Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. - shooting to be a global leader in utility-scale solar electricity - Solar Dish Designs (SWEET)

Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. or SES has created, designed and tested one of the best looking and performing solar dishes that i have seen. Here are some of the specs of their "SunCatcher" system.

The SunCatcher™ is a 25-kilowatt-electrical (kWe) solar dish Stirling system which consists of a unique radial solar concentrator dish structure that supports an array of curved glass mirror facets, designed to automatically track the sun, collect and focus, that is, concentrate, its solar energy onto a patented Power Conversion Unit (PCU). The PCU is coupled with, and powered by, a completely re-engineered SES Stirling engine that generates power grid-quality electricity. Best of all these systems are modular! If you have the space and the funds you can plan to have as many of these units as you need.

Power Conversion Unit (PCU)

The PCU converts the focused solar thermal energy into grid-quality electricity. The conversion process in the PCU involves a closed-cycle, high-efficiency four-cylinder, reciprocating Solar Stirling Engine utilizing an internal working fluid that is recycled through the engine. The Solar Stirling Engine operates with heat input from the sun that is focused by the SunCatcher’s™ dish assembly mirrors onto the PCU's solar receiver tubes which contain hydrogen gas. The PCU solar receiver is an external heat exchanger that absorbs the incoming solar thermal energy. This heats and pressurizes the gas in the heat exchanger tubing, and this gas in turn powers the Solar Stirling Engine.
A generator is connected to the Solar Stirling Engine; and produces the grid-quality electrical output of the SunCatcher™. Waste heat from the engine is transferred to the ambient air via a radiator system similar to those used in automobiles. The gas is cooled by a radiator system and is continually recycled within the engine during the power cycle. The conversion process does not consume water, as is required by most thermal-powered generating systems.

New Radial Dish Design

The SunCatcher™ uses an innovative radial design for its concentrating mirrors. At sunrise, each SunCatcher automatically rotates to face The Sun, and with sophisticated automation software, tracks, collects, and focuses the sun’s energy onto a single point, the Power Conversion Unit.

- Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. 2010 - info from the website @ http://www.stirlingenergy.com

Students at MIT invent a Solar Dish that could revolutionize energy production

A new type of solar energy collector concentrates the sun into a beam that could melt steel. Researchers say the device could revolutionize global energy production.
The prototype is a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish was made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror. It concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000 to produce steam.
"This is actually the most efficient solar collector in existence," said Doug Wood, an inventor based in Washington state who patented key parts of the dish's design — the rights to which he has signed over to a team of students at MIT.
To test the prototype this week, MIT mechanical engineering Spencer Ahrens put a plank of wood in the beam an generated an almost instant puff of smoke.

The thing does more than burn wood, of course. At the end of a 12-foot aluminum tube rising from the center of the dish is a black-painted coil of tubing that has water running through it. When the dish is pointing directly at the sun, the water in the coil flashes immediately into steam.
Ahrens and his teammates have started a company, RawSolar, to hopefully mass produce the dishes. They could be set up in huge arrays to provide steam for industrial processing, or for heating or cooling buildings, as well as to hook up to steam turbines and generate electricity, according to an MIT statement. Once in mass production, such arrays should pay for themselves within two years or so with the energy they produce, the students figure.
Wood, the inventor, said the students built the dish and improved on his design.
"They really have simplified this and made it user-friendly, so anybody can build it," he said.
Wood said small dishes work best because it requires much less support structure and costs less for a given amount of collection area.
"I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen," said MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer David Pelly, in whose class the project first took shape last fall. "And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world."
-By LiveScience Staff - Link to Article & additional info