Paging through old newsletters from the thinktank, Resources for the Future, I came across this wonderfully wacky Soviet solar power plant idea. It’s reported by George Lof, who was a giant of solar research and had just returned from the USSR, so we can be pretty sure it was real. The year was 1964.

Essentially, the Soviets turned railroad cars into massive heliostats, which moved slowly around 23 concentric rings surrounding a power tower. The mind boggles!

“[Lof] reports that one of the most interesting and furthest developed of the projects — a design for a 1,000 kilowatt solar thermal power station — utilizes the undercarriages of special railway cars each of which is fitted with a 9 x 15 ft. reflector made up of thirty separate flat mirrors. The study has been in progress for a number of years, but recent developments are bringing it close to a final design

Triple movements [presumably on the X,Y,Z axes] catch every scrap of sunlight. The railways cars move slowly along twenty-three [!] concentric tracks encircling a steam-producing boiler which is placed on top of a high tower. The boiler turns on its axis to follow the course of the sun. The reflectors on the railway cars tilt independently to collect the greatest amount of sunlight at each moment of the day. The movements of boiler, cars, and reflectors are regulated by automatic instruments and by tracking systems the photocells of which enable light reflected from all the mirrors to concentrate continuously on the boiler. High-pressure steam from the boiler passes to a turbine which powers an electric generator.

An output of 8.2 million kilocalories per hour, equivalent to 24,000 tons of steam and 2.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, is claimed for this installation. A single reflector unit has been constructed and tested, with results fully confirming the theoretical predictions. There now appears to be no major technical obstacle to a successful power system based on this principle.

If current economic and design studies yield favorable results, a solar power station of this type may soon be built near Tashkent in the Uzbek Republic.”

I love the Soviet use of trains in their technology development. They put the robotic vehicles that take cargo to the International Space Station on trains, why notput the mirrors for a concentrating solar thermal plant on trains?

No word on whether anything like this ever got built, although Daniel Hallacy briefly mentions it in his book, The Coming Age of Solar Energy from 1973.

It reminds me to wonder again why we never got in a “solar race” with the Soviets. I have some guesses, but I don’t know that anyone has explored the topic with any depth. Ideas?

Image: flickr/wgrabar