Technician installing sun trac reflectors.
The unique shape of argonne's non-imaging solar concentrators gathers sunlight scattered by haze, smog and air pollution, as well as direct sunlight. The concentrating reflectors can be used in solar heating and cooling systems or with photovoltaic cells to directly convert solar energy into electricity. sun trac corp. is developing a two-axis track-ing concentrator array for photovoltaic conversion. The suntrac reflectors use argonne's non-imaging reflector design to provide a wide field of view with a high concentration ratio. Technology transfer to private industry is an important part of argonne's energy technology development programs. (sun trac receives direct doe funding for this work).
Original public domain image from Flickr