City of Design Day Nine – Solar thermal dish receiver at the Australian National University
Friday, 4 November 2023
Designed and constructed by scientists at the Australian National University (ANU), a new receiver for the solar concentrator dish has set a world record for efficiency for a solar thermal dish generating steam.
Halving losses and achieving a 97 per cent conversion rate of sunlight into steam, the receiver could be a breakthrough that leads to cheaper base-load electricity from renewable energy.
Concentrated solar thermal technology uses reflectors to concentrate sunlight and generate steam, which can then be used to power conventional power station turbines. The solar concentrator dish at the ANU is a parabolic dish that can turn on axes to track sunlight. Light is reflected from the sides of the dish, directly onto the thermal receiver positioned in the centre. At 500m2, the dish is the largest of its kind in the world, and focuses the power of 2,100 suns onto the central receiver. This is an intensity of heat so strong that it can damage the componentry if improperly aligned, requiring the ANU team to use the light of the full moon to calibrate it.
For more information, visit the ANU website.
Images: Stuart Hay, ANU
