The sun is dropping 1KW/SQ meter
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Solar thermostat
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To put that into perspective, your microwave oven uses about 600-1kw when running.
I put the mirrors and built the stand for this old radar dish in the early 80's but never got the thing to do any useful energy gathering until this week.
Sue loves organically grown veggies, and has canned pickles, tomatoes, and beans for many years. When I see her heating the large canning pot to a boil and holding it there for nearly a full hour start to finish, It hurts me to think that the free veggies have sucked so many electrical watts to preserve them. I finally got a working canning system going.
The dish needed a tracking system, and a way to hold the pot so it was properly heated at any solar position.
The first run of the system showed me that I had way too much power.The cover had blown out on one of the jars, as the boiling was so intense, as to bring the tomatoes to the boiling point, and turn the internal water to steam. I needed a thermostat.
The first approach that came to mind was to move the container to a different point in the focus, but I did not want to have to play with the tracking system calibration and wanted to have the system self operating.
I thought of how oriental fans fold up and spread out, and built a rather crude and rude dual fan one for each side of the dish. The "Thermostat" is part open in photo.
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