|| You may also want to cool your house. How does a zero || operating cost strike you? | | ZOC is great as long as initial investment and amortized | ownership costs are below what a conventional system would cost.
Yes - and here is where the fluidyne (a short name for a liquid piston stirling cycle engine) absolutely shines for a limited set of applications.
The engine itself is a plumbing construct, partly filled with water and the remainder filled with a air. There are no special requirements: neither the water nor the air need be particularly clean and there is no pressurization.
This engine operates at temperatures below the boiling point of water and without producing particularly high pressures. The only moving parts are the air and water; and there aren't any "wear points".
The diameters and lengths of the plumbing elements are important; but there doesn't appear to be any need to be fussy about precision.
If you knew the plumbing measurements, you could probably build your second engine out of (mostly) schedule 40 PVC pipe in less than a half hour. The engine could be expected to outlast your (great-?)grandchildren if you protected it from UV and abuse.
If you powered it from a flat-panel solar collector, you'd probably want to replace the polycarbonate glazing every quarter-century or so. A 6mm x 48" x 96" sheet of twin-wall polycarbonate glazing cost me about $40 last time I shopped for it.
I don't yet have exact numbers on what this thing is going to cost to produce (I'll guess less than US$100/HP for engine and collector); and I don't even have a clue as to what conventional systems cost to produce, operate, or maintain - so I can't help much with your cost analysis.
| IMO, this is where solar is having problems right now. Sure, I can | get panels that would generate enough electricity to run my house
Agreed. Photovoltaics are over-priced and under-efficient; and, as long as people are willing to pay too much for too little, improvements will come slowly.
I don't have the resources to solve the photovoltaic production cost problem (there is at least one that I'm aware of) so I don't waste my time on it - but electricity doesn't necessarily provide the best solution for /all/ problems.
If solar is having problems, it's because people insist on a "magic bullet" - a single, comprehensive solution to all energy problems - and solar is not a magic bullet (at least not yet).
-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA