Fabrication and Verification Experiment of Solar Thermal Power Generation Device Aiming to Generate Power Exceeding 10mW

We have been researching renewable energy. We especially think solar thermal power generation has much potential because the sun shines toward us daily and supplies great thermal power for us. There is no way we do not utilize such energy. Then we started to establish solar thermal power generation devices. In the conventional study, we could fabricate a cone-shaped solar power generation device that can generate several mW. However, we thought that this result was not enough power generation for the size of the device. Another problem with the cone-shaped device was the need for a power unit to direct the concentrator to the sun. To solve these two problems, we have developed a dome-shaped power generation device. The main focus of this device was to eliminate the need for a rotating device by having a dome-shaped light receiving surface, but at the same time, we examined increasing the volume efficiency of power generation. By introducing the light collection coefficient and heat retention coefficient, we were able to clarify the quantitative design guidelines for the device. As a result, the dome-shaped device was able to obtain a coefficient product of about twice that of the cone-shaped device. Finally, we developed an arrayed power generator with dome-shaped devices. We confirmed that an arrayed power generator can generate more than 10mW power with our new test bed which is equipped with a water pool.