Cataloguepermanent
Primary facets
Cheap area is the product. Silvered glass or polished aluminum, serviceable individually.
Pod: ~10 strips, 0.6 × 8 m. XP: four 1.0 × 0.50 m flats.
Bill of specialty
Hardware to design
The field is cheap and sits there for decades. Almost everything interesting is a replaceable part on a frozen interface — or a catalogue instrument the lab cannot live without.
First island, 120 pods
Two and a half acres. Pickup trucks of steel, tanker trucks of oil.
- Mirrors4800 m² · ~48 t glass2 trucks
- Steel frames~58 t racks and posts3 trucks
- CPC / secondary960 m of rail120 pods
- Receiver tiles960 m of tube, swap cartridgesthe part that evolves
- Thermal oil~138 t · ~172 m³6 trucks
- Two tanksHot + cold, insulated, nitrogen, drip panshop-built tanks
- Trackers + dump120 drives, hardware tripif tracking dies, dump
- Fence + dump plateNobody walks through a focused beamthe boring safety that ships
Custompermanent
Mirror frames and foundations
Sets the optical geometry for decades. Repairable steel, not exotic alloy.
Low-profile LFR gantry, ~4 m receiver height. Dual-axis yoke on XP-C01.
Customserviceable
Secondary CPC / involute
Raises intercept without shrinking the aperture into an unverified ultra-flux hole.
Linear CPC over 100 mm illuminated width. Acceptance sized to tracking error.
Drawing OP-C02Customserviceable
Dump-focus interlock
High-flux sunlight starts fires. Loss of tracking, flow, or over-temp must dump.
Hardware trip to dump/stow. Beam dump plate. Fence. No untracked focus over people.
Drawing OP-C02Customserviceable
RC-T receiver tile
The wearing, upgradable part. Absorb and extract only.
400 × 180 × 160 mm, DN15 oil tubes, Pyromark control, QD stab plates.
Drawing RC-TCatalogueserviceable
Absorber tubes
The oil sees the sun through a steel wall. Film temperature lives here. This is how light becomes a factory flange.
Two DN15 × 8 m. 250–390 °C oil. T_film ≈ T_bulk + q''_peak / h. Dump at 400 °C film.
Drawing RC-T02Customserviceable
Thermal header and QD manifold
One tile can fail without retiring the field. Cartridge swap on a frozen optical datum.
Common header for a 10-pod cluster. Independent isolation per rail.
Drawing ST-C01Customserviceable
Class-M two-tank oil storage
This is the commercial wedge versus batteries-then-a-heater.
Hot ~390 °C / cold ~250 °C. Expansion tank, N2 blanket, drip pan, fire enclosure.
Drawing ST-C01Customserviceable
Receiver-plane flux fixture
Cg is geometry. Coatings and tubes see q''(x,y).
Swaps onto the 400 × 200 mm datum. Water-cooled pixels or Lambertian + camera.
Drawing XP-B03Catalogueserviceable
Calorimeter loop
Gate G0 lives or dies on ṁ cp ΔT, not on a pretty coating.
1–4 L/min water (Phase A), matched RTDs, calibrated flowmeter, bypass, vent.
Drawing XP-B02Catalogueserviceable
Pyrheliometer / DNI chain
Pin is the denominator of every efficiency. A 2% DNI error is a 2% lie.
First-class pyrheliometer on a separate tracker. Time-synced to the DAQ.
Drawing XP-B02Catalogueserviceable
DAQ and time sync
G0 is a closure of a time window, not a screenshot.
1 Hz: DNI, flow, Tin, Tout, cavity T×4, ambient, wind. File hash on raw data.
Custompermanent
Optical target datum
Every receiver generation must land on the same plane. The field does not move.
Fixed pins and target plane on the rail. Tile swap without re-aligning facets.
Laterserviceable
Aperture window / seals
Optional once convection at Class M is measured. Not in Phase A.
Only if G1 shows the window beats an open cavity after soiling and stress.
Lateroptional
Downstream ORC / TPV
Electricity after G5. Never inside the tile.
Same heat header. Swap-in power block. Project survives if this never ships.