Stirling Engines

Stirling engines can achieve the highest efficiency of any real heat engine, up to 80% of the Carnot efficiency, limited only by non-ideal properties of the working gas and engine materials, such as friction, thermal conductivity etc.

Global Warming

Global warming is a specific example of the broader term climate change, which can also refer to global cooling.

Ecology and Pollution

Large-scale onshore and near-shore wind energy facilities (wind farms) can be controversial due to aesthetic reasons and impact on the local environment.

Engine Configurations

Stirling engines into three distinct types. The Alpha type engine relies on interconnecting the power pistons of multiple cylinders to move the working gas, with the cylinders held at different temperatures. The Beta and Gamma type Stirling engines use a displacer piston to move the working gas back and forth between hot and cold heat exchangers in the same cylinder.

The Engine Cycle

The Stirling engine, like most heat-engines, cycles through four main processes: cooling, compression, heating and expansion. The process is known as The Engine Cycle.

Environmental Impacts

Unlike fossil fuel based technologies, solar power does not lead to any harmful emissions during operation, but the production of the panels leads to some amount of pollution. Also, placement of photovoltaics affects the environment. If they are located where photosynthesizing plants would normally grow, they simply substitute one potentially renewable resource (biomass) for another.

Gas Turbine

A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a flow of hot gas produced by combustion of gas or fuel oil in a stream of compressed air. It has an upstream air compressor (radial or axial flow) mechanically coupled to a downstream turbine and a combustion chamber in between. Gas turbine may also refer to just the turbine element.

Gas Turbines in Vehicles

Gas turbines are used on ships, locomotives, helicopters, and in tanks. A number of experiments have been conducted with gas turbine powered automobiles.

Global Warming

Global warming is a specific example of the broader term climate change, which can also refer to global cooling.

Jet Turbine Power

Jet engines can be dated back to the first century AD, when Hero of Alexandria invented the aeolipile. This used steam power directed through two jet nozzles so as to cause a sphere to spin rapidly on its axis.

Microturbines

Microturbines are becoming wide spread for distributed power and combined heat and power applications. They range from handheld units producing less than a kilowatt to commercial sized systems that produce tens or hundreds of kilowatts.

PV Power (Photovoltaics)

Photovoltaics, is a solar power technology that uses solar cells or solar photovoltaic arrays to convert light from the sun directly into electricity. It is best known as a method for generating solar power by using solar cells packaged in photovoltaic modules, often electrically connected in multiples as solar photovoltaic arrays to convert energy from the sun into electricity.

Stirling Engines

Stirling engines are usually more energy efficient, quieter, and more reliable with lower-maintenance requirements. They are preferred for certain niche applications that value these unique advantages, particularly in cases where the primary objective is not to minimize the capital cost per unit power ($/kW), but rather to minimize the cost per unit energy generated by the engine ($/kWh).

The Stirling Cycle

The idealised Stirling cycle is a thermodynamic cycle with two isochores and two isotherms. Theoretically it is the most efficient thermodynamic cycle practically possible, however technical issues limit its efficiency when applied - a simpler mechanism is favored over attaining a close fit to the theoretical cycle.

Turbine Placement & Installation

wind generators are practical where the average wind speed is 10 mph (16 km/h or 4.5 m/s) or greater. Usually sites are pre-selected on basis of a wind atlas, and validated with wind measurements. Obviously, meteorology plays an important part in determining possible locations for wind parks, though it has great accuracy limitations. Meteorological wind data is not usually sufficient for accurate siting of a large wind power project.

Turbojet Engines

A turbojet engine, in its simplest form is simply a gas turbine with a nozzle attached.

Wind Energy

An estimated 1% to 3% of energy from the Sun that hits the earth is converted into wind energy. This is about 50 to 100 times more energy than is converted into biomass by all the plants on Earth through photosynthesis.[citation needed] Most of this wind energy can be found at high altitudes where continuous wind speeds of over 160 km/h (100 mph) occur. Eventually, the wind energy is converted through friction into diffuse heat throughout the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere.

Wind Power

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into more useful forms, usually electricity, using wind turbines.

How PV Cells Work

To understand the functionality and uses of photovoltaic panels and to understand how they work, it is important to first have a solid understanding about how the sun’s solar energy works and why it is important to the earth’s inhabitants.