With an aperture area in excess of 400 m2, and a focal length close to 13 m, PETAL (Photon Energy Transformation & Astrophysics Laboratory) is probably the world’s largest solar-tracking parabolic dish concentrator. It was custom-designed as a multi-purpose research facility for Ben Gurion University’s National Solar Energy Center, by Professor Stephen Kaneff and his colleagues at the Australian National University in Canberra. However, PETAL differs from the original, slightly smaller, ANU dish in two major respects. First, PETAL’s individual mirror panels are adjustable, allowing the concentration ratio to be chosen according to needs. Second, being continuously paraboloidal in two dimensions, PETAL’s mirror surface can achieve concentrations close to 10,000×.
1Pictures show PETAL: 1. Front-on (The white screen in the focal plane has dimensions 1 m×1 m); 2. Focussed on the sun, with 215 out of its 216 mirror panels covered (Mirror covers are...
