CERAMIC STIRLING GENERATOR
This project is about providing a quiet, long lasting and affordable electricity generator for homes, whether you’re supplementing solar in winter or living off-grid.
Funding for development has been secured.
Solar panels with battery backup work well in summer but struggle in winter, when electricity demand is highest. You could rely on the grid in the winter, but at a high cost. Offsetting the cost by supplying excess summer electricity to the grid is becoming problematic, because the growing surplus of summer solar energy is driving down its value. Utilities may not accept summer offsets for expensive winter power much longer.
If only you could generate your own winter electricity at an affordable price. Unfortunately, traditional gas or diesel generators are noisy, costly to operate, and will not last if run continuously.
Meet the ceramic Stirling engine:
It runs on the same fuels you use for heating your home or hot water (oil, propane, natural gas, or wood pellets). These fuels cost much less than gasoline or diesel at the pump.
The waste heat can go towards heating your home or hot water. The combined effect of the high efficiency of the engine and capturing the waste heat allows you to generate electricity at a lower cost than the utility.
The Stirling is an external combustion engine. This makes it extremely quiet, and clean.
It runs at low speed. This makes it durable. making it ideal for continuous use throughout the winter."
Off-grid use and fuels.
The engine is multi-fuel and allows easy switching between heating oil, natural gas, propane, wood pellets, or biogas. Solid fuels require a feeding system, which the engine is designed to accommodate. This fuel flexibility allow one to build housing on land that has no grid access. Such land is much cheaper than land that has grid access.
Energy transition.
The engine can also run on fuels like hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, or DME—key candidates for green energy storage. The challenge of introducing these fuels at scale is the lack of transportation infrastructure and engine compatibility, creating a 'chicken or egg' problem. Our multi-fuel engine solves this by running on today’s fuels (natural gas, oil) while being ready for future fuels like hydrogen. And, unlike fuel cells, it doesn’t require ultra-pure hydrogen, making it more versatile for the energy transition.
Burn fuel? really?
Why should any new energy technology rely on burning fuel? The answer lies in practical considerations—many households still rely on combustion to heat their homes. Even green national grids rely on peaker plants when renewables are being "intermittent". From a thermodynamic perspective, this approach is inefficient: it wastes high-grade heat to produce low-grade heat. A smarter alternative is to use that high-grade heat to generate electricity, a high-grade energy source, and repurpose the waste heat—low-grade energy—for heating. This is best done on a household level, so you can use the heat where it is being generated. This approach essentially produces electricity with minimal additional environmental impact. Moreover, it complements the use of solar panels for summer electricity, ensuring reliable electricity and heating in summer and winter.
What's next.
This project has been kicked off with an extensive modeling/engineering effort resulting in a patent application. Now, two "next steps" are in order:
1) A prototype must be built to validate all run of the mill engineering parameters and mass-production options, and
2) Costing evaluations must be made for mass production of the inverted ceramic dome that is central to the engine's efficiency.
This will be done in collaboration with reputable parties. Alert: If the ceramic parts are too expensive to mass produce, the project is dead. One of the reasons that stirling engines have not dominated the CHP market is their cost. I believe I can drive that cost down with the new design, but this has yet to be proven true.