Subject: [Homestead] Solar dish and Stirling electric generation
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 19:25:17 -0800
A Stirling engine and mirrored solar dish are within the capability of
reasonably well-equipped machine shops, unlike a lot of photovoltaic
technology.
And according to this article, in the cloudless southwest, (an
installation 100 miles by 100 miles square, could generate all the
electricity currently in use in the U.S. and produced by fossil
fuels----at a price competitive with said fossil fuels. The U.S. should
be moving in this direction to replace our current reliance on imported
oil, and to replace our reliance on coal as an oil substitute.
*Sandia, Stirling to build solar dish engine power plant*
*Goal is to deploy solar dish farms with 20,000 units producing energy*
Solar Talk*SANDIA RESEARCHER Chuck Andraka, left, talks with Bob Liden,
Stirling Energy's executive vice president and general manager.* (Photo
by Randy Montoya)
* Download 300dpi JPEG image, 'solartalk.jpg', 912K
<http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2004/images/jpg/solar-talk.jpg>
*(Media are welcome to download/publish this image with related news
stories.)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The National Nuclear Security Administration's
Sandia National Laboratories is joining forces with Stirling Energy
Systems, Inc. (SES) of Phoenix to build and test six new solar
dish-engine systems for electricity generation that will provide enough
grid-ready solar electricity to power more than 40 homes.
Five new systems will be installed between now and January at Sandia's
National Solar Thermal Test Facility. They will join a prototype
dish-Stirling system that was erected earlier this year, making a
six-dish mini power plant producing up to 150kW of grid-ready electrical
power during the day.
"This will be the largest array of solar dish-Stirling systems in the
world," says Chuck Andraka, the Sandia project leader. "Ultimately SES
envisions 20,000 systems to be placed in one or more solar dish farms
and providing electricity to southwest U.S. utility companies."
Sandia and SES staff will work together over the next couple of months
to assemble the five new state-of-the-art systems.
Stirling Engine*SANDIA RESEARCHER Chuck Andraka makes adjustments to a
Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. solar dish-engine system installed at
Sandia's National Solar Test Facility earlier this year. Five more will
be erected by January as test units.* (Photo by Randy Montoya)
* Download 300dpi JPEG image, 'stirling-engine.jpg', 1.1MB
<http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2004/images/jpg/stirling-engine.jpg>*(Media
are welcome to download/publish this image with related news stories.)
Each dish unit, which consists of 82 smaller mirrors formed in the shape
of a dish, will be similar to the system installed earlier this year
with some modifications to improve the design. The frame is steel made
by Schuff Steel, also of Phoenix, while the mirrors, provided by
Paneltec of Lafayette, Colo., are laminated onto a honeycomb aluminum
structure invented and patented in the late 1990s by Sandia researcher
Rich Diver (6218). The engine will be assembled at Sandia's test
facility using parts that were contracted out by SES.
Once the units are installed, Sandia and SES researchers will experiment
with the systems to determine how best they can be integrated in a
field, as well as improving reliability and performance.
"It's one thing to have one system that we can operate, but it's a whole
other thing to have six that must work in unison," Andraka says.
Each unit operates automatically. Without operator intervention or even
on-site presence, it starts up each morning at dawn and operates
throughout the day, tracking the sun and responding to clouds and wind
as needed. Finally it shuts itself down at sunset. The system can be
monitored and controlled over the Internet. Researchers want to make the
six systems work together with the same level of automation. The
controls and software that perform this integration will be scalable to
much larger facilities.
The solar dish generates electricity by focusing the sun's rays onto a
receiver, which transmits the heat energy to an engine. The engine is a
sealed system filled with hydrogen, and as the gas heats and cools, its
pressure rises and falls. The change in pressure drives the pistons
inside the engine, producing mechanical power. The mechanical power in
turn drives a generator and makes electricity.
The cost for each prototype unit is about $150,000. Once in production
SES estimates that the cost could be reduced to less than $50,000 each,
which would make the cost of electricity competitive with conventional
fuel technologies.
Bob Liden, SES executive vice president and general manager, says solar
electric generation dish arrays are an option for power in parts of the
country that are sunny like New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada.
They could be linked together to provide utility-scale power. A solar
dish farm covering 11 square miles hypothetically could produce as much
electricity per year as Hoover Dam, and a farm 100 miles by 100 miles in
the southwestern U.S. could provide as much electricity as is needed to
power the entire country.
"Another application could be to operate as stand-alone units in remote
areas off the grid, such as the Navajo reservation, and supply power to
one or several homes," Liden says. Stand-alone units have already been
demonstrated as an effective means of pumping water in rural areas.
He notes the dish-Stirling system works at higher efficiencies than any
other current solar technologies, with a net solar-to-electric
conversion efficiency reaching 30 percent. Each unit can produce up to
25 kilowatts of daytime power.
"This is the perfect type of electricity generation for the Southwest,"
Liden says. "It's a renewable resource, it's pollution free, and the
maintenance of a solar farm is minimal."
One of the system's advantages is that it is "somewhat modular," and the
size of the facility can be ramped up over a period of time, Andraka
says. That is compared to a traditional power plant or other large-scale
solar technologies that have to be completely built before they are
operational.
The cooperation between SES and Sandia is seen as critical to the
success of this technology. This on-site teaming is a new way of doing
business in the energy field and is being watched with interest at DOE
headquarters, Andraka says. "There is no more effective way of providing
technology transfer," he says.
Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a
Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National
Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia has major R&D responsibilities
in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and
economic competitiveness.
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[Homestead] Solar dish and Stirling electric generation,
Tvoivozhd, 11/12/2004