Team Members
Mohammad Al-Shaboul, Natalie Broide, Antonella Cipriani, Evan Lynch, Samuel Paris, Moxa Raval, Jose Rivas Espinoza
Abstract
Team 1’s design, the Solar Pack, is a module consisting of four heliostats with a 1 m^2 reflective area. It aims to tackle the high costs associated with classical heliostat designs, which employ large steel structures and multiple drive systems. To achieve this, our hedgehog concept is a modular, industrial solar processing unit designed for linear expansion. Each heliostat in the module features a support structure, two positional rotation servo motors, and a 90-degree bracket for mounting the mirror to the support pedestal. The frame components are made entirely of ABS plastic, due to its ease of manufacturing, high strength to weight ratio, and thermal resistance. The two servos provide 180 degrees of movement in two axes, ensuring a focal point to the receiver tower in a CSP plant is maintained. The novelty in our design lies in the ease of scaling, due to notched bases, and low cost and high modularity, due to a high ratio of off-the-shelf parts. A single small-scale unit would be implemented in a radial-stagger pattern with a max distance of 19.62 m away from the tower. The modules have necessary azimuthal spacing between them in the field to prevent interference while also minimizing land use. The heliostats within each module are spaced by 0.2 m to prevent mechanical interference and minimize shading/blocking losses. A field of 350 heliostat modules is projected to generate 1.73 MW of focal thermal input power and have an average yearly optical efficiency of 0.71.