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The company's design has certain advantages over other approaches to concentrated solar power. In other systems, heat is collected over a large area and used to drive turbines in a central facility. These turbines require large amounts of water for cooling, Mancini says, whereas the SES system uses a closed-radiator system that doesn't consume water. Water use is an important consideration for solar thermal technologies, Mancini adds, since they work best in areas with a lot of direct sunlight--that is, in deserts. (These concentrated-solar-power systems are quite different from solar water heaters used in homes.)
Another advantage of the SES system is its modularity. With other approaches, the entire solar collection and generation system has to be in place to start generating electricity. With the Stirling engine system, power can come online as the dishes are installed, and more generating capacity can easily be added by building more dishes, without any need to enlarge a central generating plant.
But the system also has a significant disadvantage. Other solar thermal power plants collect heat in a central place where it can easily be stored, making it possible to generate electricity when the sun isn't shining. "There's no obvious way to do this with the dishes," Mancini says.
Although there has been a resurgence in contracts for solar thermal power, obstacles to the plants being built still remain. The new projects could be stalled by slow action from the government. Permits originally thought to be ready by the end of this year are now expected no sooner than next May. What's more, the current economy has made financing hard to come by, says Sean Gallagher, SES's vice president for market strategy and regulatory affairs. That has forced his company and others to rely on Department of Energy loan guarantees. But, Gallager says, although the DOE has promised to speed up its process for issuing these, it has yet to issue even the rules for applying for the guarantees included in February's stimulus package.
The company thinks adding solar-thermal technology to its natural-gas plants will make them run more cheaply and efficiently
A new strategy could reduce coal plant emissions and cut the cost of solar power.
Solar technology that generates both heat and electricity could make solar energy practical in places that aren't sunny.
SES has themselves in the news again? Still with nothing but another single prototype? (Now serial #3, with the new high of 31% efficiency, up from the 29% efficiency of the 1984 prototype. Yes, it's been since 1984!) I remember in early 2005 SES received the contract mentioned to build 800 megawatts. This was exciting news as it seemed the technology developed in the government research labs was ready for production. But after 4 years of silence, it obviously wasn't. [Try Wikipedia for background.]
It would have been useful in this article to report on the corporate history as well-- not just the latest press release. For example, from 2005, "Stirling Energy Systems makes Fortune Magazine’s 25 BREAKOUT COMPANIES 2005", and from Feb 2005 Popular Science Magazine - "Dishing Out Real Power - Costs are down, interest is up, and the Stirling solar system is ready to flick the switch." (oops, they weren't). I don't know what is different now for 2010 than it was in 2005. They still seem to have just a prototype, and in 2005 they seemed even further along. This is so different than the typical VC funded startup.
From reading the Sandia National Labs, etc. reports, the Stirling dish technology seems very promising-- both in efficiency (area required), cost, and impact (e.g. water use). It would be great to commercialize this, but now I just have this memory of false promises from SES. I really wish the company well, but now I wonder if there will be 4 more years of a prototype here or there, or will they really make a factory?
Re: Is this classic vaporware?
Quote: The company is currently building a 1.5-megawatt, 60-unit demonstration plant that will use the company's latest design. Stirling expects to finish that project by the end of the year. Unquote. Sixty units sounds like more than vaporware to me. Of course, it's not finished yet.
Just finished reading a story about Phoenix Technology's reflecting concentrator dishes using both high efficiency photovoltaics as well as heat reclamation for water heating. Got to say, some kind of hybrid system taking advantage of both the concentrated light and heat sounds like the most efficient and cost effective way to go. I would be interested to see if someone could engineer a hybrid photovoltaic, with a thermal Stirling engine mopping up the waste heat. Sunlight is after all rich in both visible light and heat, and a system that only uses one or the other is leaving quite a bit on the table. And this way, the heat could also be stored for nighttime energy generation.
Re: Is this classic vaporware?
I have invented the very thing you wanted combination Stirling dish pV system.
It will be patented in the next month.
take a look at the solar enrgy page
on the vulvox website.
http://vuvlox.tripod.com
Re: Is this classic vaporware?
That's http://vulvox.tripod.com for anybody who hasn't noticed.
Re: Is this classic vaporware?
Water heat co-production does seem practical with the Stirling dish. Unlike the solar tower/trough projects, the Stirling dish systems could be used individually instead of in large arrays (once in mass production). So one unit could be placed at a farm or factory and waste heat could be used for building hot water, heat, and possibly adsorption cooling.
I don't think the Stirling engine would work with a concentrating PV system, because the temperatures required for PV are relativly low (the cells lose efficiency as temperature rises). Note the concentration in the SES dish is over 4000x (38ft on 7"), while concentrating PV is around 100-500x.
I asked one concentrating PV manufacturer about the possibility of recovering heat via water circulation, and they claimed it was not cost effective (I don't know why) so they were not pursuing it. The higher temperature of the Stirling engine and 25kW to get rid of per dish makes these more practical for water heating with waste heat.
Re: Is this classic vaporware?
Stockage could be by tubes heating the earth at a dept of at least two meters. Destockage is at night when there is no sunlight. At night the ambient temperature has fallen so the efficincy rises. No problem. I would like to be contacted to give you the mathematical explaination.
Re: Is this classic vaporware?
I too wish them well, but am I the only one, or does a stirling engine (not easy to manufacture these due to high tolerances needed) plus the heavy coils for generation, the need to handle very high temperatures etc mounted on a large solar tracking dish attached to a strong pylon presumably with a mechanism for getting the power off of this moving joint (brush connection?), all this needing to stand weather etc ...
Why does this not seem like a very simple solution to me? Seems like an extremely challenging, hard, complex engineering problem with lots of potential points of failure. No wonder they are in the Nth "any day now" prototype -- I'm not trying to belittle this, since, working in robotics, I deeply respect how hard it is to make reliable things, I'm just dubious that this will be competitive with fixed concentrator systems.
Guest (hankusage@gmail.com)
Cheaper Solar Thermal Stirling Power
Great work! I humbly suggest keep moving the stirling engine into focus instead of the dish and using concentric circular solar troughs and this may be possible at sea more easily. Instead of parabolic troughs; there are flat angled fresnel lens type mirror reflector platforms that are better yet. This is all cheaper to build, maintain and repair. And if we want simultaneous direct light to electric capture how about thermionics instead of photocells at the stirling engine, they like it hot and also transparent layered I.R. to U.V. photocells over the mirrors. This is all old stuff existing technology in a new package here for you. Just think how much easier this will all be in space. Great work yours truly Arecibo Harry
Re: Cheaper Solar Thermal Stirling Power
That's cheap. This is also cheap but very good <a href="http://www.sunpowerport.com"> solar power generator </a>. Read this and get the benefits of it.. :D
Guest (hankusage@gmail.com)
Cheaper Solar Thermal Stirling Power
Kiss this Dish
Great work. But some idiot critic forgot to mention steam gimbals, rings, transducers, microwave and lasers will be needed to move and keep the stirling engines and or thermionics and or nano heat exchangers in focus to keep it simple. That would allow for stationary mountain and later crater "stator" slope reflectors even in inhabited areas. These reflectors could be hundreds of miles or more across, self cleaning by rain or self contained spray runoff heat capture and cooling on otherwise wasted urban and rural real estate for real peak to peak, point of purchase "4P" power anywhere in the universes. So this idiot critic can kiss this dish, you'd think this was The President's birthday or something. Oops I'm afraid this idiot critic is me. !) Arecibo Harry
Guest (hankusage@gmail.com)
Great work but some critics are just abit ridiculous. Hey and someone should tell this guy it is the President's birthday! Happy Birthday Mr. President! I mean why not just use steam electrolysis to make hydrogen fuel along with the stirling engine. And how are you supposed to put ""4P" peek to peek point of purchase power plants" around inhabited areas? Put them on the rooftops?! .Well maybe that would work? If we used retrofit reflectors on all the city and suburban rooftops to reflect sunlight to one focal point or another, sure would stop any line loss and it would be free! And everyone everywhere just got free power and the power to be free! Happy bearthday to us all! But you'd need some fedral government body to organize it like this and if you had the DOE you could really do it. That sure would get anyone elected and make profits boom. I quess all recessions are over with this as collateral for all the mortgages.
As far as using this as a multi purpose power generator the next thing this critic is going to say, is use the same "kiss dish" on deserts mountains and farms and also use the same solar reflectors as microwave rectennas to download microwave power from power satelites orbiting in space too like some kind of standard pattern. Well that might be safe in rural areas and even on oceans and that would almost be free too; compared to today: and steam electrolysis would make it portable: as piped liquid hydrogen or hydrogen hydride: and keep it's own superconducting noresistance power lines along side cool all in one step: with the same liquid nitrogen to keep it safe. You might as well put a maglev or suspended high speed cable train or tube train there in the same step: and use it as a SMESS superconducting magnetic electric power storage unit too. I mean that assumes some kind of economy of scale and multiplier effect that would make us all every single person on earth wealthy and end all poverty forever. You'd think we lived in a global free market democracy or something.
It's just too big. You don't see anything even in nature like a giant solar thermionic steam electolysis microwave IR to UV photocell fresnel lens reflector thats keeping us all alive and is hundreds or even thousands of miles across; heck you might as well build it the size of America make it say 2,160 miles across with a surface of 14,650,000 square miles and let's get really ridiculous and put it in space and cover a half a degree of sky. This is pie in the sky stuff! Why not just shoot for oops by God it's the moon. There's one there already. Dang mooned myself again! Got to love those critics. Arecibo Harry Harry.
I believe there is some "vaporware" here. This may be a dead-end for this company, the innovators in and around it (even their contractors/manufacturers - it is survival of the innovator out there) will take the opportunity to leap-frog/progress the technology into scalable, cheaper to manufacture in the USA, versions. Watch the UK green sector especially for breakthroughs...and for Obama money, well, nothing says "made in the USA" like manufacturing the stirling engine in the good ol' great white north...Canada. Guelph to be exact.
Something good will come of all of this work. Will it come from SES? Not sure...but there are a lot of smart people in a lot of companies trying all over the world..and a lot of submarine companies already relying on it.
SolFocus (and I do not work for SolFocus) has an interesting way to enhance efficency in their applications. In extrapolating their progress, perhaps the most efficient use of solar radiation will be a hybrid of several technologies.
The only question I have on the path SES has chosen is why did they choose a first generation patented design when a second generation design was available? There is not enough information in the technical journals or articles to understand. I guess we will all eagerly await the first plant installation and connectivity to the grid.
Solar thermal power has truly incredible possibilities. Innovations like this are doing a good job of bringing the price down, but that is just the beginning. Since heat storage is so much easier than electricity storage, solar thermal is likely to be the next major renewable power source that can provide baseload electricity. Currently hydroelectric is the only one that does so on a large scale. I am really excited to see developments like this because once the price gets closer to 10 cents per kilowatt hour, we will start to see truly massive deployments around the world. Even without carbon taxes that will be a competitive price.
I am excited for the first dispatchable (or load-matching) solar thermal system. I don't expect to have to wait more than 15 years or so before I see that.
I talk about some of these issues in more depth in an article my volunteer group wrote recently. If anyone is interested they can find it at www.visionofearth.org
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protn7
72 Comments
solar thermal breakthrough
VULVOX Inc's breakthrough collectors will be able to generate more than double the amount of power generated by current solar power tower plants! The Abengoa solar power tower in Spain is currently the worlds biggest. If it is retrofitted with VULVOX hybrid solar energy collectors it will generate 46.5 megawatts, not 20 as it does currently.
The dual solar thermal-photovoltaic system will wrest approximately twice as much power from an area as regular solar thermal or photovoltaic energy systems. Our technology can be used to retrofit existing parabolic troughs and solar power towers to increase their efficiency. Besides applications at utility scale solar power plants that are contributing electricity to the California power grid, they will also have an important advantage in the upcoming industry of rooftop solar power. Apartment buildings, offices and industrial buildings all have flat roofs that can accommodate our solar power systems and the greater efficiency of dual thermal-photovoltaic energy generation systems will make it cost competitive with other generation systems. Between 2009 and 2012 it is expected that the amount of installed CSP solar thermal power in the United States will grow 14 times!
The Vulvox collectors will not depend upon complicated advances in quantum or solid state physics. Our novel combination photovoltaic-solar thermal collectors will achieve the unprecedented efficiencies predicted here by means of relatively simple modifications to solar energy equipment; modifications that can be developed at a moderate cost.
The Vulvox solar system will generate higher power levels than competing parabolic troughs and solar power towers, while retaining all of the storage capabilities of solar thermal power.
Contact us for more information.
HTTP://VULVOX.TRIPOD.COM
Reply
GaryB
119 Comments
Re: solar thermal breakthrough
Dude, you've invented a website! The patent office will patent a peanut butter sandwich so that doesn't mean anything either*. As flaky as SES is, at least it isn't spam.
* I'd cure our patent system very simply -- charge a linearly growing amount every year to maintain a patent (then only the valuable ones would be maintained) and double the charge every year that a patent is not reduced to practice (that would eliminate the troll patents).
Reply
N O M
23 Comments
Re: solar thermal breakthrough
Neil, you have spammed this rubbish for years on several forums, yet you have produced no product.
Reply