# 46 > I PERSONALLY SOLD 2ea-3meter dishes like THESE TYPES IN 1980s

This picture is of interest to me because Myself and a partner sold a solid surface 10 foot across dish product in the early 1980, and as we sold 2 units overnight for a 4 state area.. They were then taken off the market before delivery could happen.. We flew to california and the company would not talk to us...
These two dishes we sold were tested in multiple national labratories and were generating such high heat ranges at the focal point that the company had to manufacture ceramic balls to store the heat because rocks were turning to crumbling dust from the heat temps.

Solar + Gas Hybrid Turbine
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 09. 5.05
Science & Technology (alternative energy)
Our friends at WorldChanging have a concise summary of a blog post by Sudarshan P. about a solar & gas hybrid turbine. The post starts out being about how solar production is still more expensive than other methods, and later on a solution is proposed: "Solar concentrators such as parabolic reflectors or fresnel lenses heat oil up to a temperature of 200C which is used to boil water to produce steam at a high pressure. The steam is super heated to temperatures of about 400C to 500C using biogas, wood gas, natural gas etc. [...] Maximum theoretical efficiency of a steam engine at 100 C is 20%. If we are able to increase the temperature of operation of the engine to say 400 C we get efficiencies of the order of 50%. [...] During bright sunlight the hybrid power station would be using 60% solar and 40% bio fuel. During the night the power would come from bio-fuel alone. But the demand during the night would be small. So less bio fuel would suffice during the night."

The gas doesn't even have to be of fossil origins; for example, biogas can be produced in great quantity with agricultural waste.
The hybrid turbine sounds like a great idea and we would really like a prototype to be made. If it works are well as predicted, we shouldn't waste any time before starting building a large number of power plants working on that principle!
The picture above is a random solar concentrator, not a solar/gas turbine. Mirrors of that type would probably be part of it if one is ever built, though.
::Profitable Solar Power, via ::WorldChanging.