1. Home
  2. Hobby Electronics Basics
  3. Numbers Behind Bird Friendly Solar Thermal

Numbers Behind Bird Friendly Solar Thermal

Googlemap "Ivanpah" to see tens of thousands of tracking mirrors in a 2 km dia farm.

Use these ballpark numbers:

mirror dimensions: 3 m X 3 m

ave. distance of mirrors from receiver: 600 m

angular velocity of the sun: 0.004 degrees /sec

ave. bird size: 1 m

ave. bird speed: 10 m/sec

ave. bird acceleration: 1 m/sec^2

% reduction of radiation required to save the bird: 80%

This problem isn't nearly as difficult as missile defense / bird hunting.

All that is necessary is to give some mirrors some advance time to defocus, move the beams 0.3 degrees perpendicular to and out of the bird's flight path.

The powerplant may already have a rapid defocusing system in place anyway for other safety reasons, overheated boiler or load leveling that is possibly independent of the primary tracking system.

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill
Loading thread data ...

How many birds are we talking about here? 1000/day? 1/day?

Reply to
mrdarrett

Maybe dozens, nothing honest birders worry about. This is something a winger got off of the Watts Up With That denier site.

Still it's an interesting academic problem.

80 km/hr winds are common in the Mojave so we know the tracking system in each of the 170,000 mirrors is geared way down to keep the mirror from being moved by the wind.

Without researching [cheating] do you think the original control system can be adapted to avoid birds w/o any hardware changes other than the addition of the radar/sonar?

Bret Cahill

Reply to
Bret Cahill

Dozens... implies more than one dozen, so at least 24 birds/day, huh.

Without knowing anything about the hardware specs? Nope.

Bonus points for having your software recognize a bird, versus say aircraft.

Michael

Reply to
mrdarrett

So... you'd need a radar system capable of detecting the location and velocity of birds. How much would that cost?

I suppose you could divide the mirrors into say four large groups. For example, If a bird arrives from the east, have the western mirrors (which are pointing east, say) re-direct their light.

What do you do if you have birds approaching from both the east and west though?

Reply to
mrdarrett

Not much compared to a 2 billion plant but more than what a few dozen birds are worth.

With 170,000 mirrors they may already be using some kind of target/feedback system to keep the mirrors properly positioned. This could eliminate a lot of individual programming for each location.

The ones flying South in the spring or North in the fall are obviously confused and probably wouldn't survive anyway.

So ignore those birds.

Reply to
Bret Cahill

Put a small explosive charge on each mirror and splatter the ones that might hit the birds. Reaction time will be fast, you don't have to redesign the tracking drives, and there are longterm economic benefits as well.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation
Reply to
John Larkin

ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.