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I worked for a bit on a solar powered Stirling engine to drive a refrigeration cycle for HVAC, the idea being that when the sun is shining you need your AC the most and you get all the power in the world to run it directly proportional to how much the sun is shining. So it doesn't need any further control circuitry, sun shines, pump runs. No electricity involved.

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that sounds cool. did you get it working?

Stirling engines are quite tricky to get right, as I understand it. And that sounds like you'd need a good sized one, not a toy.

The basics, yes. A direct solar->Stirling path using a stationary engine and tracking mirrors worked very well, the next trick to figure out would have been to arrange for the mechanics and to scale it up a bit.

It's quite magical to see sunlight turned into motion without any intermediary.

Sounds a smart thing to try building.

It's essentially a solar powered heatpump, you could do the same thing with solar panels and a regular inverter + AC pump.

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