Re: Satellite Dish Engery

On 28 Jun 2005 15:15:13 -0700, "Mike" <jacko2001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>I thought that has come to me tonight, the heat of the satellite dish
>when pointing dircetly at the sun is very high would it be possible to
>capture this energy and convert it into electrcity from the focal
>point. Thanks

Several small solar power plants have been built on this principle.

In the 70's, france built a 2.5 MW power plant called 'themis' using
dozens of parabolic mirrors ('satellite dish' if you wish).
A sodium-based heat transport system converted the heat from all
these receptors intpo electricity.
This worked but the plant was too expensive to operate and the
program was discontinued.

More recently, other dish-based solar power plants use a diufferent
techgnology : instead of collecting heat from all diqhes into one
centralized boiler, they put a small heat-to-electricity conversion
system on each dish.
So each dish is a small (10 to 100 kW) power plant, and you just
cluster them to get a "farm" on any size.
The conversion unit can be a stirling engine or a photovolataic
receptor. Dish-stirling systems (Eurodish consortion in Europe,
Stirling Energy Systems in the States) can convert 30% of incoming
solar energy into electricity, probably the higher efficiency for any
type of solar power conversion.

The biggest dish is an australian 100 kW system,the mirror is huge
(25 meters in diameter IIRW)

These systels are still expensive but mass production would bring
their price down and make them quite competitive. Perharps not for the
main grid, where they would be in competition with nukes, coal and
dams, but for remote communities in desertic areas.

These communities use small diesel power plants. With current oil
price, electricity from diesel plants in extremely expensive, and
renewables can easily comptete. Of course, this is just a niche
market.



.

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