Big solar furnace at the Parkent station as a unique equipment for conducting of innovative research

Full text: Currently due to the decrease in global energy resources, such as oil and gas, renewable energy sources are becoming attractive from the viewpoint applied research and practical implementation. According to current energy consumption rate per capita, as projected by competent experts many countries will face unseemly situation in 40-50 years. During recent years Uzbekistan has achieved considerable results in this field. The big high-temperature furnace is being exploited with a thermal power of 1000 kWt-BSF (analogous furnace to this one is located solely in France), International Institute of Solar Energy has been established, the draft of law 'On usage of renewable sources of energy' is being discussed and etc. In this context the utilization of solar energy with wide range of practical applications has a specified position - starting from water heating to receiving laser beaming. An enormous amount of solar energy entering the Earth is considered to be the reason for this. Live issue is its effective utilization. Therefore national programs on utilization of solar energy have been accepted in many countries. If the usage of solar energy is categorized, then it is possible to mention that in the majority of cases concentrated solar energy is used. At this point the concentration coefficient fluctuates from some ten to ten thousand times. At present high-performance solar batteries have been developed with efficiency up to 40-45% which operate in concentrated solar rays, though in costly laboratory circumstances. But the current temp of development of solar technologies is greatly high and it's hard to predict a situation, let's say in 10 years, but anticipation is favorable. For instance, these days 1 Watt of energy recovery costs 3-4 dollars while 6 years ago it cost twice of that. Most effective and widespread method for solar energy concentration is the paraboloids and cylindrical parabolic concentrators. There are thousands of solar systems equipped with such devices for converting solar energy and they are called solar energy concentrators (SEC). In this aspect an important role has gained scientific-technical capabilities of BSF as unique scientific equipment on conducting innovative projects. The work represents technical capabilities of BSF on solving actual issues of helio-material science as well as perspectives of using the furnace in applied investigations. (authors)