Capstone Turbine Corporation, the world’s leading clean technology manufacturer of microturbine energy systems, is also focusing their attention on solar energy as they were asked to develop and modify their C65 MicroTurbine to a solar powered one. Receiving this kinda of order from HelioFocus, Capstone Turbine is intending to combine the benefits of the microturbine and solar concentrator technologies in one. The HelioFocus Solar Concentrator focuses enough sunlight energy to provide an equivalent amount of combustion heat to drive the microturbine. Replacing the gaseous or liquid fuels, these solar powered microturbines will offer 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 setting these systems.
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.
