“Thanks to everyone for attending today’s ribbon cutting ceremony for the Tooele Army Depot’s, Stirling solar array PowerDishes. This truly marks a day in history for the Depot. In our current fiscal environment, renewable energy of this type will allow the Depot to be self-sufficient in electrical power. The Depot is leading the way in alternative energy within the Department of the Army. I couldn’t be more proud of the progress that Infinia Corp., CDM Smith, Hunt Electric and Army Corps of Engineers have made.”
- Col. Chris Mohan, Tooele Army Depot Commander
Featuring Infinia’s free-piston Stirling generator technology, the 1.5MW concentrated solar power plant includes 429 PowerDish units that are contributing toward the U.S. Army’s push for greater energy security utilizing renewable solutions, said Infinia.
“We are excited to mark this milestone in providing the Tooele Army Depot with a long-term, dependable clean energy solution,” said Infinia president and CEO, Mike Ward. “Given their need for secure energy, high performance and reliability, our PowerDish is ideally suited to help them optimize their sustainable energy goals and provide them with 30% of their electricity requirements.”
PowerDish is a parabolic dish with a unique free-piston Stirling generator that converts the sun’s heat into grid-quality AC power at 34% efficiency. The PowerDish uses no water, and can be deployed faster than other concentrating solar thermal technologies.
Infinia has deployed its PowerDish product at numerous locations around the globe and is currently involved in two NER300 projects awarded by the European Commission. The Cyprus/Helios project includes a 25MWe transmission-scale PowerDish deployment near the city of Larnaca where each of the 16,920 dishes will supply electricity to the national grid.
The Greece/MAXIMUS project in the Florina region will have a total installed capacity of 75.3MWe, said the company. The plant includes 25,160 PowerDish units composing 37 distribution-scale power plants, each connected to the grid via a single connection point.