Make has an article on the "Solar OSE" project, a DIY solar concentrator that can heat steam to 250º Celcius:
Solar concentrators work by focusing the sun's rays on a water pipe to generate steam. The Solar OSE uses Arduino-controlled motors to pivot the array of mirror strips at the base of the structure to track the sun, automatically maintaining optimal solar concentration on the pipe.
The build instructions are fully documented on Instructables, quoting a 2000€ material cost with about 150 hours of fabrication time.
The design presented is developed by Open Source Ecologie France, a French group, which "fits into a[n] international movement, called Open Source Ecology, created in the USA in 2003".
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2015, @03:35AM
Solar commentators are cool and have been around a long time. But what this couple did... http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/naturhus-wraps-a-house-in-its-own-private-greenhouse.html [treehugger.com]
That is brilliant. It would work in many parts of the world. They build a greenhouse around their house!
My wife has already shot it down :(
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 24 2015, @05:43AM
Let me guess... you live in Arizona, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 24 2015, @12:29PM
Or live in Turkey? Or wait is it too early for those jokes?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 24 2015, @01:16PM
Not in the US culture myself, thus I wouldn't know how close to the day of shooting turkeys and giving thanks they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 24 2015, @01:47PM
Oh good one, although I was referencing the turks shooting down russian jets using american-supplied jets and missiles. Well, they say a turk did it, hopefully it wasn't an American Technical Adviser or the shits going to hit the fan.
Both sides F-ed up pretty well, why is a Russian plane overflying Turkey, and as for the other side, why did most of the parts fall to the ground just over the Syrian side of the border?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday November 24 2015, @02:18PM
(I got it, didn't need the explanation)
My reply originated in the article linked by OP [treehugger.com] (the idea shot down by his wife), which starts with:
Then your joke came so unrelated with my tongue-in-cheek reference (and with the challenge of "jokes which may puzzle the reader that early in the morning") that my insomnia** affected brain decided to continue on the same (disconnected) line.
Seems that I marked a point, eh?
--
** I'm well past the time a normal person falls asleep in my time zone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday November 24 2015, @04:12AM
It's Celsius. Named after the Swedish astronomer Andres Celsius [wikipedia.org].
(I'll repeat myself in saying the English language orthografy and pronunsiation are surpassed in silliness only by ideographic scripts).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Tuesday November 24 2015, @06:56AM
Bugger. I used the spelling from TFA in the submission to make sure I didn't get it wrong, but it turns out I just copied their mistake. Should have written centigrade instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2015, @07:10AM
(the editor should be able to correct)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aXis on Tuesday November 24 2015, @05:07AM
It's fun/interesting that the mirrors are individually controllable, but having a direct drive NEMA stepper motor on each one is awfully wasteful and will have huge standby power requirements. Even a worm drive would do a better job as you could leave it unpowered between moves.
There's something to be said for taking advantage of physics though and just having a fixed shape parabolic trough on a tracking frame. Get the shape right once and you never have to change it again.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday November 24 2015, @05:54AM
Fear not... their second iteration will use some Peltier thermoelectric generators stuck on the motors and running the generated electricity through some nichrome wire to preheat the water.
More sophisticated and geekish schemes on the third-and-beyond iterations: of course, each supported by a new crowdsourcing round.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 24 2015, @01:37PM
You can do better than a parabolic design, though.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday November 24 2015, @12:59PM
solar concentrators seems like a good idea at first but they have a serious problem in that they are high maintenance because you have to clean the mirrors regularly.
(Score: 1) by zoefff on Tuesday November 24 2015, @07:34PM
And a very sunny climate. One cloud and you get zero output. While a PVE solutions still get something from just the surrounding daylight....