Stirling Energy Systems

The Stirling Energy Systems, Inc. (short- SES ) is a manufacturer of solar Stirling systems from the United States, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.

History

The company SES was founded in 1996. In the same year, SES acquired the patent rights to the so-called SunCatcher (English for sun catchers ), a 1984 by McDonnell Douglas and Kockums advanced solar Stirling. As a result, SES continued to develop the SunCatcher in cooperation with Boeing, who had taken over McDonnell Douglas, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Several field test plants were built, including the NASA Glenn Research Center and Sandia National Laboratories.

Today, the Suncatcher has a bowl with 11.5 m in diameter and is made ​​of a four- cylinder Stirling engine with hydrogen as a circulating medium of an electric power of 25 kW.

SES 2008 broke with the Suncatcher held by Sandia since 1984 world record for the efficiency of solar Stirling with an efficiency of 31.25 %. In order for this technology, with the same exposure about twice as much of the energy in sunlight into electricity converts, as an average photovoltaic solar cell with 15 % efficiency.

In response to the development successes SES received the first orders for commercial solar power plants on Stirling base, including the power plant, " Maricopa " with 1.5 megawatts ( 60 SunCatcher ) in Phoenix, Arizona. In addition, there are long-term development contracts for systems with several hundred megawatts of power by the major electric utilities, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

In September 2011, creditor protection and thus bankruptcy was filed.