Talk:White Cliffs Solar Power Station, New South Wales

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I've added the FIXME note after the mention that the plant was based around a steam turbine - the is not correct and article referencing White Cliffs as having been a steam turbine plant will have to be corrected. For the period to 1989 the steam generated by the collectors was used to drive a 3 cylinder 2-stroke diesel engine that had been converted to steam using the 'bash valve' principle. The machine had reliability problems due to the contamination of the working fluid (water) with engine's lubricating oil. A small scale steam turbine would have been much too expensive for the experimental installation and would have required much more attentive control due to the relatively small operating conditions under which a turbine must operate.

That's a very interesting observation! As is the reference you added: The White Cliffs project : overview for the period 1979-89 / prepared by S. Kaneff.
The problem is, it's not obvious where to access this paper, or what its credentials are. Is it a published article, or a school project? Did you write it? What is the author's background in any case?
That's why I've reverted the article for the moment. Until we have better references, this is hearsay, and we must stick with the account given by the University of Wollongong web page. But it sounds a very credible story to me, and I'd love to incorporate it, and set the record straight. Andrewa 21:24, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Got it! See http://people.linux-gull.ch/rossen/solar/wcengine.html. Andrewa 21:38, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Some more heresay, I recall reading a newspaper article in the 90's with a local saying the dishes were not presently producing any power power (after White Cliffs was connected to the grid). The dishes were apparently still good for cooking frozen chickens however :-) The main thrust of the article was that while alternative energy was apparently promising, the country's main example of it wasn't being used. matturn 11:29, 4 March 2006 (UTC)