----- Original Message -----
From: Frederick Sparber
"The farm will be designed for 500 MW capacity and could be
expanded to 850 MW, making it the largest solar power facility in
the world and giving it more capacity than the combined total of
all other US solar projects. More info and background on Stirlings
over on the Energy Blog."
Fred,
Yes, we discussed this plant earlier on vortex. Very exciting.
But look at this. The average annual efficiency is 24% and the gas
working temp is nearly 973 K. This means that the low end
effectvie cooling temperature (using the naive approximation) is
over 700 K. Using chilled water cooling this could be lowered to
450 K and therby double the efficiency - except - of course, it
doesn't work that smoothly and there are many other losses - but
in fact a tremendous boost could be gained by chilled water
cooling.
That is where the fresnel troughs could come in to help the
situation. Plus they could do double duty IF as Mike Carrell
mentions, the tranparent Fresnel material could be tailored
correctly.
