Mirrored concrete for cheap solar energy

Mirrored concrete for cheap solar energy

Solar Energy Innovations: The Use of Concrete Mirrors

Introduction to Concrete Mirrors

  • The speaker introduces an experiment involving mirrors that focus solar radiation to generate steam and produce energy.
  • The goal is to create the cheapest mirror possible for solar energy production, aiming to compete with thermal and nuclear power plants.
  • Previous videos detail the construction of concrete mirrors using reflective films, highlighting that the concept isn't new but has historical roots.

Advantages of Concrete Mirrors

  • Traditional solar power plants use expensive materials for longevity; concrete mirrors aim to reduce costs significantly.
  • Unlike conventional solar panels, which only work when sunny, these systems can store thermal energy for nighttime electricity generation.
  • The speaker emphasizes the durability of ancient Roman concrete compared to modern materials used in solar technology.

Cost Efficiency and Structural Benefits

  • The cost of producing concrete mirrors is approximately $1.50 per square meter, making it nearly 100 times cheaper than traditional options.
  • Heavy weight serves as an advantage against natural elements like hurricanes, reducing structural support costs typically needed for lighter materials.

Innovative Design Considerations

  • A unique earthen berm design reduces overall system costs by eliminating complex structures between mirrors and ground.
  • This approach allows for a simpler mechanism where the receiver moves instead of rotating heavy mirrors, enhancing efficiency.

Challenges and Future Directions

  • Testing revealed issues with grass rubbing against mirrors over time due to wind exposure on earthen berm placements.
  • Various shapes (parabolic trough vs. parabolic dish) are discussed as potential designs for optimizing energy production from concrete mirrors.
  • The speaker aims for a target cost of 0.5 cents per kWh for solar heat production, striving to make it cheaper than existing thermal and nuclear electricity sources.
Video description

0:00 - My experimental concrete mirrors 0:38 - Other concrete mirrors 1:24 - Advantages of concrete mirrors 2:20 - What my YouTube channel is about 2:50 - Berms for solar energy 3:37 - Problems of the berms 4:20 - Solar heat at 0.5 cents/kWh This is one of my experiments. These mirrors focus solar radiation here where the radiation creates high temperatures to generate steam. Now I will show you 1 of these 4 mirrors, and you can see that this surface is concrete. The 2nd surface is a mirror, and you understand that my goal was to find the cheapest mirror to produce the cheapest solar energy which will win the competition with thermal and nuclear power plants. This my old video showed in detail how I made my concrete mirrors, and how I glued reflective films onto their surfaces. Of course, I am not the inventor of concrete mirrors, and for example, these are concrete mirrors which were made for the German Space Agency. They tried to create a cheap alternative to solar power plants of this type, where a similar mirror focuses the solar radiation into such a receiver where solar energy is converted into thermal energy with a temperature of almost 400 ⁰C which are converted into steam to produce electricity. In addition, some of that thermal energy comes into similar heat storages to generate electricity at night, and it is their advantage over solar panels which only provide electricity when the sun is shining. This is a technical solution from another blogger who made a concrete mirror not in the shape of a parabolic trough, but in the shape of a parabolic dish. You may still think that concrete mirrors are nonsense, but I will counter with the argument that ancient Roman concrete products have been around for 2000 years, while these beautiful mirrors use expensive materials to increase their lifespan to 20...30 years. Also, notice these complex structures that are needed to maintain the desired shape of those beautiful mirrors, while concrete is a very inflexible material, and you see that it does not require any additional structures. Also, look at my expenses for making the concrete mirrors, and you see that it is 1.5 USD / sq.m of concrete mirrors, which is almost 100 times cheaper than these beautiful mirrors. It is interesting that the heavy weight of our concrete mirrors turns into an advantage because our heavy mirrors cannot be moved by a hurricane, and therefore we get rid of the costs of such concrete masses which are needed to withstand the winds. My YouTube channel systematically describes my experiments with 10 types of cheap mirrors for producing very cheap thermal energy and electricity. My 4 previous videos described cheap mirrors based on glass rectangles, mirror steel, reflective film on expanded polystyrene, and mirror balloons. This video was about the 5th type which is a reflective film on a concrete sheet, but let's look at this cheap berm made from the surrounding soil, and it is another important innovation. We usually think that the main parts of such solar heaters are this mirror and this receiver, but here we see that they form only about 40 % of the cost of a solar heater. At the same time, this half of its cost is formed by various structures and devices between the mirrors and the ground, but we get rid of this half of the cost if we replace them with our cheap earthen berm. Now I remind you that traditional solar heaters must constantly rotate according to the movement of the sun across the sky, but we replace this movement of the mirrors with these movement of the receiver. We can notice that this system is many times cheaper than those devices for rotating large and heavy mirrors, and these 2 my videos described this simple and cheap system for moving a receiver.