Bird Friendly Heliostat Solar Thermal

Worrying about bird deaths in windmills is just plain silly. How many birds die due to crashes into buildings/ windows, how many are killed by cars and trucks? Cats?

George H.

Hey, engineers do math!

A solar tracker has to slew the mirror at roughly one revolution per day. Avoiding a bird might need to slew a mirror at one rev per second.

So, what is the likelyhood that the designers oversized the motors and drive electronics by a factor of 80,000 or so?

You imagine the mirrors are 1 m from the boiler of a MW heliostat?

First take a look at the size and dimensions of the mirror farm, take a high school trig class and _then_ make a fool of yourself.

How about looking at the problem a different way. This is a boon for pet food manufacturers, if not school cafeterias. "Mystery meat" indeed. :D

duce structural issues.

h bird as it passes through feeding information into a controller. Each mi rror would only be diverted from the boiler for a fraction of a second.

hat movement only needs to be a minimum angle to de focus the heat. They p robably would even need to change the motors.

killed by cars and trucks? Cats?

food manufacturers, if not school cafeterias. "Mystery meat" indeed.

Ivanpah is on one of the biggest flyways in N. America. Distinctive profi le birds like ducks and geese could by IDed by special duck recognition sof twar, deliberately shot down with the heliostats and cooked for the dozens of employees who toil all day cleaning bird droppings off the mirrors.

roduce structural issues.

ach bird as it passes through feeding information into a controller. Each mirror would only be diverted from the boiler for a fraction of a second.

that movement only needs to be a minimum angle to de focus the heat. They probably would even need to change the motors.

re killed by cars and trucks? Cats?

et food manufacturers, if not school cafeterias. "Mystery meat" indeed.

file birds like ducks and geese could by IDed by special duck recognition s oftwar, deliberately shot down with the heliostats and cooked for the dozen s of employees who toil all day cleaning bird droppings off the mirrors.

Sounds like a plan! Thank you for volunteering to write the open-source du ck recognition software. :D

Bird droppings... there MUST be a way to use some of the waste heat to burn off the bird droppings.

ntroduce structural issues.

each bird as it passes through feeding information into a controller. Eac h mirror would only be diverted from the boiler for a fraction of a second.

ss that movement only needs to be a minimum angle to de focus the heat. Th ey probably would even need to change the motors.

are killed by cars and trucks? Cats?

pet food manufacturers, if not school cafeterias. "Mystery meat" indeed.

rofile birds like ducks and geese could by IDed by special duck recognition softwar, deliberately shot down with the heliostats and cooked for the doz ens of employees who toil all day cleaning bird droppings off the mirrors.

duck recognition software. :D

rn off the bird droppings.

Track it as it falls with radar then hit it with the heliostats. The dust can then be blown off with compressed air.

Few things provide more opportunities for fun than solar thermal.

Bret Cahill

...

Oh... wait... aren't bird droppings mostly nitrates? Salts don't burn...

What do you think of the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector?

I haven't seen too many on a large scale. I wonder why that is...

Michael

The goal was to eliminate H2O and VOC.

Interesting.

Maybe too much heat is lost from the receiver. Sometimes economies of scale decide everything.

Bret Cahill