Solar Stirling Engine Plans

Solar Stirling engine plans have the advantage of being accessible to most people and do not require deep technical knowledge. Despite the high price tag of ready made applications, the building process for a diy Stirling plant is relatively easy.

While a solar panel requires care and attention in soldering the fragile photovoltaic cells in the right order and the cells themselves, a Stirling generator requires a parabolic reflector plus a tiny and basic Stirling engine.

The whole plant is fairly quick to set up, but most importantly, the Stirling plant is very safe and green to operate, delivering more electric energy but occupying a smaller area than traditional photovoltaic units.

The total cost of basic materials can be as little as $100 for the tightest of budgets. A single diy Stirling plant can deliver up to 40% of the electric power of an average household, thus it can be scaled up to several units to supply the whole household electricity eliminating bills, similarly to solar panels but more efficiently.

Another advantage of the solar Stirling plant is that it offers a longer lifetime comparing to conventional solar panels, while over all the parabolic dish combined with the Stirling engine offers the highest efficiency amongst all CSP (Concentrating Solar Power) systems.

Other sun concentrating systems include the linear fresnel reflector and the solar power tower, but the parabolic reflector as used for the Stirling plant is the most efficient.

The only caveat to a solar Stirling engine may possibly be the visual impact like for all renewable energy devices, as neighbors may be forgiven for thinking that the happy solar Stirling installer is really a maniac of satellite TV, especially if he/she has several parabolic units.

Having said that, even few units of Stirling plants may be a lesser eyesore than the whole roof carpeted with solar panels, the jury is out to decide what is unsightly and what is not.

Solar Stirling Engine Plans are a new and attractive option to get rid of the grid tyranny without having to bow to expensive ready made applications either.

There is no mystery about the Stirling engine itself, an efficient mechanical engine invented two centuries ago by Rober Stirling which uses the temperature difference of an expanding and contracting internal gas to move a piston.

However, it is only recently that such an old technology has been coupled to concentrating solar power in order to spin a generator and produce electricity.

There is an array of large scale projects going on, especially in sunny countries like Arizona, where Stirling engine generators with parabolic dishes produce some of the most amazingly efficient power outputs of any known renewable source system.

The parabolic dishes have proved more efficient than throughs (pipes with circulating internal fluid), reaching a 31% efficiency. Most notably, Infinia has developed state of the art solar Stirling generators with outputs ranging from tens of watts to multiple kilowatts and parabolic dishes with a capacity of 32%.

And while it is true that parabolic dishes concentrating solar power to a Stirling engine are more efficient than conventional photovoltaic systems, the Israeli firm Zenith Solar has recently come up with ultra efficient photovoltaic parabolic dishes, not panels, that produce electricity without a Stirling engine.

This new system is based on HCPV (high concentration photovoltaic system ) to produce not just electricity but also heat for domestic use, such as hot water, at the same time.

For now, ready made applications of this kind are prohibitively expensive for the average consumers and would take many years to pay themselves off. Alternatively, a new wave of DIY projects has sprung to life to make it possible for green conscious people to take advantage of these new technologies.