This paper presents a feasibility study of developing a portable solar power Stirling engine. A generator is to be coupled to the Stirling engine to generate electricity. This system is proposed to be used for low power electrical equipments such as laptop computer and battery charging at remote area inaccessible to grid-connected electricity supply. The anticipated power of the system is about 30W. Two main components that are critical for the performance of the system are solar thermal collector and Stirling engine. Therefore, in this study, many possible choices for solar thermal collector and Stirling engine have been reviewed. Fresnel reflector is chosen as the solar thermal collector because it is portable and able to concentrate solar radiation to high temperature. A prototype Fresnel reflector was constructed and tested. Although the Stirling engine has been designed preliminarily, it was not constructed due to time constraints. However, a piece of steel was used as the receiver. The rate of energy absorbed by the steel is calculated by measuring the rate of change of the temperature of the steel. The test has shown that, if selective coating is used, a stagnation temperature of above 500°C is possible to be achieved. Moreover, the reflector can remain unadjusted for a duration of 35 minutes. From the calculation, it is found that the optimum operating temperature of the system is about 200°C. However, with an aperture diameter of 1.05m for the Fresnel reflector, the system can only deliver 18.3W of electrical power at an overall efficiency of 3.417%. The system has to be optimized to meet the expected electrical power of 30W. Testing on the prototype has shown that selective coating should be applied directly onto the receiver’s surface without any adhesive in between for achieving high temperature. On cloudy day or at night, the Stirling...
