Solar Tower
Posted on July 25th, 2007 by keithy
Why isn't there one up and running yet?
'They' were supposed to be building a 1 km tall version in Australia, but alas, it never happened.
It was supposed to cost about 800 million dollars.
Is it going to be built in America?
Solar Tower
whoops typo! Works better during the day!
Solar Tower
That third paragraph is pretty interesting.
It works BETTER at night, you say.
I am intrigued!
Solar Tower
I remember the solar tower being quite a big thing in the media, but it sort of just faded away. Apparently it's still being developed, and is now in the "Final Feasibility" stage of development. The next stage is the finalisation of design, which will see the construction of the project.
On the "Enviromission Ltd." website (http://www.enviromission.com.au) they claim that the first tower will be operational by 2008, but somehow I can't see that happening. It will provide 200MW of electricity, which is pretty incredible and for $700 million it's reasonable. Once you consider the carbon off-set I imagine it'll be quite a profitable project.
What I find most amazing about this design is that it can produce power at night, due to the heat trapped/generated by the earth. Since it works by temperature difference rather than solar energy itself, it can work any time of the day (although it will work more effectively during the night). Solar Technologies usually only function during the day, which is a major limitation that has been greatly improved by this project.
It looks pretty amazing, they've got a cool "never-gonna-look-like-that" promotional video for the project if anyone's interested: http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/video/video.htm