Solar concentrator applications in agriculture

We have developed several prototypes of solar concentrators that are compact, light, and inexpensive. As an example of solar concentrators, we selected parabolic solar concentrators with plane mirrors that approximate the parabolic surface. A methodology is proposed for the evaluation of the impact of combinations of solar concentrators together with certain agricultural crops. The proposed mathematical model is simple and applicable for different cases of combination of solar concentrators and agricultural fields. This study is dedicated to renewable energy on the example of two countries, Mexico and Azerbaijan. The relief and climate of both countries have many common features, which are expressed particularly in the abundance of solar radiation, the predominance of mountainous regions with remote and hard-to-reach settlements that need to create autonomous life support systems. The main problem for proposed solar concentrators is the automatization of the assembly process of these solar concentrators. We proposed two methods of assembly that is, using a parabolic rule and using a robotic arm with a stereoscopic vision system. Both methods are described in this chapter.