Dish-Stirling Systems: An Overview of Development and Status

Abstract

Dish-Stirling systems have demonstrated the highest efficiency of any solar power generation system by converting nearly 30% of direct-normal incident solar radiation into electricity after accounting for parasitic power losses[1]. These high-performance, solar power systems have been in development for two decades with the primary focus in recent years on reducing the capital and operating costs of systems. Even though the systems currently cost about $10,000 US/kW installed, major cost reduction will occur with mass production and further development of the systems. Substantial progress has been made to improve reliability thereby reducing the operating and maintenance costs of the systems. As capital costs drop to about $3000 US/kW, promising market opportunities appear to be developing in green power and distributed generation markets in the southwestern United States and in Europe. In this paper, we review the current status of four Dish-Stirling systems that are being developed for commercial markets and present system specifications and review system performance and cost data. We also review the economics, capital cost, operating and maintenance costs, and the emerging markets for Dish-Stirling systems.

Solar hydrogen production with cerium oxides thermochemical cycle

“…For two different sites (Las Vegas and Sevilla), the performance of the system in terms of yearly hydrogen yield (YHY, kg H2 /y) were compared against two alternative solar driven hydrogen production systems: a parabolic dish with Stirling engine coupled with an alkaline electrolyzer; a PV system with the same aperture area (A PV =A dish ) coupled with an electrolyzer. The selected dish/Stirling system is similar to the EuroDish SBP system, located at the "Plataforma Solar de Almeria" [17], that uses a SOLO 161V1 engine of 10 kW e and whose main characteristics are reported in Table 1. The photovoltaic system uses LG Electronics LG250S1K-A3 monocrystalline Si modules [18] [19] mounted with an optimized tilt angle ; the main PV characteristics are also reported in Table 1.…”

“…The selected parabolic mirror is the one used in the SBP EuroDish system [17], while the chemical reactor is supposed to have a circular quartz window of radius r with a secondary reflector CPC or V-trough shaped. The need for a secondary reflector is strictly related to the slope errors of the primary mirrors: for a given radius r there is a value of slope below which no secondary mirror is needed.…”

On the Kinematics of Solar Mirrors Using Massively Parallel Binary Actuation

“…By integrating equation (1) and applying the static equilibrium conditions, the slope and displacement between actuator i-1 and actuator i can be found using:…”

“…Manufacturing precision mirrors for solar concentrators and making them robust to disturbances such as wind and thermal warping is expensive. Imprecision in mirror shape due to manufacturing limitations and disturbances degrades the performance of solar concentrator systems [1][2][3]. Embedding simple, inexpensive binary actuators in the mirror structure to correct the shape can decrease manufacturing costs and improve system performance.…”

Feasibility study of dish/stirling power systems in Turkey

“…Basically, there are four different concentrating solar power system technologies; Parabolic Trough, Central Receiver, Linear Fresnel Reflector, Parabolic Dish [5][6][7][8]. Among them, Parabolic Dish Solar Power Systems consist of a parabolic shaped concentrator, a solar tracking system, a heat exchanger (receiver/absorber), a power conversion unit and a system control unit.…”