Proving that missiles and skyscrapers aren't the only way to erect a huge phallic symbol:
"...in the next year or so, construction will begin in Australia's Outback on the most expansive, and tallest, manmade structure on Earth. The "Solar Tower" will be a 200 megawatt electrical generating plant that gets its energy from harnessing the daily solar heating of the desert surface. This heat creates a self-contained wind field that drives a network of 32 turbines. The concept is marvelously simple, but is still an engineering challenge. The 3,000 foot tall "chimney" at the center will dwarf other buildings around the world... The glass-covered canopy surrounding the tower will be about four miles in diameter. A much smaller version of the Australian facility was built in Spain, and operated continuously between 1982 and 1989. Once built, the facility will continue to produce electricity indefinitely."
Very impressive, mates.
Personally, I'd rather fund superconductivity research. When we can string power lines with much lower loss factors, solar towers or even better technologies will start to make a lot more sense in places like Arizona, Nevada, et. al., and attract the investment they need. Plus, the conservation factor will produce a much higher net benefit throughout the grid. Not to mention all the other associated spin-offs of superconductivity.
It isn't all size, you know... it really is what you do with it.
Rather fund superconductivity research?
Actually, given the admittedly artificial choice you set up, I favor funding projects that we expect to succeed rather than projects that may or may not succeed. The Solar Tower, for all it's hype, is "low hanging fruit." The research has already been done and it is almost certain that it is going to work and be cost-effective. You can't say that about superconductivity research-- that's why its research.
This is all well and good but Team America World Police came out on DVD today and all this jibber jabber is distracting you from buying it and spending tonight giggling uncontrollably. I got mine yesterday and reviewed it at my blog.
Stop all this focus on the unhappy, forget Newsweek and watch Michael Moore explode.
Cordially,
Uncle J
Yea, it is a cool thing. There was a great article in Scientific American about this, as well as a host of articles in Nature and Science mags.
The bottom line: it works marvelously in desert regions due to the heat and nearly limitless solar potential (and free land).
One version of it has the 10 square miles of feeder paved with 1 to 2 foot black basalt rocks. Idea is, they are relatively good conductors of heat, making them relatively good storage cells for the energy. Heat up all day, cool off all night. The power output actually increases overall! (The high altitude air is cooler, increasing effeciency.)
Another version has the entire underscape paved with farmland. The water is pumped by the tower, and the constant 15-20 mph wind benefits the plants substantially. And you get a harvest of something useful. But it requires farmers, and of course, it then requires trucking of products, and so on. Probably better if it is filled full of rocks.
In any case, it really is one of the more benign energy schemes. The deserts of the world are 'bedeviled' by dust-devils and other naturally occuring atmospheric convection effects all the time. The tower is just a way to capture a 'permanent' dust devil. Really!
There are also some folks that point out that even all the expensive glass isn't really needed. Just a bunch of 1000 foot long 'half-dome' plastic tunnels as spokes out into the desert. There's plenty of hot air out there.
GG
Uncle Jimbo, my copy is in the mail. ;-)
I like the tower. It's very symbolic for green energy alternatives. The only other towers that are richly symbolic are nuclear cooling towers -- which I am not totally against, but they certainly have negative connotations.
Put a couple thousand of those stacks in Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and things might change.
The US supposedly consumes 450,000 megawatts a year, so there'd need to be about 2,250 of these little 200 mw stacks. Maybe the stack could have an outer shell for living space, which would be self-sustaining. I'd live there.
A Berman, good point re: provenness... though it has't been proven on this scale before. There may be wisdom in waiting for project lessons learned from Australia.
If we wanted to think about U.S. locations, Tucson and Phoenix are probably growing fast enough to make a local tower viable, and its status as a tourist attraction could interest a place like Santa Fe.
Better be somewhere with powerful senators, though, because they'll need significant subsidies and obstacle-clearing clout to make anything happen.
Cicero, interesting idea. Right now, I suspect the cost of turning the "Tower of Power" into something sturdy enough to dwell in would put it way out of reach. Future materials may change that calculus.
Does anyone know why the facility in Spain went out of operation?
What's interesting to me is that if you look at the sources of energy coming down the pipe, especially nuclear, there's a real chance of having a nice surplus of non-transportation-type energy.
Once you have a surplus, you can then add one of those oil-producing plants and start transforming surplus energy into oil.
Aren't they going to cost about 700-800 million apiece?
Building 2000+ of them adds up.
And at over 12 sq miles each... 24,000+ square miles? Isn't that like half the size of Pennsylvania?
A nuclear power plant costs billions for a 1 mw plant so 800 million is not that expensive. It is also highly predictable which is an important attribute.
They are not 12 sq miles each. They cover 12 squar miles but you need space between them to operate them efficient. Don't know what that distance is but it my guess is that they need 50sq miles each. They need preferably something like a desert enviroment so i don't think space is really a problem.
You could compare it with the Hoover dam. It cost was $165 million in the thirties. Lake Mead is 247 square miles large and produces 2mw of power which goes partly to California.
#3 Farms need water. That is a bigger problem than the farmer. Also more wind leads to more water evaporation which is a problem in a desert enviroment
#8 Spare electricity is first exported, than used for making aluminium (or other medals)
Ideal location.
Las Vegas with a cas_ino on top of it.
Just wait until somebody proposes building one of these thingies in Death Valley. The enviros will be in a fit of hysteria -- "But you are going to kill the blind desert pupfish."
Back in my yoot, I read a s-f story In Analog about one of these put in the LA basin to get rid of the smog. Only about 40 -50 years ago.