Hacker News Reader

I like that idea - can anyone commment further? Up here in the Yukon it's regularly -30C and below for long stretches and we all have our wood stoves burning 24x7 for 4+ months.... It would not be hard to have one end touching the wood stove (200-400C) and the other end outside (-30C - -40C). Will this work?

View on HN

It depends on what your power requirement is. For a 200C difference, you should be able to get around 500W to 600W with a properly built stirling engine.

Sounds nice for all the people running off-grid up here who get so little precious sunshine in the winter. Can you provide more information on where I might be able to buy such a Sterling engine? Are there any companies actively making them?

Unfortunately, there are not many companies building these engines commercially (at least at these power outputs). Most of the engines I have seen are built by hobbyists (either too tiny or crude :( ). That's changing in recent years with increased focus on solar power.

Thats what we saw and why we started the project - just not enough solutions for real world requirements. The engine itself is somewhat simple, its the thermodynamics that are tricky - There are only a few moving parts, no spark plugs, no oil, no valves and works off of any kind of heat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com