My involvement and knowledge goes way back so I have forgotten much. I think the unit was charged with Helium. Helium has a slow leak it seems. the units I was familiar with had no way to refill the helium charge. Also the rings or seas may be bad. The piston had rings, seals, and a long life was expected but if those seals went bad of course the power would drop off. I do not even remember the basic Sterling cycle, I think the piston did the valving such that the only moving part was the piston. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Thank you for the many helpful comments you have made over the years.
On Sat, Nov 24, 2018 at 1:40 PM Starlight Solar Power Systems < [email protected]> wrote: > Thank you Hilton and Darryl. That explains what I’m seeing here in Yuma: A > 90kW installation that went slowly, and is now entirely, off line. > > These are the linear alternator design. Any chance your friend will have > technical documents? > > Larry > > > > On Nov 24, 2018, at 11:37 AM, Hilton Dier <[email protected]> wrote: > > A friend of mine worked for them. I believe they went bankrupt and/or got > bought out. Seemed like the usual high tech startup management > cluster_____. Tech guys trying to do finance and finance guys trying to do > tech. > > They had a good idea in that the 3kW engine didn’t require the complicated > heat exchanger of larger machines. It had a linear alternator design, which > simplified things as well. They also developed a cheaper mirror. > > Their problem was that the price of PV dropped so much that they couldn’t > compete in turnkey $/kWh. There are a few orphaned arrays out there with > nobody to do O&M. > > Unsolicited opinion: solar Stirling is a non-starter in a world of cheap > PV. Stirling does have a place in small scale cogeneration. > > Hilton Dier III > Renewable Energy Design > Missisquoi River Hydro LLC > > _______________________________________________ > List sponsored by Redwood Alliance > > List Address: [email protected] > > Change listserver email address & settings: > http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org > > List-Archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html > > List rules & etiquette: > www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm > > Check out or update participant bios: > www.members.re-wrenches.org > >
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