Infinia seems to have developed one of the most innovative electricity producing products to appear in the Green Energy sector in a long time.

The solar energy system Infinia produces is based around the Stirling engine that was conceived almost 200 years ago by Robert Stirling,

Calling the Stirling engine an engine almost implies that there's some internal combustion happening, but a Stirling engine has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels. Stirling engines utilize the change in volume of a gas at different temperatures in a closed loop system to produce mechanical motion.

Wikipedia has a really descriptive article on the Stirling engine.

Basically, Stirling engines require a hot side and a cold side to cool or heat a gas - this is where Infinia has moved in on utilizing this almost 200 year old idea. Infinia has designed a Stirling engine powered by using a parabolic dish to focus the suns rays onto the hot side of a Stirling engine. The mechanical motion of the Stirling engine converts the sun's concentrated rays into electricity. Infinia claims that their product produces 3KW and that their product can be manufactured utilizing the same construction methods that the car industry uses to produce their products.

Infinia's Website has a really impressive video of their electricity producing Infinia Solar System.

It looks like Infinia has designed a product that they'll be able to shape and change the whole energy sector with - it's really likely that they have. But the problem I see with Infinia is that they don't appear to be about empowering the people with the ability to produce their own clean, renewable and free energy. It seems that Infinia wants to tie themselves to the old energy sector business model of having giant energy companies noose the general population into continually giving up their hard earned dollars.

While summarizing a few of the FAQ's on Infina's web site you'll notice that Infina is not interested in dealing with investors for less than a million dollars. Infinia only wants to talk to you if you need a system capable of producing at least 1 megawatt and that "Residential systems for individual purchase will not be available for the foreseeable future".

Hopefully for you and me, and more importantly the Earth, it's not Infinia's intention to help the old energy sector business model prevail. Maybe their partnership with Rennai, who already has a foothold in energy efficient products is the prelude to making Infinia's clean energy producing machines available to the general population of the world.

Use the comment form below and discuss whether or not it's a good idea for everybody to have the ability to produce their own green, renewable energy.