Facilities

• 1,000 square meter solar roof laboratory with staff and workshop
• Solar resource assessment and weather station with public website access
• State of the art solar water heater test facility for student research and commercial projects
• 25 kW McDonnel Douglas Sterling dish
• Utilities and control facilities to perform contract R&D on CSP optical systems

• 18 m flex use lattice tower
• 40 square meter aperture heliostat field for intermediate flux (~50 suns)

STERG owns a number of facilities situated within the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering

• 1000 °C Kiln with automated quick charge/discharge capabilities
• 5 cubic meter, 3 ton, 600 °C thermal storage test facility
• Differential Scanning Calorimeter capable of sampling to 700 °C
• Software: Fluent CFD, ArcGIS, TRNSYS, FLOWNEX etc.
• Further access to Departmental heat transfer and flow laboratories including multiple wind tunnel

• 2 Hectare facility at Mariendahl experimental farm, enabling dual use of land and cross-discipline research
• Available for SU post graduate students, affiliates and for contract research and testing
• Electrified for multiple experiments including feeding into the grid
• Reticulated water supply
• Fenced for basic security
• Helio100 heliostat R&D pilot system with secure control and storage capable of expansion and adaption. The Helio100 project is closed.
• Full Solys tracker and weather station
• Newly installed 15 kW single axis tracking PV system
• Under construction: Packed bed thermal storage pilot with gas combustor designed to be retro-fitted to an air receiver

A full-scale test facility was purposely designed and constructed at Stellenbosch University to demonstrate the performance of a large diameter axial flow fan under installed conditions and to test and develop the water reticulation system of a deluge condenser cell (see above photo). The facility has the following general specifications:

1. 24 ft fan rotor diameter.
2. The fan drive consists of a 10:1 parallel shaft reduction gearbox, in turn connected to a 132 kW (rated) electric motor (drive end) and variable speed drive (VSD) for controlling fan rotational speed up to a maximum of 150 rpm. The gearbox and motor are mounted on a slew bearing that enables measurement of the shaft torque.
3. The deluge system is quipped with an 18.5 kw pump that enables circulation of water to feed a ¼ quarter segment of a full deluge system.

For more information please visit the following link https://www.minwatercsp.eu/demo-sites/stellenbosch-full-scale-test-facility/