All About Solar | Green Energy News

August 7, 2005 – Vol.10 No.20

ALL ABOUT SOLAR.

This week’s news...

This is impressive. This project, when finished, may change the way people think about solar energy power plants.

In a few years the world’s largest solar power station - by far - could be built without using photovoltaic cells. Instead it would use technology almost 200 years old - Stirling engines.

In a 20-year power purchase agreement with Southern California Edison, Stirling Energy Systems will initially supply 40 Stirling dish solar energy converters for a one-megawatt solar power plant. Then, over a period of four years, a 500 megawatt (yes 500 megawatt) solar power plant could be built that would need 20,000 Stirling solar dishes spread out over 4500 acres of California desert. Further, under the power purchase agreement, the project could expand to 850-megawatts.

At 500 megawatts, more solar electricity would be generated in this facility than all of the solar power generated in the U.S. combined.

Stirling engine technology dates back to 1816 when Reverend Robert Stirling invented a safer alternative to steam engines. At the time steam engines were exploding regularly, taking many lives. Instead of steam his design used a gas, such as air, sealed within the engine that expanded using heat from an external source. The expanding gas forced a piston down a cylinder to turn a crankshaft. The principal remains the same today.

With Stirling Energy Systems technology the external heat source is sunlight focused with a 37-foot parabolic dish mirror. The Stirling engine generator, mounted at the focal point of the dish, generates about 25 kilowatts.

The Stirling Energy technology has been tested successfully for more than 20 years and in more than 26,000 hours of operation. Aircraft maker McDonnell-Douglas originally developed the technology in the 1980’s. The Boeing Company inherited the technology in the buy-out of M-D and now, along with the U.S. Department of Energy, is a technology partner in the project.

The Stirling Energy solar dish technology is said to be more than twice as efficient as typical solar power generating technologies such as photovoltaic and solar trough which uses concentrated solar thermal energy to make steam and then generate electricity. Stirling claims that on a megawatt scale power can be generated at 6 cents per kilowatt hour.

One of the main attractions of Stirling Energy’s technology is that common manufacturing techniques are used to build the systems. Stirling engines themselves are little more difficult to manufacture than Internal combustion engines, which are of course, dirt cheap. Visit Southern California Edison at http://www.sce.com/ Stirling Energy Systems at http://www.stirlingenergy.com/ .

Another impressive solar power project is the newly unveiled 904-kilowatt array atop a FedEx terminal at Oakland International Airport.

Built by PowerLight with 5759 Sharp Solar modules, the array covers nearly all of the 81,000 square feet of roof of the terminal’s two buildings. More than 300,000 solar cells for the modules used in the array were flown by FedEx from Japan to Memphis, Tennessee, where both FedEx and Sharp Solar have facilities.

The new array can add clean power to the grid or be used by the facility. The system provides the equivalent of the power used by more than 900 homes in daylight hours. Visit FedEx at http://www.fedex.com/ , Sharp Solar at http://www.sharpusa.com/

China is looking for energy from all sources to power its bustling economy. The country is also continuously looking for more products to export.

GT Equipment of Merrimack, New Hampshire, has announced that it has sold a $33 million solar wafer fabrication line to LDK Solar Hi-Tech company of Jiangxi, China. The line, to be operating by October, will be able to produce nearly 75 megawatts per year of solar wafers used in making solar cells. The new capacity will double the LDK’s solar manufacturing capabilities. The company plans further expansion with up to 200 megawatts per year by the end of 2006.

The solar equipment sale is GT’s largest to date. Visit GT at http://www.gtequipment.com/ and bookmark LDK Solar’s website at http://www.ldksolar.com/ (now under construction)