August 11, 2008—Capstone Turbine Corporation, the world’s leading clean technology manufacturer of microturbine energy systems, announced that it has received an order from HelioFocus for the development and modification of Capstone Turbine’s C65 MicroTurbine to operate on solar energy.
Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Ness Ziona, Israel, HelioFocus Ltd. is engaged in the development of modular, high efficiency Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems. These systems will convert sunlight to grid electricity using a parabolic solar concentrator to focus the sun’s energy into a solar receiver that provides enough heat energy to drive Capstone’s modified turbine and power electronics.
Under the initial phase of development, Capstone will make modifications to the existing microturbine to operate on superheated air and integrate the microturbine with the HelioFocus solar concentrator system.
Capstone Turbine has been evaluating product development opportunities to combine the benefit of the microturbine and solar concentrator technologies. The traditional Capstone microturbine engine uses gaseous or liquid fuels to heat combustion air. The HelioFocus Solar Concentrator focuses enough sunlight energy to provide an equivalent amount of combustion heat to drive the microturbine. This fuel free renewable solution offers higher solar conversion efficiencies over traditional solar photovoltaic systems. In addition the increased power density of this system should reduce the amount of required real estate for siting these systems.
