The Tracking of the Sun for Solar Paraboloidal Dish Concentrators

Abstract

Paraboloidal dish concentrators need tracking the sun in the east-west and north-south direction continuously throughout the year. But this paper explains the method of intermittent tracking of the sun in the north-south direction with no tracking in the east-west direction for less energy yield. The frequency of tracking in the north-south direction is determined by the relationship between the variation in solar altitude angle and the size of the absorber in the Paraboloidal dish concentrator. A computer program in Visual BASIC is written to enable the detailed calculations of data for the analysis.© 2004 American Institute of Physics.