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.

Issue Section:
Technical Briefs
Keywords:
solar energy concentrators, natural sciences computing, tracking, sunlight, Paraboloidal Dish Concentrators, Solar Trace, Solar Altitude Angle, Solar Noon, Absorber
Topics:
Solar energy
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Copyright © 2004
 by American Institute of Physics
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