Massive solar tower for Arizona

[Kingfish]

I just happened to catch this on MSNBC today – Arizona's massive solar tower may power 200,000 homes


Can you believe it?

This is not the same type of solar tower going up near Las Vegas; that tower uses molten salt to store energy that is generated during the day for 24/7 power production. THIS tower uses simple thermodynamics: Desert hot air rising through a chimney at a fast clip is harnessed by wind turbines.

Intrigued, I followed with a larger search and found this on GizMag: Twice the height of the Empire State - EnviroMission plans massive solar tower for Arizona

The basics:
Air is heated at the base of the tower; the shape of the structure provides a natural escape for the hot air to rise up through the atmosphere where the air is cooler. The temperature differential between the top and the bottom is enough to create enough power to feed 200,000 homes. The cost is estimated to be 750 Million USD. They expect to be online serving power by 2015 to the L.A. market.

The pictures give a perspective on just how large this single tower will be. If it is successful, can you imagine how the desert will be dotted with these devices? I wonder what the impact will be on weather?

Wild! KF

[ohzee]

Wow that looks pretty wicked.. never even realized something like that was possible much less profitable..

Wonder how many years it takes to recoup the investment ? Gonna read now hopefully I find out

thanks for sharing.

Financial modelling projects that the tower will pay off its purchase price in just 11 years - and the engineering team are shooting for a structure that will stand for 80 years or more.

[Brentis]

Wow that looks pretty wicked.. never even realized something like that was possible much less profitable..

Wonder how many years it takes to recoup the investment ? Gonna read now hopefully I find out

thanks for sharing.

Financial modelling projects that the tower will pay off its purchase price in just 11 years - and the engineering team are shooting for a structure that will stand for 80 years or more.

+1

I saw a special on Discovery( IIRC ) on the Vegas moten salt project.
I was very impressed.
Had not seen this proposal.
Hope it isn't vapor ware. Be an impressive site to see.

Thanks for sharin'

[TylerDurden]

Thought this was old news... stalled.

[Dauntless]

... stalled.

Yeah, stalled probably isn't the best word, but you hear that politician talking about all the hangups SHE can provide. Can't have someone achieve a much needed technological advance without having our little mischief first. What I like about these towers is they're EVOLUTIONARY, not revolutionary. Not only have they already built smaller towers, but it started out as a lot of old hat technology being adapted. Higher likelyhood of success that way.

You know the story, 'We have an ambitious 6 year plan to complete this, we might be able build in 6 months if we can keep the political wranging down to 5 1/2 years,' or some such. So I thought it was supposed to be in the middle of nowhere, like you think it's safe to test your atom bomb there. So far this hasn't sounded like there should be real safety issues, for gawdes sakes, let them get started.

These people have signed on.

http://www.fgould.com/north-america/res ... n-arizona/

And these guys do the actual building, the Austrailians would own it.

http://www.aora-solar.com/

And I think the plan is to build more than one at a time there. Along with several of the smaller type that are already in operation in other parts of the world to be built in California and Nevada by other companies. Depending on the type, some of them are actually storing energy to be used at night.

[REdiculous]

According to Betz's law, no turbine can capture more than 59.3 percent of the kinetic energy in wind.

The theoretical maximum efficiency of any heat engine depends only on the temperatures it operates between.

It seems to me that the molten-salt type could have a good efficiency advantage over these turbine-towers, but who knows. I know they have to clean the mirrors regularly though, which would severely reduce the overall efficiency of the molten-salt type....pumping a bunch of water and driving a large pickup from mirror to mirror isn't good...

Maybe these simple towers are the way to go. Seems pretty big though...it's gonna sway like a mofo...

[TylerDurden]

Maybe these simple towers are the way to go. Seems pretty big though...it's gonna sway like a mofo...

They could be tourist attractions with giant tube-slides.

I'd pay a hundred bucks a pop.

[dogman]

They talked about one of those in El Paso for awhile. Instead a lot of photovoltaic, using parabolic mirrors to improve efficeincy has been built nearby. At least something got online.

Did the one in Australia ever get built? The only existing one I know of is a small prototype in Spain.

It's a bitchin idea, especially the way you can multi purpose the greenhouse that heats the air to grow tomatoes.

I used to fantasize about something similar, but rising to 10,000 feet. The idea was to chimney suck urban pollution out of a city. I was thinking huge black mylar tubes supported by an aerostat.

[TylerDurden]

It's a bitchin idea, especially the way you can multi purpose the greenhouse that heats the air to grow tomatoes.

That gets tricky...

The system requires a constant flow of air, such that at the perimeter the air temperature will be low and then rise as it is drawn toward the center. Plus, as the system leverages differential (rather than absolute), the range of incoming air temperature may vary more than hothouse crops may tolerate.

One possibility might be PV modules at the perimeter, that get the cooler incoming air across their surface to make them more efficient and feed more warm air to the stack.

[Kingfish]

<snip>
I used to fantasize about something similar, but rising to 10,000 feet. The idea was to chimney suck urban pollution out of a city. I was thinking huge black mylar tubes supported by an aerostat.

Beverly Hillbillies: That was a scheme hatched by a scammer to con Jed Clampett out of millions; the plan was to build one or two giant tunnels through the San Bernardino Mountains to suck away the LA smog. The check was written (might have been $50 million; I can’t quite recall) and handed over to the guy, but he feels remorseful over the con and tears up the check, and LA is left with the smog. I never forgot the humorous engineering lunacy of this plot; big gigantic turbines spinning away (and off-loading the problem downstream). Interestingly, a few years later some conspired to build a chimney to suck ground-level ozone to the upper atmosphere; you know… repair the ozone hole.

I was a child TV-holic. Then I discovered beer
~KF

[amberwolf]

Beverly Hillbillies: That was a scheme hatched by a scammer to con Jed Clampett out of millions; the plan was to build one or two giant tunnels through the San Bernardino Mountains to suck away the LA smog.

Funny you mention that show...One of Dogman's dogs is a descendant of the one from that show.

[veloman]

I read about this idea years ago, they wanted to do somewhere in the middle east. Tourist attraction hell yeah. Wicked water slide!

[bigmoose]

The wind power tower does not intuitively seem optimum or efficient for the materials and labor to construct it per kWh generated.

High grade heat is a terrible thing to diffuse...

[dogman]

From the original B hillbillies? Maybe that one was floating around in my oldest LSD soaked brain cells somewhere then.

Ellie Mae died of lupus last summer, but one of her great granddads was the original Duke. Another dog we have now is from the same kennel, but we don't know if she has the Clampet blood or not.

They are still expanding the parabolic concentrated PV cells in Sunland Park NM. Visible on Google Earth shots. Find El Paso, then look slightly north and west of El Paso and Juarez. It's right next to the border crossing at Sunland Park. Out in the open desert.

The algea to deisel pilot project hasn't gone belly up yet either. Still hiring in Columbus NM. Saphhire energy. Kind of amazing, we have two or three unfinished Enron year generator projects laying around in the area. People thought those kind of spot energy prices were going to be a permanent thing. Suddenly there was a generator plant getting built every 100 miles along the EPNG natural gas pipeline.

Shocking to see sapphire get out of the lab and onto the ground in this economy.