World's largest solar concentrator systems to be built at US laboratory

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, US, 2004-11-17 Refocus Weekly

Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems of Phoenix will build six new solar dishes that will make a 150 kW power plant.

Each dish has 82 mirrors in the shape of a dish, and electricity is generated by focussing solar rays onto a receiver which transmits the heat energy to an engine. The six systems will provide electricity 40 homes, and researchers will experiment to determine how to integrate the systems, as well as improve reliability and performance.

Each prototype unit will cost US$50,000 but, in production, the cost would drop to allow the cost of electricity to be competitive with conventional fuel technologies. The engine is filled with hydrogen and, as gas heats and cools, its pressure rises and falls. The change in pressure drives the pistons inside the engine, producing mechanical power which, in turn, drives a generator to make electricity.

“This will be the largest array of solar dish-Stirling systems in the world,” says Chuck Andraka of Sandia. “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."

The five new systems will be installed by January at Sandia¹s National Solar Thermal Test Facility where they will join a prototype system erected earlier this year. The mirrors are laminated onto a honeycomb aluminum structure invented in the 1990s by Sandia researcher Rich Diver. The engine will be assembled at Sandia¹s test facility using parts contracted out by SES.
Each unit operates without operator intervention or on-site presence, and starts each morning and operates throughout the day, tracking the sun and responding to clouds and wind. The system can be monitored and controlled over the Internet.

Solar electric generation dish arrays are an option for power in parts of the U.S. that are sunny, such as New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada, explains Bob Liden of SES. They could be linked together to provide utility-scale power and a solar dish farm covering 100 miles by 100 miles in the southwestern region could provide as much electricity as needed by 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,” he adds. Stand-alone units have been demonstrated as an effective means of pumping water in rural areas and dish-Stirling systems work at higher efficiencies than other solar technologies, with a net solar-to-electric conversion efficiency reaching 30%.

Sandia lab is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy¹s National Nuclear Security Administration.


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