The world's cheapest tracker for solar heaters Parabolic trough

This is my solar station which is about 10 times cheaper than these well-known mirror heaters for a large solar power plant.
This is technical testing of my new prototype. This is its concave mirror which focuses solar radiation on this receiver.
Now I am showing how my new tracker changes the vertical position of the receiver. The cost of this tracker is several tens of times less than the cost of turning systems of mirrors for these expensive solar heaters.
My tracker requires my receiver to have these springs. That is why the receiver lowers when the weight of the water in these containers increases. If the water gradually leaves the container, the receiver rises.
We understand that a similar water container should be located on each of these battens, but these 2 battens should have containers with a volume of almost 2 times less. Nevertheless, a solar station must have a single pump which moves water to all containers simultaneously when we want to lower our receivers. That is why all receivers of a large solar station change their position by the same value, and I will describe the principles of unified control of all receivers in one of my future videos, after several winter experiments during frosts.
I remind you that now my solar station does not have any trackers, and the rows of my solar heaters are located along this West-East line, unlike these well-known solar heaters where this West-East line is perpendicular, not parallel.
Now I will show photos of this spot of solar radiation from my absolutely motionless mirrors at these points in time of one day around the summer solstice. Now my receiver is absolutely motionless all day long, and these photos give us an understanding of how our new tracker should change the position of the receiver from morning to evening.
This is a similar experiment, but on a different day, around the vernal equinox, and we see that the spot from my motionless mirrors accurately hits my motionless receiver all day long. A similar situation will be around the autumn equinox, but the closer to the winter solstice, the more we need the tracker to change the position of our receiver.
Now I am showing how I can change the vertical angle of my mirrors. I do this operation about once a week, but now my solar heaters do not have trackers. If I install those trackers, this operation will have to be done several times less often, about once a month or more rarely.
So, this was the 1st option to use my tracker when my mirrors have a different inclination in different months, located between these extreme positions. The 2nd option for using my tracker is such an absolutely fixed mirror which never changes its inclination. However, the position of this receiver is changed by the tracker, and this is its location in June, and this is its position in December. I am planning to explore both of the options, both this option and this option, and I will describe them in my future videos.
I remind you that my goal is to reduce the cost of our solar heat with a temperature of several hundred degrees to the level of 0.5 cent / kWh for the generation of very cheap electricity which is cheaper than electricity from solar panels or thermal power plants. This goal can be achieved if the total construction cost of similar solar heaters is less than 25 dollars per square meter of mirror. Therefore, my tracker should cost less than 2-3 dollars per square meter of mirror, and let's analyze whether this is true.

[@ashleyelgin9808]

Sergiy; your work fills me with hope for the future, in a world where climate disaster seems inevitable. I hope that more people can use your discoveries to reduce our dependancy on fossil fuels.

[@johnmcginnis5201]

Alternative. Replace the springs with pulleys. Arrange the water bottles behind the mirror. Counter balance the assembly with weights so there is a neutral force equilibrium. Adding or removing water moves the central collector. Springs have the tendency to lose force over time, especially in weathered conditions.

[@andrettibark]

Even in weather, modern spring steel should give him 12-20 years of consistency before degrading. Good as a solar panel. Appliance tech. Not an expert, or a metalergist, but ive googled it a few times.

[@johnmcginnis5201]

@@andrettibark Maybe your experience, not mine, at least in the form of a spring. For humanity, gravity is forever constant.

[@VividDroid]

Use the springs' water as balance counter measured.

[@FelonyVideos]

You can use 4 containers, one close to the rotational axis (proximal ballast), and one extending out beyond the collector (distal ballast). These would be the ballast containers, distal ballast and proximal ballast. Moving water from one to the other essentially changes the weight on the spring, moving the collector. But, we do not need to move water directly from one ballast to the other. We can be sneaky and use a pair of heat collector bottles located right at the focal point, each connected to one of the ballast tanks. Now, we can move virtual water from one ballast to the other. All we are really doing is moving the center of gravity of the sprung mechanism closer and further from the rotational axis, which moves the collector pipe. The other two containers (also plastic bottles) would be the servo containers, and they would be mounted one on top of the other right at the focal line. The lower servo container (plastic bottle), when heated, pumps it's water into proximal ballast container. This lightens the weight on the springs, raising the collector pipe. The upper servo container, when heated, pumps it's water out to the distal ballast, adding weight to the springs and lowering the collector pipe. It would even be possible to add a counterweight on the back of the pivot system that exactly balances the entire pivot mass. The spring can then be removed. Although this might make the device sensitive to wind loads. There is a problem with this - night time. We need a way to hydraulically lock the two flows at night, so that the mechanism doesn't go back to the middle point overnight. This would be a really bullet proof solution, if the night problem can be solved, and it may also be solved passively, by exploiting the geometry of the collector bottles. As a last resort, a tiny solar cell operating off a coin cell battery (10 year life) could operate a cheap solenoid valve. Sadly, this would double your cost. Perhaps other readers can solve this challenge? Maybe we can form a company and become millionaires.

[@leoncryp8182]

great idea re ballast/counterweight/closed loop , im still having trouble to wrap my head around how its going to track the sun on a given day / seasonal, Sergiy does not really explain it. using water just seems like a lot of accurate celebration, and too many things can go wrong, I understand its awesome as it does not use electricity, but Ive seen many DIY solutions on cheap solar trackers for solar panels, some guy even made a solar tracker with 4x diodes (no rasbarry pie needed), since this only needs to track it in 1 dimension you can get away with only using 2 diodes. Here is what im thinking: 1x Solar tracker (12V operated) + few ballast/counterweight Cheap electrical solar tracker, repurposed drill as motor. short threaded screws, bearings, gears etc.... probably only need one per roll of collectors as. Another solution instead of using expensive motor, threads, bearings, gears: use water pump, flexible garden hose, in closed loop ballast / counterweight this is what im leaning towards as its supper cheap and fast and reliable easy maintenance, negatives I can think of are only that its not strong, eg a wind may blow it around as its only pure counterweight holding it up, where as if its a motor/threaded rod, its stronger Still need some sort of electrical solar tracker, and probably rasberry pie as well so you can monitor all sorts of stuff/stats, while you at it might as well add a small solar panel and old car battery to power the whole rig. Have you seen that NZ guy did a solar tracker using alcohol/evaporate closed jar, with few other stuff which i cant remember. absolutely blow my mind as its also dont require electricity, he did it for a parabola solar cooker, cant remember his name or channel but he also build wind mills, and one of this biggest videos was the 10 or 40$ water electric generator, used a broken Segway / scooter motor + 4" computer server fan, off the shelf pluming parts. down side of this its not efficient, it uses a tone of water.

[@Channel-tr1hx]

the genius of this is the self levelling of the water level in all bottles.

[@weslingm]

Thank you Sir from South Carolina, USA. I love your ideas and you aim your engineering for the least expensive way. And you explain your ideas thoroughly so even I can understand them. 👍

[@dherrington2001]

Thank you for another brilliant and well researched video. Thank for sharing it with us.

[@johnfife3062]

Looking forward to following the results of your research. Much respect!

[@peterdavila3045]

Hi Sergiy, You are a very creative soul. Hopefully, you have a successful company to profit from your ideas. I salute you.

[@redsquirrelftw]

Wow that's a really cool concept. I plan to eventually live off grid so this would be a good addition for generating heat for an infloor system or even domestic hot water. Just need to ensure everything is well insulated and water is kept circulated so it survives the night or several days of clouds. Could have a rad going near the wood stove as well for those periods.

[@bossdog1480]

This is very interesting. I'm going to try something similar myself. I live in the tropics, (just), so it will be interesting to see how this works in much more hotter and humid conditions. Keep up the good work and I hope you are safe at the moment.

[@lostpony4885]

My tracker idea for solar trough is to have the mirror pivot freely around the focus pipe and have a couple solar switches turn small servo motor on. Which is pretty elegant but your idea here is much more elegant.

[@disklamer]

Great concept, excellent ideas about the mechanisms powered by heat instead of motors

[@BCreativeDIY]

A brilliant idea. Thanks for sharing.

[@yannickpar]

To reduce pressure stress of bottles, maybe put a lightly inflate ballon with air, in bottles. I don't know if it's really working, it's just a idea...

[@glenliesegang233]

A small solar powered pump triggered by photosensors behind a small hole should work.when sunlight hits the proper photosensor, pump turns on, lowering collector bar. A small drain hole can allow dreain-down to a sump bucket. Antifreeze needed...

[@FelonyVideos]

Brilliant

[@TinyGiantLifeStyle]

A boat lift would work and stabilize in winds. It's a gear motor with a pipe which twists up the cable.

[@markmarsh27]

You are an ASSET TO THE WORLD Sergiy. ... Your ideas could save the World from Global Warming. ... I WANT VERY MUCH to be involved with the development and marketing of your technologies in Canada when ever you're ready. ... That won't be long apparently.

[@reinoud6377]

Nice! Wish I had a backyard big enough for experiments too

[@altayu1]

Sergiy, put 2 flat mirror walls at the sides of the trough facing each other (east and west sides).. that way you trap the morning and evening sunlight coming obliquely and getting reflected away from the receiver.. the mirror wall height should be no higher than the trough edges.. regards

[@TheSRDR79]

It is a nice project u have, i only advise that instead of using springs where they are steal and hard to maintain in cold. U can use counter water jug weights for lowering and rising the water heating pipe. U can make a pully system where u have the steam pipe (moving up&down) one side and the other side a jug with water where u can pump water in/out. as the water increase the weight inc. and the other side will go up. Vise versa.

[@chippysteve4524]

I think changing the mirror angle seasonally wd work better as the mirror is at the optimal angle to catch maximum sunlight due to maximum surface area exposed. If the mirrors were mounted on stub axles at each end around the centre of gravity then mirror angle adjustment is a rotation about the centre and not a raising/lowering action.Thus much less energy required to adjust mirror angle daily and seasonally so even possible to semi-automate the work with e.g. some cheap stepper motors running from a small PV cell and battery or even just a crank chain and cog welded to the axle for easy adjustment and locking of the mirror angle.

[@andrasszabo9653]

Hi Sergiy, Have you thought of using a metal chord below the focus line, so when the sun "loses" its focus, it heats up the metal chord, which expands so allowing the machine to move a little bit upwards against a counterweight? Nice work by the way! Andy

[@andyolsensovereignbeing.6211]

Great once again!

[@ThisIsToolman]

Very clever design.

[@matsv201]

I have made a similar system with fluid based gravity control, and well.. it don´t work. If there is only 2 or ever 3 buckets it works just fine, but when there is 8-10 one side will inedible get a head of the other, there for absorb more fluid and there for hang down more. Even if its perfectly calibrated, it will do that regardless. Springs also have a ability to degrade, making the string value deviate from the original value. Just having the wood board go right throw out the back side, and simply put something heavy there. Controlling via steel cables also don´t work outside. The issue is that the cable get longer in the summer and the far end will drop down. The simplest solution is probobly have a board just going from one side to the other slide at the bottom. Than have a calibration screw every 5 meters or so covered by a flap (so neither sun or rain get on it, even if its stainless it will still degrade). Connect that to a rather large wheel and have a up bucket and a down bucket. Then just have two small garden light solar panel on the solar colector then if the sun gets to far up, there is a smal aquarium pump pumping water from one side to the other, getting to far down, pumping the other way. This way you can have a small 0.5W motor moving something that is over a ton heavy

[@5th_decile]

Your first paragraph describes what I feared most about this method. That you'd effectively have to put a short cut-off to the length of the system and the pump subsequently had to be counted per unit (or 'extensively' if you will). Nevertheless, maybe one can have a single heavy pump servicing some parallel water circuits, one for each of the short units.

[@5th_decile]

The spring degradation can be addressed by having a 'intelligent' algorithm govern the pump, e.g. one can let it update every 5 min for the best position using a Newton-Raphson iterative procedure, assuming e.g. that the pump the algorithm is fed with calorimetric data or visual data concerning the light spot on the target.

[@jozefnovak7750]

Super! Thank you very much!

[@fabriglas]

Great work, what are you doing with the heat at the minute?

[@user-vq4mt4zd4e]

good job and thank you

[@charlesdavis2406]

Useful thought now that's something the world could use more of instead of idle gossip

[@snax_4820]

You are a genius!

[@mikaelasp5251]

A small solar panel above and under drivning a small dc motor which changes direction should work if the collector is well balanced

[@goregogi7571]

Respect

[@DanielinLaTuna]

Very interesting, thank you 😊

[@wulfhart2653]

dude you are a genious. What temperature can you reach ?

[@robcarl1100]

Wondering if a fresnel lens inserted near the surface of the large reflector would eliminate any need for moving the setup. Hyperstealth is a channel on youtube worth taking a look at for this if interested.

[@user-ym7tf]

Nice😀, why you use springs instead of weights (stones) whith rope?

[@FelonyVideos]

A spring is required to give a variable force so that the thing can actually track. A stone would just force the tracker to one limit or the other. It does not provide a variable force. A special geometry would have to be devised to make a stone work.

[@user-ym7tf]

@@FelonyVideos 👍 you're right

[@PetasIII]

Ropes would allow for perfect alignment and solve the problem with water gravity alignments (ie. have rope on each side connected to a central point somewhere, could even work for the whole array at once). As all panels are fixed to ground this could work. Why not use ropes and centralized geared motor for control? With springs or counterweight to reduce the needed force ofc. With enough gears you could pull a lot of force without issues.

[@lowrads3653]

@@FelonyVideos If you were going with the counterbalanced water reservoirs, then the pulley system would probably work ok. I have no idea how this system is calibrated. The more mass in the system, the more resistant it will be to wind loading. I think ultimately you will want to manipulate whatever part of the system needs to move less, such as the angle of the mirror assembly. This would be with small movements, and more torque.

[@FelonyVideos]

@@lowrads3653 yes, you understand the nuance of what is happening, and how. This guy is a master at doing a design in a minimalist fashion, which carries with it massive reliability. Energy systems live and die by reliability.

[@johnrutledge3892]

Awesome ! Thankyou !

[@thetinkering5943]

Outstanding!

[@greyhnd001]

Look up the esp8266 esp32 and other non wifi chips like the attiny 85 and arduino family of cheap chips. The attiny don't have wifi so you could wire up a light sensor to detect brighter light and move in that direction. It may require multiple light sensors but they are so cheap it is no issue. The attin85s are about 1.50 shipped. The esp8266 are easier to connect to and program and ther are about 3 dollars shipped. The esp32 have wifi and bluetooth and cost 5 or 6 dollars shipped. The esp32 has also touch pins which are very cool to play with. I think the attiny with 2 or 3 light sensors and a simple directly controlled motors would cost about 7 dollars total.assuming 3 light sensors and one motor. The motors are any where from 3 to 6 dollars. The light sensors you can get 20 for about 5 dollars

[@smokyislay]

Sun doesn't make surprises in perspective of time. Therefore simpliest way to calculate absolutely right direction is to use a chip that has a radio clock (so called atomic time).

[@justtinkering6713]

What happens to the water when it freezes? Why not use a refrigerant instead if water? Or alcohol?

[@Martins_Musings]

you should use a couterweighted lever to reduce the load

[@billmcphee6891]

Best wishes for you & Ukraine in these difficult times March 10th2022. Are you safe?

[@Nobody-Nowhere]

Isint using water as weights problematic in winter time?

[@IlContainerdelMicio]

But jow you produce electricity after ???

[@dyslexiksteve2488]

In my greenhouse i have a window that opens when it's hot. Would having something that oil field better for your case?

[@stivstivsti]

why don't u use simple small motor with reductor?

[@Molb0rg]

молоток, правильная задумка с гидравликой такой

[@whatthefunction9140]

So is that mirror just a wall mirror that is slightly bent?

[@luckyboy1970]

Moving parts is a nightmare !!! You have to buy expensive or it will brake in time.

[@spongbob205]

Imagine if I could tell you how to turn that thing on what would that mean

[@jnwl5068]

Cool

[@kingbobgenau853]

still looking for a valueble steamturbine...

[@elarcadenoah9000]

you didnt explain how this pump is working ,and wahr activates it so the botle can be filled,this video is not complete and u said in future videos u will explain but u still didnt

[@AmigoBeiba]

👍👍👍👍

[@luckyboy1970]

There is no solution here.. everything will freeze in the winter. No moving parts whatsoever is the solution. Even cleaning them is a problem.. The best thing is to make more money.. and buy another apartment in the Carribeans, and go there in the winter season.

[@yukselsahin2878]

Türkçe altyazı desteği eklermisin

[@user-du9nx5go6t]

крутень :)

[@HoneyBerighthere-Saysarath]

🥪🥓🥪🍔🌭🍔🍕🍔🍳🥫🍔🌭🍔🍖🥖

[@Channel-tr1hx]

it's ridiculous that you or someone with your pragmatism never make it to "green" projects. seems like the green movement is used to fetch as much money from government funds as possible rather than coming up with a financially good project. engineering in the 50' was way more resourceful in appliances than today when there's cheap electronics, motors of all kinds.

[@fordranger7]

Slava Ucrania!!!

[@samantharobertson7918]

Sergiy-- I hope you are staying safe in Ukraine. I am not a bot and this is not spam-- I have a company who would like to finance R&D for your projects. Please let me know how to contact you. Again, this is not fake. Thank you!