Dish/engine systems use a parabolic dish of mirrors to direct and concentrate sunlight onto a central engine that produces electricity. The dish/engine system is a concentrating solar power (CSP) technology that produces smaller amounts of electricity than other CSP technologies—typically in the range of 3 to 25 kilowatts—but is beneficial for modular use. The two major parts of the system are the solar concentrator and the power conversion unit.

Solar Concentrator

The solar concentrator, or dish, gathers the solar energy coming directly from the sun. The resulting beam of concentrated sunlight is reflected onto a thermal receiver that collects the solar heat. The dish is mounted on a structure that tracks the sun continuously throughout the day to reflect the highest percentage of sunlight possible onto the thermal receiver.

Power Conversion Unit

The power conversion unit includes the thermal receiver and the engine/generator. The thermal receiver is the interface between the dish and the engine/generator. It absorbs the concentrated beams of solar energy, converts the energy to heat, and transfers the heat to the engine/generator. A thermal receiver can be a bank of tubes with a cooling fluid—usually hydrogen or helium—that typically is the heat-transfer medium and also the working fluid for an engine. Alternate thermal receivers are heat pipes, where the boiling and condensing of an intermediate fluid transfers the heat to the engine.

The engine/generator system is the subsystem that takes the heat from the thermal receiver and uses it to produce thermal to electric energy conversion. The most common type of heat engine used in dish/engine systems is the Stirling engine. A Stirling engine uses the heated fluid to move pistons and create mechanical power. The mechanical work, in the form of the rotation of the engine's crankshaft, drives a generator and produces electrical power.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Learn more about the basics of concentrating solar-thermal power and the solar office's concentrating solar-thermal power research. 

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