The Big Dish is a parabolic dish concentrator developed by the Australian National University’s Solar Thermal Group. [1] The initial prototype, SG3 [2] , was constructed on the Canberra campus of the Australian National University in 1994. A modified version of SG3 was exported to Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center at the Ben Gurion University in Israel. In 2006, a joint project led by the Solar Thermal Group with the aid of the Wizard Power Partner , and funding from the Australian Government’s Renewable Energy Development Initiative, [3] initiated the design and construction of SG4. [4] SG4 is located next to the SG3 dish, and was completed in 2009.
Wizard Power holds the patent rights for the SG4 Big Dish structure and is developing commercial facilities which will see the arrays of hundreds of powering tens to hundreds of megawatts of power. The first of these will be the Whyalla Solar Oasis which will use 300 Big Dishes to deliver a 40MWe solar thermal power plant. Construction is expected to begin in late 2013.
See also
- Australian National University
- Solar thermal collector
- Concentrating solar power (CSP)
- Solar tracker
- SolarPACES
- Wizard Power
References
- Jump up^ “Solar Thermal Group” . Australian National University . Retrieved 2010-09-03 .
- Jump up^ “Solar Thermal Facilities” . Australian National University . Retrieved 2010-09-03 .
- Jump up^ “Renewable Energy Development Initiative” . AusIndustry . Retrieved 2010-09-03 .
- Jump up^ “SG4 500 m² paraboloidal dish solar concentrator at ANU” . Australian National University . Retrieved 2010-09-03 .
