thedailygreen.com — Phoenix-based Stirling Energy Systems plans to begin construction in 2009 on two $1 billion solar power farms on federal land in California's Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles and in the Imperial Valley east of San Diego, reports USA Today.
Jan 21, 2008 View in Crawl 4
berkanaJan 22, 2008
If they're loud, that's probably why they're building them out in the desert. If I remember correctly, they want to put nearly 30,000 of these guys in the Mojave desert.Time to get a plug-in hybrid. This will be way cheaper than importing oil in the long run.
berkanaJan 22, 2008
Solar stirling engine systems don't look like they will be suitable for individual home use any time soon. The best you can do to take your house off grid is a combo approach using micro wind turbines (<a class="user" href="http://www.helixwind.com/">http://www.helixwind.com/</a> , video: <a class="user" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9flSPAdOLk">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9flSPAdOLk</a> ) and high efficiency sun tracking solar panels, which aren't the cheapest on a capacity per dollar basis, but have the most capacity per square foot--possibly enough to take a normal sized house off grid. (<a class="user" href="http://www.soliant-energy.com/">http://www.soliant-energy.com/</a> )
an0n1m0usJan 22, 2008
News like this makes it worth getting up in the morning :)
bincoderJan 22, 2008
Stirling is Boss! Can it be downsized? Yes. Efficiency doesn't drop by much, but then neither does price. It can convert heat to electricity and electricity back to heat (or cold) far better than the normal freon type compressor or heatpump. Here is a small and practical application for a stirling engine: <a class="user" href="http://www.coleman.com/coleman/colemancom/detail.asp?product_id=5726-750">http://www.coleman.com/coleman/colemancom/detail.a ...</a>Horribly overpriced imo, but very very efficient with low power consumption, compared to any other way to cool a beer cooler. (me thinks the whole patent issue is why they cost so much, but that's another story)
privil3g3Jan 23, 2008
Are you serious? give me your suppliers details I worked on a project incorporating something similar here in Australia and we racked up near US$40K
scliffordJan 25, 2008
Last I looked (a year or so ago) there was a 3kW unit from Infinia nearly ready for market suitable for a large single family home with an estimated cost of about $12k (price from an article on green building). Just checked their site <a class="user" href="http://www.infiniacorp.com/applications/clean_energy.htm">http://www.infiniacorp.com/applications/clean_ener ...</a> and it looks like they're going for city govs rather than residential and it's not commercially released yet. I don't have a price quote from Infinia. These are scaled down versions from the ones Stirling Systems have been plopping down in the desert.Another alternative I've explored is Fresnel lens plus photovoltaics tracking the sun.
neoniJun 30, 2009
I think this will be the right way - you save our planet when you get your energy this way. No pollution that way. Think about it.<a class="user" href="http://www.gelsenpv.de">http://www.gelsenpv.de</a>