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Because right now, batteries last only about one year and need to be replaced after that (I have lots of bad experience there), and because right now, my calculations show that for a 35,000 investement, the panels have to last 13 years before one breaks even, unless one lives in a sunny area. The problem is that the current solar technology isn't very good yet: the panels constantly lose capacity as they generate electricity. And integrated Stirling engine designs are only available for industrial applications, or made by enthusiasts: one still cannnot go to local Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a residential, integrated Stirling engine power plant. That's why oil is going to stay with us for a few more decades. Hopefully not too many, but it's not going to disappear overnight.

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Not on an industrial scale. Currently, solar and battery is roughly similar too diesel generated electricity in cost (i.e. very expensive) but for load displacement solar is very hard to beat. In this case the Abu Dhabi grid is basically running on gas plants that would be peakers in other markets.

i.e. Abu Dhabi could consume much more solar especially as a large demand for power is for cooling (storing cold water, freezing some food further is a much cheaper way of storing power than batteries as it is load shifting.)

Basically oil is out of mind for generating electrical power on an industrial scale as its way to expensive so it is not competing with that. See every small island powergrid investment over the last 5 years.

Comparing stirling engines to panels -> Panels are so much simpler they will perform better for any domestic and even industrial use. Maintenance is a driving cost in getting these prices down, mechanicals tend to have much higher maintenance requirements.

20% worst case degradation over 20 years is an minor issue. Easily planed for in the financials of such a plant.

What exactly needs maintenance in a Stirling engine? Please be concrete.

Any of the moving parts e.g. mechanical to electrical converter, the 2 axis point solar tracker.

And you believe that a solar panel would last longer and be cheaper than a Stirling solar power plant?

Based on which data?

One of these is currently commercially widely available, installed on roofs, and halving in cost seemingly every 18-24 months. The other one isn't.

I don't doubt that Stirling systems could be cheaper, but I'm not seeing them yet. I also flatly refuse to believe that a moving-parts system can last 25 years without maintenance, even if just regular oiling, while solar panels should still have 70-80% of their output after 25 years with no maintenance. It's the inverters and batteries that require maintenance or replacement.

(There are claims that solar thermal storage + Stirling is cheaper than PV+batteries, which are much more plausible, but where are the installations, big or small?)

I have yet to see a Stirling engine implementation which requires lubrication, so again, which maintenance are you referring to?

Specifically, I was and am referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahfGfDdgNY

That video makes my point nicely in two ways. Firstly, the link under it to the commercial supplier is dead. It's not a product you can just buy.

Secondly, it's a concentrator system with a two-axis tracker. That's going to require maintenance, however trivial. You can clearly see a chain-and-sprocket arrangement at about 1:20 in the video. If you have a chain technology which is maintenance-free for 25 years, I know a lot of cyclists who'd be interested.

I never oiled the chain on any of my bicycles, and it's been more than 25 years. They still run. Even so, I prefer putting on a little grease on such a sprocket compared to hoping that my solar panels will generate enough power after 13 years.

And in my initial post, I unequivocally stated that one of the biggest problems with the integrated Stirling engine is that no residential kits are available at the local hardware store.

Mordern batteries last a lot more than one year. Tesla is providing ten year warranties on their batteries for their daily cycle batteries. https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

They do? I guess that explains why my UPS's, running on the same type of batteries, would be regularly shot after a year and I'd have a power outage. And I have industrial uninterruptible power supplies, with the current going through them, just like how they would be used in a solar panel scenario.

Don't believe the hype. Modern batteries are junk.

Panels have a 25 year warranty, and only degrade about 0.8%/year. They'll produce usable power for at least half a century.

> That's why oil is going to stay with us for a few more decades.

In a couple of decades we might also have fusion power, and this time it's probably going to work because we have much better superconductor magnets. We can make the whole reactor much smaller.

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