Patent ID: 8609979

Claim:
A concentrator for concentrating solar radiation onto a receiver as the solar point moves throughout a day, said concentrator comprising: a deformable reflective surface; a pair of vertical supports anchored to the earth; two flexible members hanging freely between the vertical supports and supporting the deformable reflective surface so as to define its shape; a mechanism movably mounted to one of the vertical supports and having one end of each of the flexible members attached thereto; a rotation-adjusting linkage which changes the rotational orientation of the mechanism and thus the attached ends of the flexible members; a tension-varying linkage which varies the tension of each of the flexible members between the vertical supports; and a controller which drives the rotation-changing linkage and the tension-varying linkage to impart a toric shaped curvature on the reflective surface to minimize astigmatic aberration due to obliquely incident radiation, this toric shaped curvature changing as the solar point moves throughout the day; wherein the deformable reflective surface comprises a row of reflectors extending between the vertical supports; wherein the row of reflectors are arranged end-to-end wherein each reflector of said row of reflectors is directly adjacent to at least one other reflector of said row of reflectors in a direction parallel to the direction that the flexible members extend a vertical displacing linkage which varies the vertical displacement of the mechanism, and thus the attached ends of the flexible members, wherein the controller also drives the vertical-displacing linkage; and a receiver, disposed remote to the deformable reflective surface, which receives reflected solar radiation from the reflecting surface, wherein the receiver is disposed along a cable, wherein the cable is supported by a plurality of receiver supports.