″ down from the top on all 3 boards as a drill line. We drilled a 5/8″ hole through all 3 boards. We also got a 12″ by 1/2″ pipe and two 1/2″ end caps that we could screw onto the ends of the pipe to keep the boards from sliding off. We pushed the pipe through the holes, placed the end caps on the pipe and then spread the boards apart.
We set the tripod frame up with each board being one of the legs. The center leg could be adjusted anywhere from 1 foot out to 5 foot away, but the other two legs could not be spread far enough apart to make a steady tripod. We took the tripod down and removed the pipe.
We then spread the outside two boards out from the middle board about 3 feet apart at the far end and the near end the boards were held together. The outside boards made about a 30 degree angle with the center board. We remarked the tops of the 2×4 boards again with a guide line on the top of each board. We re-enforced the tops of the boards where we were drilling the holes with two pieces of 5/8 plywood that were about 3″ x 4″ We then re-drilled the 5/8″ holes through these two 2×4s and the plywood at the angle marked on the boards.
We had to get a new pipe that was 18″ long as the 12″ pipe was now too short. We pushed the pipe through the three boards, put the end caps on and now we were able to spread the tripod legs apart about 5 foot per side. This tripod was much more stable.
We took two more of the 2×4 boards and nailed 2 inch spacers between them and put a pivot point stop on the sides of these two boards in the middle. We put these two boards over the center board of the tripod so that the stops would hold them from sliding up or down over the pipe on the top of the tripod. These two boards could be used like a teeter totter to lift the pole and dish up.
We then lifted our 13 foot pole up and slipped it into our hole that we had dug out before. We slipped a circular wire mesh over the pole and into the hole and braced the pole straight up. We used a level to make sure it was straight up and down.
We mixed 5 bags of concrete mix, one at a time and poured concrete into the hole. We stomped the concrete to make sure it didn’t have any air holes trapped. We need to extend the cardboard sides up about 1 foot further and add one more bag of concrete mix.
The pole is now set and ready for the Solar Power Concentrator to be fitted onto it.
I like this website really much.
This is really a great place.
And it is not like other money oriented website, the info here is very useful.
I am definitely bookmarking it as well as sharin it with my friends.
Redesign of the antennae/collector base unit
We redesign the base of the antennae/collector so it can move in both a horizontal and a vertical directions. We removed some of the excess hardware and bolted the pole adaptor directly to the cross member frame. The pole adaptor will rotate around the pole to give us up to 270 degrees of horizontal rotation and the cross member frame is bolted to the circular frame with brass bearings to pivot on. This will give us up to 90 degrees of vertical movement. We should be able to track the sun from morning till night and morning till high noon and back to night.
We drilled two holes at the top of the pole adaptor where we will add two grease zerks so that the pole can be lubricated as the collector rotates around the pole horizontally.
We will fit the top of the pole with brass strips drapped over the lip, circeling the top of the pole. The pole adaptor will fit over the pole at the top of the pole.
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
Solar eneragy is the future for the world.
solar energy facts
Horizontal Control Unit
We have designed and built a Horizontal Control Unit to turn the solar panel collector in the horizontal plain. We purchased a worm gear winch and got a windshield wiper motor off an old Toyota at the Pick A Part junk yard. We got some metal sheets that we cut and bent into shape to attach the wiper motor to the worm gear winch.
We made a small adapter to connect the wiper motor to the winch so the wiper motor can turn the winch when a voltage is applied to its leads. The wiper motor will turn either in a clockwise or counter clockwise direction depending on polarity of the voltage applied to its leads.
We made brass bearings for thrust and and axial at the top of the pole and axial about seven inches down from the top for the Antennae/Collector Base Unit to set on and rotate around the pole.
We mounted the Horizontal Control unit close to the top of the Solar Panel Concentrator Pole. The Antennae/Collector Base Unit is mounted on the top of pole. We wrapped a small serpentine belt around the bobbin on the winch and attached it to the back side of the Antennae/Collector Base Unit.
Next we will design and build a Position Control Unit that will track the sun and control the Horizontal and Vertical control Units so that the Antennae/Collector Base Unit is always facing directly toward the sun. Then we will determine how to build a photovoltaic panel into the Solar Power Concentrator.
solar power will be used more often in the future as the oil supply dwindle and gas prices increases”;”