Ideas and technologies developed at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab and in telescope design and manufacture have been put to use in developing more efficient ways of focusing and harvesting the energy of sunlight.

For example, the concept of deformable secondary mirrors for adaptive optics has been extended to make the world’s first deformable heliostat, with automatic mechanical twisting. Fields of these, each one keeping the sun’s disc focused through the day on a central receiver, will yield the highest concentrations and temperatures (up to 1500°C), and conversion to electricity with efficiency up to 50%.