Dish Stirling

A dish-Stirling system is a type of concentrating solar power (CSP) system that consists of a parabolic dish-shaped collector, receiver and Stirling engine. The collector focuses direct normal solar radiation on the receiver, which transfers heat to the engine's working fluid. The engine in turn drives an electric generator. A dish-Stirling power plant can consist of a single dish or a field of dishes.

Solar Advisor's dish-Stirling performance model uses the TRNSYS implementation of the energy prediction model described in the thesis Stirling Dish System Performance Prediction Model (Fraser 2008) https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sam/pdfs/thesis_fraser08.pdf (4.1 MB). For a description of the type of system the dish-Stirling model can represent, see About the Solar Advisor Model.

This   describes the dish-Stirling system input variables and some basic calculations in Solar Advisor, and is intended to be used with the Fraser publication, which describes dish-Stirling systems and the model algorithms in more detail.

This section describes the system input pages that are available when the technology option in the Technology and Market window is Concentrating Solar Power - Dish Stirling System.

For an example of a dish-Stirling system, open the sample template Sample Dish Stirling Systems: On the File menu, click Open Sample Template and select the template from the list. The template contains two cases. The first case represents a 25 kW system consisting of a single collector-receiver-engine unit. The second case represents a 100 MW field of collector-receiver-engine units.

The dish-Stirling input pages are: