1kw/m^2 is the "standard" rule of thumb for heat energy from solar irradiation. I'm unsure whether OP has done the calculation (in which case, credit to a well built system) or simply cited the standard rule.
There are some large Stirling engines out there that operate on hot oil. With a large diameter piston, quite a bit of torque can be generated with even small ∆T. Oil can be heated as with traditional solar water heaters (i.e., with no concentration), though concentration doesn't hurt.
Comments
1kw/m^2 is the "standard" rule of thumb for heat energy from solar irradiation. I'm unsure whether OP has done the calculation (in which case, credit to a well built system) or simply cited the standard rule.
There are some large Stirling engines out there that operate on hot oil. With a large diameter piston, quite a bit of torque can be generated with even small ∆T. Oil can be heated as with traditional solar water heaters (i.e., with no concentration), though concentration doesn't hurt.
I have developed a simple simulator [0] to estimate the theoretical power received by the target for a given hardware configuration:
- the global position on the planet
- the date and time
- the size and position of some background elements
- the number, size and position of the panels in the grid
The solar power estimation uses :
- the Python code provided in this article [1] to estimate position of the sun (thank you John Clark Craig)
- the simplified formula [2] to estimate the direct insolation from the sun position
- a custom light projection implemented using Panda3D game engine [3]
[0] https://github.com/remipch/solar_concentrator/blob/master/so...
[1] https://levelup.gitconnected.com/python-sun-position-for-sol...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_insolation#Simplified_f...
[3] https://www.panda3d.org/