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Open Energy and Infinia to develop solar/stirling engine combo
November 13, 2006 - by Dana Childs, Cleantech Group
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Open Energy Corporation (OTCBB: OEGY), a renewable energy company focused on the design and manufacturing of solar energy products, has signed a development agreement with Infinia Corporation to integrate its products into a new power generation system.
Infinia’s free piston Stirling engines are currently used for aerospace and national security applications, where high reliability and a long service life are required. Operating without internal combustion, a Stirling engine utilizes high temperature differentials to drive a piston and produce electricity.
The engineering teams at Infinia and Open Energy believes that Open Energy's Suncone CSP solar concentrating power system can be modified to deliver over 700 degrees centigrade of solar thermal energy to Infinia’s engine, thus generating electricity cost effectively without burning fossil fuels or emitting green house gases.
“We are very excited by the potential of this combined effort,” said David Saltman, president and CEO of Open Energy.
“Infinia is already commercializing a 1 kW engine for residential heating and electricity in Asia and Europe. We will begin our product development utilizing a modified version of this engine to prove out the feasibility of the Suncone/Stirling system, before developing a larger version for distributed generation applications.”
J.D. Sitton, CEO of Infinia Corporation said, “We have already achieved solid results with a dish Stirling system at our facility in eastern Washington and have made significant progress on our larger engines. By working with Open Energy, we believe we can accelerate the development and commercial availability of these truly important and unique solar power generation systems.”
Open Energy develops and commercializes solar energy products and technologies for a range of applications including electrical and thermal power production and water desalination. Infinia has been developing and delivering Stirling generators and cyro-coolers since 1985.
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Comments
stirlings engine
Submitted on November 21st, 2008 by Abhishek jakate (not verified)sir kindly help me to know which gas is fessible to be used in stirlings engine and what is the procedure to seal the gas inside the cylinder? from where i can buy the smallest model in india.?
Infinia may not live up to it's hype!!
Submitted on November 12th, 2009 by Vin Jal (not verified)Infinia is setting very high expectations in the Solar community. There are inherent design issues in Stirling engines which may cause this technology to fail -> 1. moving parts 2. Helium leakage, 3. the large area of land required compared to PV [ 10-20 acres/MW for Stirling vs. 3.5 - 4 acres/MW for PV]. Infinia has not even sold a single finished product in the market and they have not even gone into production. Their claim of 35-40% efficiency may not be realistic. A more realistic efficiency would be in the 20% -25% range.
With 2nd and 3rd generation PV technology production ramping up and their efficiencies getting upto 25%, they may prove to better than Dish Stirling technologies. The key disadvantage that will prove to be the downfall of Dish Stirling technologies is the area required for installation. PV requires less than 4 acres per MW and this keeps coming down with the advent of newer technologies whereas Dish Stirling requires 10-15 acres per MW. Scale that up and land use goes up exponentially compared to PV.
Infinia has a peak market potential of 10 -15 years, so they better ramp up their production before 2nd and 3rd generation PV hits the market.
Comments are welcome!
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