Open Energy and Infinia to develop solar/stirling engine combo

Open Energy Corporation (OTCBB: OEGY), a renewable energy company focused on the design and manufacturing of solar energy products, has signed a development agreement with Infinia Corporation to integrate its products into a new power generation system.

Infinia’s free piston Stirling engines are currently used for aerospace and national security applications, where high reliability and a long service life are required. Operating without internal combustion, a Stirling engine utilizes high temperature differentials to drive a piston and produce electricity.

The engineering teams at Infinia and Open Energy believes that Open Energy's Suncone CSP solar concentrating power system can be modified to deliver over 700 degrees centigrade of solar thermal energy to Infinia’s engine, thus generating electricity cost effectively without burning fossil fuels or emitting green house gases.

“We are very excited by the potential of this combined effort,” said David Saltman, president and CEO of Open Energy.

“Infinia is already commercializing a 1 kW engine for residential heating and electricity in Asia and Europe. We will begin our product development utilizing a modified version of this engine to prove out the feasibility of the Suncone/Stirling system, before developing a larger version for distributed generation applications.”

J.D. Sitton, CEO of Infinia Corporation said, “We have already achieved solid results with a dish Stirling system at our facility in eastern Washington and have made significant progress on our larger engines. By working with Open Energy, we believe we can accelerate the development and commercial availability of these truly important and unique solar power generation systems.”

Open Energy develops and commercializes solar energy products and technologies for a range of applications including electrical and thermal power production and water desalination. Infinia has been developing and delivering Stirling generators and cyro-coolers since 1985.

Cleantech developments making news in the past 24 hours

• Qteros claims 15-fold improvements in cellulosic ethanol yield
• Solairedirect raises €20M to move into commercial solar
• Intel, Numonyx open $20M water treatment plant in Israel
• Booming data-center business creates troubles for India

View the last week of cleantech developments here | Subscribe to full feed