Solar to electrical energy conversion system Development: Difference between revisions

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==Existing design work==
==Existing design work==
This section and the linked pages contains all existing design documents that have been produced during the design of prototype I as of June 21, 2011.  Documents produced after this point should be included elsewhere on this page.  I'm excluding blog posts because they are not part of the design process.
This section and the linked pages contains all existing design documents that have been produced during the design work as of June 21, 2011.  Documents produced after this point should be included elsewhere on this page.  I'm excluding blog posts because they are not part of the design process.


More relevant to current efforts:
More relevant to current efforts:

Revision as of 01:14, 22 June 2011


Solar to electrical energy conversion system
   Home  |  Research & Development  |  Bill of Materials  |  Manufacturing Instructions  |  User's Manual  |  User Reviews    File:Solar to electrical energy conversion system.png



Goals, purpose and design criteria

  • Convert solar energy to electrical energy.
  • Have an operating and capital cost which is the lowest that we can manage while meeting other design criteria. Current working goal in sight is 1$ per peak watt in capital material costs.
  • We still have to decide exactly how to factor in capital labor costs (e.g. $ per hour equivalent). We still have to decide how we want to factor in running material and labor costs, too, to have uniform values for evaluating expected system costs for various designs.
  • Be designed in accordance with OSE Specifications, including lifetime design, environmentally benign, etc.
  • The exact power output and size is not specified because the main performance parameter is the cost per peak watt. (Assuming reasonable efficiency under other than peak insolation conditions - maybe we should be more specific like the kWh gathered in the worst 3 day period of the typical meteorological year for Columbia, Missouri (using TMY3 data) divided by the total system cost (if you are off grid that is how you might size the system, and therefore what determines the capital cost). However it may change relatively little so peak watt is okay and more convenient if less than perfect.
  • The components should be considered in the context of the rest of the OSE enterprise and larger goals. Most of these are explicitly stated in the OSE specifications. But the implications are not always obvious. For example, the choice to take the current piston steam engine approach was influenced by the fact that the same design can be scaled up for use in future versions of the powercube (the lifecube project has as one of it's stated goals the evolution towards a biomass powered powercube), making it meet the modularity part of the OSE specs better.

Similarly, if the light-electric component for a prospective design is a low temperature diff stirling, or photovoltaics that would interfere with it's potential for being re-used in the biomass cogeneration unit project. It might still be the best approach in the end, but that would be a mark against it.


We would like to be able to re-use the the solar collector or parts thereof for: - Process heating for chemical engineering (see chemical engineering category for specific processes under consideration) - Producing heat for heating homes, greenhouses and other buildings, hot water, etc. in winter (this can be waste heat after electricity production)

We would like to be able to re-use the conversion (light or heat to electric) unit for: - A biomass cogeneration unit - A Biomass powered powercube (a hydraulic powerplant) - Maybe (less important) either in reverse as a heat pump or to power: air conditioners or refrigeration or cryocooling (for liquefying air to extract pure gasses or produce LN2 etc.) units. - Maybe (less important) as a water pump, either in reverse or to power one.


  • The end use of the system is to part of the electrical power supply for a ~200 person community based around the GVCS, which is part of the OSE specifications. If the cost goals are met it will also be highly useful outside of this context, such as powering an off grid home. The current prototype I is expected to have a peak output in the 3 kW range, which is in the right range for powering a single home with one unit for an efficient home and 2 for a typical one.
If anyone has more to add, please do.

History and overview of the project

OSE, at the main Factor e Farm facility, has been working on the project for the last 3 years or so, off and on. It was originally called the Solar Turbine Project because the most promising approach for the heat-electric conversion was thought to be a boundary layer turbine (A Tesla turbine). This approach was later abandoned after it was found that a Tesla turbine was found to be impractical (reasons? Probably not that easy to fabricate given the high rotational speeds involved and the thinness and close spacing of the discs, also not as efficient as an impulse turbine or many other expanders).

To improve the modularity of things, both the solar collector and the heat-electrical power conversion unit have to some degree been separated and this is evident on the wiki.

The expertise of the Steam Automobile Club of America (SACA) has been drawn on, with Marcin going to some of their meetings, and some experts contributing to the steam engine design.

Recently, a collaboration has been struck with the people at SolarFire.com to use the collector and absorber they have developed. See blog posts in the prototyping work documentation section.

Current state of progress

As of June 19 2011 the design stage for prototype one is finished and prototyping has begun. It is to combine:

  • a P32 solar concentrator and absorber of the design developed by solarfire.org with an automatic tracking system and other peripherals with,
  • A piston based steam engine developed through the (general purpose) steam engine project.

Completion is expected in the next 6 months or so.


I have gone through the category:Steam engine and category:Steam Engine (capitalization matters), category:Energy and category:Solar_Turbine to retrieve all the documents that are relevant to the current project so others can get up to speed easily without missing anything.

Existing design work

This section and the linked pages contains all existing design documents that have been produced during the design work as of June 21, 2011. Documents produced after this point should be included elsewhere on this page. I'm excluding blog posts because they are not part of the design process.

More relevant to current efforts:

see also http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Category:Steam_Engine there are too many for me to go through there.

Better wiki management tools or a Wikian team would really help to get things categorized better and keep them categorized.

Documentation on prototyping work so far

Recent blog posts laying out the current happenings: http://blog.opensourceecology.org/2011/06/steam-engine-technical-drawings/ http://blog.opensourceecology.org/2011/05/solar-fire/

Less relevant to current prototyping:

More relevant to current efforts: See http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Category:Steam_engine for all the documents relating to the current prototyping of the steam engine.

The solar concentrator prototyping specific to this project has not yet started as of june 21, 2011. The P32 solar concentrator system and absorber/steam generator is a finished product of the Solar Fire organization, but we still need to add automatic tracking and mirror cleaning, then combine it with the engine.

Prototype II

It has been suggested by Gregor that we try a community-exploration and design approach for the design of prototype II. This might help to improve the openness and collaboration of the process, and efficiently harness the efforts of more people. Gregor is currently working on getting the groundwork to start with this approach up on the wiki, including this page.

Related pages

See the energy category page for more pages on the project. Remember this project has been going on a long time and many of the pages have little applicability to the current development effort(check the date in the edit history).

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