Two Breakthrough Innovations that Enable a Grand Vision to Provide Virtually Unlimited Generation of Clean Green Solar Power 24/7/365
Stirling Innovations, LLC was founded for the express purpose of developing and commercializing delta Stirling machines and GREAT TES. After more than five decades of pushing the state-of-the-art with free-piston Stirling engines and coolers, Maury White was convinced he had defined the ultimate topology for Stirling machines that could enable the highest efficiency, lowest cost, lightest weight, and simplest hardware possible.
(GReen Energy at All Times)
(Thermal Energy Storage)
Six essential elements of a successful Grand Vision consist of the following:
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Environmentally friendly and sustainable primary power source such as solar, wind or ocean waves/tides. (Seba 2010) provides a strong argument that among these and other potential candidates, only solar is truly feasible.
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Energy storage that provides reliable 24/7/365 baseload power and peaking power under most conditions.
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Hybridization to enable seamless transition to a fossil fuel or green fuel backup in instances where the energy storage is depleted and the primary power source is unavailable, e.g., extended cloudy conditions for solar.
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Reliable operation to provide baseload power without interruption. This can be achieved by a combination of inherent reliability and distributed modular power generation.
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Reliable transmission and distribution of the electric power produced from its source to the rest of the nation.
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Provide all the above with a life-cycle cost that is comparable to current methods of power generation and distribution, with some margin for environmental benefits. This also implies avoiding significant use of any high cost or strategically limited resources.
Not essential but highly desirable is avoidance of adverse environmental consequences during manufacturing, operation, and decommissioning, with a bonus for extensive recycling at end of life.
The SI Grand Vision approach satisfies all the above objectives using a unique integration of four basic technologies:
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Concentrating solar power (CSP) that uses parabolic dishes, parabolic troughs or heliostat fields to generate high temperatures for efficient power conversion. By using a small fraction of available remote areas with high annual solar insolation, mostly in the desert southwest, enough reliable power can be generated to supply virtually all U.S. electrical needs.
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Free-piston Stirling (FPS) power convertors. FPS technology is the primary focus of SI but is not necessarily essential for achieving the Grand Vision. Rankine or Brayton power conversion systems can also be integrated with the other three elements of the Grand Vision. Free market cost and benefit advantages will determine the ultimate power conversion winner.
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Phase-change salt thermal energy storage (TES) with fossil fuel or green fuel hybridization. GREAT TES offers a paradigm-shift improvement over existing commercial molten-salt TES technology. A general salt TES advantage is that its energy storage cost is less than 10% of the cost for the best current electrochemical battery storage (Nilsen 2022). Since GREAT TES is projected to have several times the operating life of any known batteries, the true comparative cost is even less. Comparable price drops for battery or other energy storage approaches are extremely unlikely.
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High temperature superconductor (HTS) power transmission and distribution lines. This is a proven technology that will ultimately provide the lowest cost and highest reliability for power transmission from the generation sites to the rest of the country. HTS power lines can be buried in a 3-foot-wide trench using existing railroad and interstate highway rights-of-way, saving enormous land acquisition cost and disruption of existing property usage, while also hardening against weather and security threats. This infrastructure will be gradually implemented as needed to augment conventional transmission and distribution networks.
A further benefit is an option to use additional and/or off-peak solar power generation to produce green hydrogen from water using electrolysis. This can be used to fuel a hydrogen economy that, for example, meets clean transportation needs using fuel cells or clean internal or external combustion engines where the exhaust emissions consist primarily of pure water vapor. Hydrogen can also be stored at the CSP site to serve as a green fuel source for clean hybrid operation during cloudy periods.