500-m² dish construction highlights
Between 2008 and September 2009 the ANU Solar Thermal Group built the new ANU 500 m² Big Dish, named ‘SG4’. This dish was built in collaboration with our commercial partners, Wizard Power Pty Ltd, also based here in Canberra. Development was funded by Wizard Power, ANU and AusIndustry.
First test of the dish 'on sun', 29 Jun 2009.
The essential process is summarised in our recent Solar Energy paper.
We also have a fine selection of YouTube videos of the dish during construction created by Jose Zapata.
- 4 Comments
Comment by Peter Le Lievre
April 14, 2010 @ 12:55 am
Keith,
It took a while, but this thing looks great!
Extremely low kg/m2 makes this look to me, much more competitive than Gen 1.
Well done team!
Pete
Pingback by Fossil Abstinence: Desert Power Plants Worse Than PV Panels « Fossil Abstinence
May 1, 2010 @ 2:44 pm
[...] A plug in hybrid electric car will diminish responsibility for oil spills (or ocean oil platform mishaps) but will require electricity. Though cheaper than gasoline, coal-fired power costs thousands of “black lung” deaths and otherwise injured miners and does not make the electric transportation option any better. But solar power can. Any area of concentrating mirrors can intensify sunlight 1,000 times so that smaller dishes say 20 feet in diameter delivering 7 kilowatts in full sun, may fit in some neighborhoods. On the other hand, since it takes a similar effort for site work and to make parts, much larger dishes, say 100 feet in diameter (175 kWe) would be most cost effective for those who use a lot of power, heat and cooling. One almost this large was built in Australia last summer, see: http://solar-thermal.anu.edu.au/2009/12/500-m²-dish-construction-highlights/ [...]
Comment by leonh
May 17, 2010 @ 2:12 am
what are the details for the whyalla plant and what role does anu thermal solar group have in it?
thanks
leon
Comment by John Pye
May 17, 2010 @ 5:36 am
Hi Leon, thanks for the query. Wizard Power Pty Ltd are the primary developers of the Whyalla plant, and you should address them for further details. The ANU Solar Thermal Group has a collaboration with Wizard Power that reaches back to 2005 and we hope to continue our work with them, but at this point they are focussed on detailed design and we are not directly involved.
