I've been doing a fair bit of solar thermal collector testing over the last couple years. The way I do that is to wait for good steady sun, and then test the new collector design as well as a known baseline design side by side in the same sun conditions. This works pretty well, but you have to wait for the sun, and you always have to test a baseline collector along with the new collector to account for sun variations.
To make the testing easier, I've been working on an inexpensive indoor sun simulator. This gadget uses a few high wattage metal halide lamps (like street lights) to reproduce lighting levels similar to the sun on an up to 2 ft by 4 ft test collector. This setup is looking pretty good, but I'm having trouble coming up with a reflector design that puts enough of each lamps light output onto the collector.
So, if you have a minute and want to have a look at what the current sun simulator/reflector look like and pass on any ideas for improvements, I'd appreciate the help.
Details on the sun simulator and reflector ...
Gary