These are the solar pages of Marc Ringuette. I'm doing some independent research in the areas of solar cooling, solar concentrators, solar heating, and concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) cells.
In 2003-2004, my project is a solar air conditioner based on the Vuilleumier cycle. See my solar cooling pages .
I've been participating in a discussion group on solar air conditioning. There are some good web links on its bookmarks page.

I've partially writen a Solar cooling FAQ.
In the year 2001, I did some solar heating and CPV experiments on a 1 square meter, 2-axis-tracked, fiberglass parabolic dish concentrator. Here you can see some pictures of the origin and assembly of the dish.

To start, I taped strips of newspaper over most of the dish area, to make it safer to noodle around with, and to give me a grid of shiny "dots" to help me to study my dish. Here are some cool pictures from my first afternoon in the sun.

The CPV cells I was testing are from Sunpower, and are designed for 100x to 300x concentrations. Here are some pictures of my first batch of 60 cells.

I'm ashamed to say, I still haven't put any cells in the sun. I've never figured out how to mount these ones well. I should try my cheesy air-cooled heat sink next time I have the dish up and tracking, and see if it fries. :-)
I should put in a plug for the solar-concentrator mailing list also, which is older and bigger than the solar-ac list, and has many very accomplished contributors. To join, send email to solar-concentrator-request@cichlid.com . There's a partial archive at http://solstice.crest.org/renewables/solar-concentrator-list-archive/
I'm always looking for people to work with. If you're interested in these topics and you haven't contacted me already, please do! I'd like to hear from you. If you're doing work in this area, it's likely I will do a little free work on your project, just so you owe me a favor. :-)
Webmaster: Marc Ringuette