Technology

Solar Concentrator Designs

- Batant - 200°C- small, versatile, ideal for learning and demonstrations.
- Vesta - 400°C - stove top, for cooking and boiling water.
- Helios - 950°C - for ovens.
- Apollo - 950°C - for semi industrial purposes.
- Prometheus-100 - for steam production, measured at 210 PSI (13 bar) - for semi industrial purposes.
- Prometheus System - design a Prometheus of any size.

Construction guides:

Batant Construction Guide v1.1
Vesta Construction Guide v2
Helios Construction Guide v1

To understand the principle, please look at the short films.

Feel free to build, and let us know what you use it for and what improvements you find or imagine.

Vesta-Helios Advantages

27 August 2009
Principle of solar concentration When the sun is shining, there is on average 1000 watts/meter2 of solar energy available at the earth’s surface. Though this represents a significant amount of energy all over the globe (virtually everything on the surface of the globe is powered by the sun), the energy is homogeneous at a relatively low temperature with respect to ambient temperature (as this solar energy essentially defines ambient temperature) and so it is difficult to transform this (...)
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Brief History of Technique

14 December 2008
In 2002, Michael Sacco, a Canadian, travelled to the region of Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico with the idea to share and develop a solar technique. This solar technology was a concentrator prototype initially designed by Fraser Symington in Ottawa, Canada. Fraser Symington (left), a Canadian inventor, elaborated the principles of the Vesta, Helios and Apollo concentrators after several years of research. Keeping the conditions of poor countries in mind his idea was to design a concentrator (...)
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Prometheus System

Here you will find the steps used to design a Prometheus-100 type solar concentrator at any scale. Though nothing more than basic arithmetic is needed to build a Prometheus-100, Vesta, Helios, or Batant, when a construction guide is available, a bit more mathematics is necessary to redesign, optimize or build at a different scale. Fortunately, included in this guide is a small Open Source (GNU GPL) program that takes care of most of this mathematics business for you. Description The Prometheus System is a simple technique to build a solar concentrator of essentially any size. Small (...)

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Prometheus 100

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Batant

The Batant solar concentrator cooks or fries by focusing the suns rays, about 80 times, reaching 200°C and 800 Watts! However, precisely the same compound parabolic technique can be used for much larger machines, such as the Vesta or Apollo. The Batant is extremely useful for training, experimentation and especially demonstration. It is designed to come completely apart and fit in the average trunk of a car. See The Batant Construction Guide V1.1. What does it do? explains what is does. How does it work? details the operation of the machine. Ask a question of leave a comment (...)

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Vesta

With 120 intensities of the sun, the Vesta reaches 400°C and delivers 1800 Watts. That’s enough power to bring a liter of water to boil in under 5 minutes, at no fuel cost. See the Vesta Construction Guide for guidance. But before, take a look at the Vesta-Batant Differences. And then, the Why is it Good? page. Finally, ask a question or leave a comment here Characteristics: The Vesta is designed to be big and powerful enough to sterilise all the water and cook most of the food of a family of 4-6 people, yet still be built locally. Total of 2.7 m^2 surface area of (...)

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Helios

Named for the ancient Greek God of the sun, The Helios solar array is a village scale or small commercial scale solar concentrator. It can be built from common steel beams, mirrors, glue, nuts and bolts and the cost depends on where it is built and how the materials are gathered. Characteristics: 3000 watts 950°C can heat an oven 60x60x60 cm to 300°C in 15 min cook bread, meat, coffee, ceramic... Construction guide pdf (English translation coming soon!) Image gallery Description The Helios solar concentrating array is designed to provide a large quantity of high quality (...)

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Apollo

Characteristics : 49 mirrors of 30 x 30 cm 3000 Watts effective 950°C can convert 45 L of water to steam per hour similar to a Vesta, but larger Description Vertical concentrator for semi industrial needs The Apollo solar concentrating array is the most powerful configuration of Solar Fire technologies. At around 2.5kw a single Apollo is not as powerful as the Helios, but it has been subtly modified such that a line or grid of Apollos can be synchronized and attached in series, harnessing many times the power of a single unit, though needing no more adjusting than a single (...)

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