Team Members
Kathleen Anderson, Christina Brooks, Gabriel Guanche, Alexander Hong, Benjamin Lehmann, Matthew Petrick, James Sanchez
Abstract
Lagarto–Ray introduces various benefits to energy production from the sun not offered by today’s heliostat market. Founded on the principle that the ground coverage area of each heliostat module should be minimized to maximize the efficiency of the heliostat field, the design requires only one tubular connection to the ground to hold 1 m^2 of reflective surface. The size of the Lagarto–Ray lowers the cost of a module significantly with savings in the support structure and actuation systems, making installing a Lagarto–Ray field cheaper than existing technologies on the market. Each Lagarto–Ray module utilizes only two 12V brushless DC motors combined with worm and spur gear sets for accurate and precise azimuth/elevation axis tracking. The mounting of mirrors allows full 360–degree rotation in the azimuth axis and 180–degree rotation in the elevation axis, allowing a Lagarto–Ray heliostat module to be installed in a wide variety of orientations. Even with all the savings in size and cost, the amount of reflective area in each module is still a large amount at 1 m^2.The Lagarto–Ray design also includes an optimized field layout so that maximum potential of the heliostat module is achieved.