On January 27, 1998 my wife and I visited the Department Engineering Physics of the Australia National University in Canberra. The goal was to meet with some of the team that designed and implemented the White Cliffs Solar Thermal Power Station and get a look at the technology. This power station was unique in that it used an off-the-shelf diesel engine, converted to steam operation as the means of converting solar energy into mechanical energy. While I was there, I talked with Dr. Ken Inall and took a number of photos showing some of the work that they have done.
This page is still in construction, but since I finally got the scanner working, I thought it was about time to show people some of what we saw while bicycling in Australia.
We never got around to visiting White Cliffs, which is just as well, since the solar power station was decommissioned in 1993 after the town was hooked up to the NSW grid. The photos shown here are of a project called "the Big Dish" (located at the ANU in Canberra) that came afterwards, building on the experiences of White Cliffs. The steam engine is built on similar principals as the White Cliffs apparatus, but the fourteen 5 metre dishes have been replaced by one 20 metre dish.
As usual, a small thumbnail will be presented in the text and it is up to the reader to click on it for the larger version. Fair warning. On with the show...
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Erik Rossen <rossen@rossen.ch>Copyright © 2000 until the heat-death of the Universe (thanks, Mickey!), by Erik Rossen
Last modified: 2016-02-07T12:43:23+0100
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