You guys are ignoring all of the mechanical and structural challenges of pointing 350,000, 30 foot mirrors at the ground using worm gears and stepper motors that have just lost power due to a storm and/or lightning strike. No motor power, no movement. The fuel source (the sun) keeps moving up and then down towards the west, so the focal point(s) of all of that incident power is constantly changing.
It is not like a typical boiler where the flame safety system can cut the source of fuel. It is more like a cross between fukushima and the towering inferno :) On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 10:46 PM, <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: > > In reply to Stephen A. Lawrence's message of Sat, 28 May 2016 17:18:24 > -0400: > Hi, > [snip] > >It ought to be possible to build the things with a fail-safe mode > >wherein loss of power results in the mirrors defocussing. Shouldn't be > >hard; the /hard/ thing, presumably, is getting them all pointing at the > >_same_ spot. Making them /not/ do that should be easy. > > > > Just turn them all upside down so they point at the ground. > > Regards, > > Robin van Spaandonk > > http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html > >
