Friday, April 04, 2008

The power of the sun

I forgot to post this before but this video is what happens when the pump stops on a solar evacuated tube collector.




Sorry about the quality,  it was taken with a camera phone. I uploaded this on January 31st so this would have been around that time. I think it was about -15C that day. This is a 10 panel, 200 tube solar water heater that is capable of 20,000 BTU/hr or more when the sun is shining.

I was reminded about this video because I was playing with a solar concentrator food cooker today. When the sun was out I could start cardboard on fire in about 5 to 10 seconds. I'll be posting a video of that early next week.

2 comments:

Saskboy said...

I think I see the scorched cardboard in the second video.

Zack said...

What you see in that video background is actually a piece of 1/2 inch plywood that we scorched. In about a minute we turned a cicle to charcoal. I would suspect in good sun it would burn through the wood in about a hour.