Member Info for observer842

It really would be quite exciting (not to mention company changing!) if we've managed to produce the most marketable Stirling Engine to date! There is (waste) heat to be converted to electricity everywhere, not just in boilers.

The Stirling Engine has been around over 2 centuries now, and there have been many, and I mean many incarnations and applications which make use of the Stirling cycle at its heart. Just because a technology is old, doesn't mean it can't be improved upon. Technological progress ;-) My understanding is that although very efficient at converting heat to electricity (typically 30%), efficient incarnations have traditionally been prohibitively expensive to manufacture, meaning that the end payback times have extended out beyond the life of the machine.

The question I ask myself is can we produce it cheaply enough to be desirable to the end customer? There are still big questions for me over the new 6.4kWe peak. Is that effectively from two units within one? If so, do we have one generator attached? What is the steady state efficiency from that? Is it off 20kW of potential energy in?

In summary we have patents on particular aspects of our implementation, but they mean jack if we never get to commercialisation...

Ob.

Interestingly the Align report from 2016 stated:

"On the cusp of cogeneration commercialisation & trading at a fraction of replacement IP cost" (13th June 2016)
http://www.alignresearch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Inspirit-Energy-Align-Research-13th-June-2016-Final.pdf
===[
Current Patents: 3 Registered and 5 Patents Pending.
]===

I never did find out what the 5 pending ones were... Of course patents only give you a head start, eventually they expire anyway. Hopefully ours have served their purpose and we are well and truly on the way to commercialisation now! ;-)

From what I can see, this is likely the main patent we hold relating to our oft cited patented “sealed for life”

"Power piston sealing assembly" (2011-02-09 Application granted; 2026-04-26 Anticipated expiration)
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1886011A1/en
===[
Abstract
A power piston sealing assembly in conjunction with a Stirling engine is disclosed. The power piston sealing assembly consists of one or several sealing retainers with threads alternatively using fasteners within the power piston. Said power piston sealing assembly comprises of a power piston, displacer rod seal(s), displacer seal spring(s) and sealing retainer(s) all concentrically mounted within the power piston.
]===

How many other Stirling engines can claim to be "sealed for life" I wonder ;-)

I wonder if we also own these:

https://patents.google.com/?assignee=inspirit+energy+limited&oq=inspirit+energy+limited

https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Disenco+Limited&oq=Disenco+Limited

Here are some of our patents we hold on our implementation of a Stirling Engine:

https://patents.google.com/?assignee=somemore+limited&oq=somemore+limited

There may be more.

If we are talking utility concentrated solar power (CSP), then our Stirling Engine will need to be overall "better" than most, if not all that have come before it. In particular that "better" needs to increase the competitiveness of CSP compared to other solar projects, and in particular compared to other CSP's using other Stirling Engines.

As I have already mentioned, I'd be quite surprised if we've either increased the efficiency sufficiently, or the lifetime, or decreased the cost sufficiently that overall the net present value of a newly built utility CSP can compete with a newly built Solar PV farm. But I like surprise - perhaps we have!

Ob.

@graham-wales. Read back through my recent posts for speculation on what the "Inspirit Solar" might be. In a nutshell I believe it will either be for efficient and cost effective utility scale conversion of solar thermal energy to electricity, i.e. an engine at the focal point of each parabolic dish in a field of dishes not too dissimilar to this:

"Dish Stirling Solar Plant Debuts" (04/01/2010)
https://www.powermag.com/dish-stirling-solar-plant-debuts/

or it will be for residential/small commercial scale combined heat and power from Solar (Solar mCHP). Picture normal looking solar tiles on roofs which convert 20% of the incident light into electricity, but combined with water heating which captures a large fraction of that not converted as thermal energy in interleaved liquid pipes, which also serve a dual purpose to cool the solar panels making them more efficient. This company sells those:

https://dualsun.com/en/

It's possible to convert additional energy from the collected heat in the liquid to electricity via a Stirling engine, though to my knowledge - no-one is doing this as the temperature differential makes it tricky. But take a read of:

"Stirling Engine for Solar Thermal Electric Generation" (May 1, 2018)
https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2018/EECS-2018-15.html

I estimated of the 100% of incident potential energy from the Sun, you might get 20% converted to electricity via PV, 50% captured as Solar Thermal, of which 20% of that might be expected to be converted via the Stirling engine to electricity.

So without the Stirling engine you'd end up with 20% Electricity, 50% Thermal. With the Stirling engine, you might end up with 30% Electricity, 40% Thermal.

I'm certainly happy to discuss either of these aspects further!

Come on JG, at least give us a clue which direction we might be heading. Both? ;-)

Ob.

Tell me about it @dougal. A single decent announcement could lead to an order of magnitude or even 2 increase in our market cap depending on its nature. For instance, say we licence out the tech to a third party, perhaps one we are already in discussions with. Say we negotiated 10% royalties on sales, and they sold 1,000 a year for £10,000 per unit, that's £1m a year for us, which would likely add over £10m to our market cap on that agreement alone. And perhaps 1,000 is conservative? And if proven for one company perhaps we can licence to others, once any exclusivity clause has lapsed?

The mind boggles on just how large this company could grow, and no doubt JG sees the same potential and wants to hold on to as much of the company as he can. I don't blame him!

I often think what's taking so long!? But then I remember what we are doing is hard, very hard! Take a read of:

"Stirling Engine for Solar Thermal Electric Generation" (May 1, 2018)
https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2018/EECS-2018-15.html

If after all these years (decades!) we've managed to finally crack the cost whilst maintaining the efficiencies, then $$$ ;-)

Ob.

@jimb2 "I will add DL is a little out of touch:". Yangibana is about Rare Earth Metals (NdPr) and as DL states these are found in the permanent magnets of motors in (most) electric vehicles and mobile phones (speakers/buzzer/other?) to name a few applications, but not storage - that's our other assets. It's looking to me like the growth of EV's has caught the REM sector by surprise. Me? You? Of course not ;-)

I've said it before, if you don't trust John Gunn to (eventually!) deliver on his vision, this really isn't the share for you.

Personally I want more information. Much more. The 20% reduction in height. Did the width increase? How has the peak electrical output doubled? My educated guess is that there are now two Stirling engines per Inspirit Charger, leading to a steady state efficiency in the 4-4.5kWe mark pushing the total sustained system efficiencies towards the 95% mark. And what about the CIBSE report? The timeline suggests this would have been on previous iterations, and therefore perhaps didn't shine a favourable light on us, perhaps because the steady state efficiencies didn't meet the 92% now required by UK government, which may apply even to mCHP boilers?

Questions, questions, questions. Time for some news flow containing answers, answers, answers ;-)

Nice find @jimb2, it's great to see what has been obvious to some for some time finally going mainstream. Makes me want to hear more about our new Inspirit Solar proposition. Fingers crossed it's mCHP not CSP! :-)

Certainly if it's Belcan or MB Aerospace! Done your own research? ;-)

It seems to me that despite the great news announced at the end of the last week, JG has much more to do to convince the market that we have been and continue to make real significant progress. My updated key dates and news is below:

13 Jun 2016: Align report: http://www.alignresearch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Inspirit-Energy-Align-Research-13th-June-2016-Final.pdf
16 Aug 2016: Collaboration agreement with CIBSE
3 May 2017: Discussions with Argentarius to raise up to £2m through asset backed bonds
18 Jul 2017: Electrical efficiency improved from 3.0kW to 3.2kWe
21 Aug 2017: Argentarius arranged funding apparently falls through
14 Nov 2017: Accelerated redemption of all securities related to Argentarius by year end
28 Dec 2017: CIBSE ongoing collaboration confirmed
29 Mar 2018: Increased efficiency in the regenerator allows commodity grade stainless steel derivative to be used
12 Apr 2018: CIBSE ongoing collaboration confirmed
04 May 2018: Issue of £845k of Convertible Loan Notes raising £530k in cash, the balance converting existing debt
28 Dec 2018: In discussions with a European company that may carry out the certification process; CIBSE collaboration not confirmed; $2,600,000 of debt facility available
29 Mar 2019: Continued discussions with a European company that may carry out the certification process; CIBSE collaboration not mentioned [now assumed to have concluded].
26 Apr 2019: Facilities moved from Sheffield to Poland in collaboration with a European engineering group. Collaboration with a UK based University on new applications. New composite materials awaiting classification. Cost savings. Can start off grid. Peak electrical output doubled to @6.4kWe, same @15kWt [unknown steady state system efficiencies] during a running cycle of 2,000 hours. Height reduced to 80cm. Schematics for new applications: Inspirit Marine - currently in discussion with a large car/marine engine manufacturer to develop a unit for the shipping industry with current output of 11.68kw; Inspirit Solar; Inspirit Cooler; Inspirit Motor/ Generator.

So in terms of near news events:
- Announcement of the name of the European engineering group/company
- Announcement of the name of the Inspirit Marine manufacturer
- Confirmation of start/end of certification process and outcome (I doubt we will hear if we fail)
- Conversion of CLN's: The maximum number of new shares if converted at the minimum conversion price of 0.07p is 1,207 million shares. These can be converted even when the share price is below the minimum share price.
- Likely placing/issue of additional CLN's using the 650m shares authorised last summer
- Funding for commercialisation, assuming we don't use the debt facility

I personally want to hear more about how the 6.4kWe peak electrical output was achieved, but significant substantial news before another fund raise would be more welcome! ;-)

Ob.

Thanks @jimb2, I've refreshed my Solar CSP vs PV knowledge and my views remain largely unchanged that PV + Lithium Ion battery is pretty much the now and certainly the future of solar generation at scale (utility). Here are a few links:

"Concentrated solar power vs. solar PV, an update" (July 5, 2018)
http://euanmearns.com/concentrated-solar-power-vs-solar-pv-an-update/

"RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES: COST ANALYSIS SERIES" (June 2012)
https://www.irena.org/documentdownloads/publications/re_technologies_cost_analysis-csp.pdf

"Enhancing economic competiveness of dish Stirling technology through production volume and localization: Case study for Morocco" (27 June 2017)
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4984406

"Dish Systems for CSP" (2017)
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1356835

It's possible that CSP with thermal storage at scale may have a short lived future (until Lithium Ion battery prices drop further). If we are talking Solar CSP with Stirling engines, it will likely be the parabolic Solar dish arrangement - one engine per 5 metre dish.

I much prefer the approach I discussed earlier, and I hope that is the route we intend to take. There is a lot of information included in this detailed report which is a must read for the engineers at INSP. @John Gunn, pass it on will you!

"Stirling Engine for Solar Thermal Electric Generation" (May 1, 2018)
https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2018/EECS-2018-15.pdf

The early sections are quite accessible, as for the later sections... ;-)

Ob.

This one piqued my interest. Although in general I'm against large parabolic installations as I believe solar PV farms now have the edge, it got me wondering where high efficiency might be useful, and the obvious answer is when land is at a premium or can't be expanded to utilise cheaper lower efficiency solutions - for instance on a residential roof. From what I can see, of the energy in the incident sunlight the best hybrid panels today can harvest approximately 20% of that as electricity, and around 50% as thermal (30% of energy not collected/wasted). Take a look at DualSun for instance:

https://dualsun.com/en/
https://academy.dualsun.com/wp-content/uploads/DualSun-EN-Datasheet-Spring.pdf

We don't know the efficiencies or capability of the Inspirit Core at extracting electrical energy from hot water. We don't even know what the efficiencies are from extracting from hot gas(!). Though an educated guess lands it likely somewhere in the region 15-25% from gas. If the Inspirit Core is able to convert 20% of the energy in Solar heated hot water to electricity then the numbers might look something like this:

On a solar PV system generating 4kW (at 20% efficiency), the thermal power generation would be around 10kW (at 50% efficiency). The additional electricity generation from the Inspirit Solar from the hot water would be 2kW (at 20% efficiency), leading to an effective 50% boost of the electricity generation from 4kW to 6kW and a resultant (effective) electricity generation of 30%. Quite impressive!

Perhaps the Inspirit Solar would only run when the hot water can not be used effectively, charging up a local battery or feeding onto the grid. As well as added utility, it's possible this combination might significantly reduce the total cost of ownership and pay back times despite an increased upfront cost.

Of course my barks might not even be in the right forest, never mind the right tree... :-)

Ob.

Thanks @HEWITT. More frequent news would be very welcome! And interviews and reports. Although I still have a sneaky suspicion there is more going on behind the scenes than JG wants us to know at this time... so we may have to stay in the dark a little longer! Time will tell...

I suggested that the electrical output of the Inspirit Marine might imply it's powered by two Inspirit Cores. By the same logic the Inspirit Charger's increased peak electrical output from 3.2kW to 6.4kW perhaps suggests that each 15kWt Inspirit Charger now has two Inspirit Cores inside of it rather than one (this would suggest that the Inspirit Marine would have four Inspirit Cores rather than two). This makes perfect sense to me assuming we are able to produce them cheaply enough, and they are sufficiently small, reliable, etc. Game changing!

John Gunn - I prefer Inspirit Core over Inspirit Generator/Motor: you can have that one on me, assuming I'm not barking up completely the wrong tree! ;-)

Ob.

Other interesting aspects from:

"Product Update" (26 April 2019)
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/INSP/14052730.html

that stood out were all of the potential future applications. What a tease!

===[
Inspirit Marine - currently in discussion with a large car/marine engine manufacturer to develop a unit for the shipping industry with current output of 11.68kw.
]===

Since we are "currently in discussion with a large car/marine engine manufacturer" it's reasonable in this instance that the name of the manufacturer has yet to be disclosed. Presumably news on this could land any time, and could be a game changer in itself.

I presume the application here is to produce 11.68kW of electrical output from exhaust heat which would otherwise have been wasted. I wonder if this is achieved by pairing two of our Inspirit Stirling engines which are present in the Inspirit Charger into the Inspirit Marine? Reusing the tech rather than making purpose built solutions should be our aim for all new applications. If this is the case, there may be a business case in scaling up the solution with different sizes of Inspirit Marine units containing 4, 8 or even more Inspirit Stirling Engine cores.

===[
Inspirit Solar - In-house design, incorporating the new development of our Stirling engine
]===

I'm personally very sceptical about this, as I believe that significant cost reductions in Solar PV over the past few years blows all other types of solar electricity generation out of the water, especially when combined with storage. So this one could be a hard sell for me, but I remain open-minded - perhaps we've managed to beat the world record and can do so on competitive economic terms.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/13/could-this-be-the-worlds-most-efficient-solar-electricity-system

I just can't see it though, but perhaps I'm missing the point completely of "Inspirit Solar", perhaps we are harnessing what would otherwise be wasted heat, perhaps in a PV context even, to improve solar conversion efficiencies towards 50%?

===[
Inspirit Cooler - Refrigeration system
]===

More information required here. I was of the impression that solid state refrigeration using strong rare earth magnets (NdPr) was in the pipeline for quieter more efficient fridges. Magneto-calorific refrigeration. Perhaps we have a particular application in mind which we are well suited?

===[
Inspirit Motor/ Generator - designed in line with the Inspirit Charger to start the unit & convert electrical output to the grid.
]===

I wonder if the "Inspirit Motor / Generator" is simply the core Inspirit Stirling Engine technology at the heart of each of the other applications: charger, marine, solar, cooler? Our core USP? A single reusable, scaleable (in parallel) patented bit of tech?

So many questions, so few answers. ;-)

Ob.

I do hope so! It would be great to see the sp over 0.1p before game changing news lands :-)

Ob