by Shane Henson — September 21, 2012—LightManufacturing, a manufacturer of low-cost, high-performance heliostats and manufacturing systems that harness solar thermal energy, recently announced that its H1 heliostat was chosen for an architectural lighting effort in Michigan, which is the first time the company’s products have been used for this type of application.
Heliostats are computer-controlled mirrors that keep the sun reflected on a target as the sun moves across the sky. In the system used for the Michigan project, roof-mounted H1 heliostats focus light onto a collector, which channels light to offices via fiber optic cable.
“This project shows how heliostats support LEED/green building efforts with zero-emission lighting and heating,” says LightManufacturing CEO Karl von Kries.
Each LightManufacturing H1 heliostat delivers more than 2,000 watts of heat, or more than 230,000 lumens of light energy to a target, the company says. Multiple H1s can be combined into even more potent arrays. LightManufacturing says the H1 is the most powerful heliostat available on the market, and that it offers the lowest cost per delivered watt or lumen.
Instead of fragile glass, the H1’s mirror is made of thin but incredibly tough metalized plastic stretched onto an aircraft-grade aluminum frame. The result is a shatterproof mirror that’s lightweight, safe, easy to ship and setup, and reflects more energy than fragile glass mirrors, claims the company.
The H1 also features an available wireless control system, which lets building control systems configure, aim, and target many heliostats from a simple-to-use computer program. The heliostats can be aimed at any number of targets on demand. In architectural applications, this means that a heliostat array can direct energy to various windows or HVAC targets as required by changing user needs.
What can architectural customers do with LightManufacturing heliostats? Applications include simple day-lighting of dark rooms through windows, more advanced “piped” light systems that bring light to interior rooms; greenhouse warming; steam generation for distributed heating, ice melting and parking lot maintenance; and many others. Customers range from individual homeowners to large multistory facilities.
Beyond architectural/LEED building projects there are a host of industrial applications for the H1 heliostat including plastic molding, food processing, enhanced oil extraction, and more. For example in plastic molding, the H1 heliostat channels sunlight to directly heat the mold, melting the plastic, through the company’s Solar Rotational Molding System.
