Sorry guys I have a love for that small simple engine that could do alot for us. PV solar arrays just aren't cutting it for efficiency. I know a mainstream company is going to put up an array of solar stirlings somewhere I forget where. One of these days I would like to find an old 6 foot satelite dish line it with small mirrors and hit s stirling with that, or even a closed loop steam engine setup. As it is my house only draws 5 amp hours ave. I could proly tell the electric company to stuff it. While sitting here thinking about it why not a closed loop steam telsa turbine.
That is not a bad idea. I believe big solar power stations are using this method already. Plenty of mirrors are hitting a black "thing" which heats up to unbelievable temperatures. The fluid inside heats up and makes high compressed steam which runs a turbine with a generator attached to it.
Br.
Vidar
I was over on youtube and seen a vid with an old man with an 18" +/- dish, not even that mirrored and in the slight cloud cover running a small stirling. I just don't know why residential power systems take advantage of such things. I have seen the mirror tower, I think thats what you are refering to. And yes very impressive, but with stirling/closed loop system maybe it does have to be 20 arces of mirrors. Maybe I will see if I can't find a dish this summer and give it a go. One thing that has always bother me about people running stirlings, they never take advantage of water cooling the darn things, water cooling would kick the efficiency way way up. Air cooled stirlings are like air cooled cars (vw) not that great and on a system that depends on temp differencial the cooler the low temp side the better. I had a T.E.C. cooler on a computer just to see if they worked. air cooled it made more heat than cooled. When I watered cooled the TEC unit I was able to take a 500mhz pent slot1 and o/c it to 1ghz long before the 1gig chips came out.
it exist also some german companies that produce
this for "GARDEN" use . as "Springbrunnen" Sorry (german) (Jumping well = Google Translation !? Right ?)
Also you can find some Ideas an invention on this link
http://www.jugendsolarprojekt.ch/Demo-Material.83.0.html
Pese
Solar Stirling array here
http://pesn.com/2005/08/11/9600147_Edison_Stirling_largest_solar/
and here
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/
Stirling Hot water and power system
http://www.whispergen.com/
Also "The Sun Runner " the little dish the "old man" had you can get here:
http://www.campbelltools.com/solarkits.htm
Yup seen those, but I think that they would benifit greatly with these suggestions:
1. use the classic two cyclinder design(the one that is at a right angle).
2. Water cool the cool side of the motor.
3. check expansion rates, and if it works out, make the hot side and cool side cylinders from copper, better heat tranfer.
4. Provide a thermal barrier between the hot side and cold side, some kind of ceramic for the crankshaft housing.
5. Use a double reflective parabola, one dish gathers and focuses on a small dish which reflects the light through a small hole in the large dish to the top of the cylinder, thus allowing the motor to hide in the shade and only exposing the one part that needs heat. Makes the water cooling work better too.
6. Use a cooling tower for the water, water is ran through the motor then through a radiator/heat exchanger, then to a nozzle the mists the water in a small tower that has an up draft airflow, the temperature drop in cooling towers like that is very effective, and very efficient for the energy needed to do it. = not much energy use to run water X greater temperature drop after being heated.
A 6 foot dish, 2 meters for our meter friends, is 3.14 yards^2 or 3.14 meters^2, and if sunlight is about 1000watts per yard, and we get 75% of that = 750 X 3.14= 2355 watts / 120v = 19.65 amps . Thats over twice what my house runs on, so with some batteries I could tell the electric company to pound sand.
Yes I think I need one of these. Heck two if I got the money.
Anyone know where to get a good sun tracker system for cheap?
or you could use one of these lenses....
http://xenotechresearch.com/solfurn1.htm
fresnel lense are a thought too.