92 comments on Wednesday at Clean Tech 2007
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92 comments on Wednesday at Clean Tech 2007
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GAIA Host Collective
The Synergetic Power group of MIT Grads built a low-tech solar trough Organic Rankine Cycle CSP plant with simple sheet metal solar troughs, low-boiling point fluid and a vane air motor for a turbine. They received a Ignite Award and a grant from the World Bank to build a beta site in Lesotho, South Africa.
pdf brochure
They are claiming 1 kW peak output from 14m2 of trough collectors. Assuming 1kw solar radiation peak, this is around 7% efficiency. The only real consideration in solar thermal power generation efficiency is the cost of the system per output kW.
Thanks, rohar1 for bringing this one to my attention. I had missed it somehow. Serves as excellent demonstration of what I was saying. Even with quite low component efficiency (car components are mediocre), a moderate temperature solar thermal system can get fairly low cost/kw-hr.
And beat PV!
BTW, during my efforts in Africa, I found that the locals liked things they could fix, even when they needed a lot of fixing- as long as the thing was doing them some good.
So who can fix a PV panel after a goat jumps on it?
I might even start contributing to the old ME department again. Might even let them know how to make a far better(simpler, cheaper, longer lived) system (he hehe).