I wrote the introduction almost in my sleep (I've been a BEAM evangelist for a long time now) and I build and wrote up the Symet piece without incident. Piece o' cake. And then the fun started. What I didn't consider was just how finicky it was to make a body and wheels out of junk that were structurally sound enough, square and level enough, the wheels, free-rolling enough, to make the most efficient use all of that precious juice being converted from photons to electrons and stored in the vehicle's SuperCap. My cassette guts weren't the same as others I'd seen used, so I had to try and create a different body for my roller. My plan was to build the vehicle in the morning, get it working by afternoon, and then deconstruct it in reverse to photograph all the steps in the evening. Then, on the second day, the only day I had left, I'd do the final write up and ship everything off.

Cue a montage of day one, a series of crazy constructions that end in failure, one after another. I tried making rollers from soldered paperclips, different epoxied-together pieces of techno-junk, AOL CDs, you name it. And you throw it in the trash. One crumpled wreck after another. I ended day one with nothing to show for it. But I tried to dust myself off and tell myself I had another day -- 24-whole hours! I could build it in the morning, photograph it in the afternoon, and then pull an all-nighter to have the article finished by the next morning.

Cue a montage of day two (which looks disturbingly similar to day one), although the look on my face has now changed from frustration to sheer desperation. By 6:30pm, I had another day with nothing to show for myself. I was toast. I was embarrassed. I was going to have to call Mark Frauenfelder the next day and tell him that I was only able to do one of the two assigned (and... gulp... contracted) projects. I saw the oven in the kitchen and thought about poking my head in it. It would certainly fit. It was getting smaller by the minute.

I took a break to watch the evening news. That's always a good relaxation choice when you're depressed and panicked, right? As I watched, distracted by my predicament, my eyes landed on our perfectly good, relatively new, VCR. (We'd recently bought a cheap one to watch our aging VHS collection.) I knew VCRs contained a lovely, wide, smooth-rolling rubber roller which is used in many a solarroller. Was that drool gathering in the corner of my mouth?

In situations like this, it's best to not over think things. I leapt from my chair, drew my Leatherman from its holster, and like Steve Irwin wrestling an angry croc, I muscled the unit out of the entertainment center and went Medieval on it. I had that thing gutted and my precious roller in hand by the time the news came back from its first commercial break. From there, everything that had been a frustration suddenly became a joy. Everything seemed to effortlessly fall into place, to an extent that was almost spooky. Where there had been massive resistance before, suddenly, there was none. Everything you see in the finished roller design grew from the acquisition of that VCR roller. From there, I had the idea to use a large nylon servo link-wheel as the drive wheel, to build the little roof out of paperclips to house the solar cell and the circuit (and add counter-balancing weight), to bond the only other wheel, from the cassette player, to the front to create three stabilizing points of contact. I had the whole thing built and working within an hour (the circuit part had already been completed).

I pulled my all-nighter, sent off the article by the middle of the next day, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. I still felt embarrassed about the ordeal though and wondered if it was going to be good enough to pass editorial muster.

Solar plant developer Tessera Solar installed 60 solar collectors, called the SunCatcher from Stirling Energy Systems, in Peoria, Ariz. Each dish is rated at 25 kilowatts and the entire facility will have a capacity of 1.5-megawatts of generation.

Utilities installing large-scale solar power generation are typically using arrays of flat photovoltaic panels or concentrating solar power systems, where mirrors or reflective troughs create heat to make electricity.

The Stirling Energy Systems technology also captures heat by using a mirrored parabolic dish that moves to track the sun. But instead of heating a liquid to make steam for a turbine, the heat is directed at a hydrogen gas-filled piston, which drives a Stirling engine to make electricity (click here to see how).

The company claims its technology delivers electricity more efficiently and uses less water than other technologies. Inifinia is another company that has built a solar-powered Stirling engine using a parabolic dish, although it is smaller.

Tessera Solar said that it has contracts to install as much as 1,600 megawatts’ worth of capacity in California and Texas.