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How a Giant Solar Tower Could Power the Future

livescience.com — A new energy concept called a solar tower could generate enough electricity for 200,000 homes. Looking like a giant smokestack, it would release no noxious fumes — just sun-heated air. Demonstrated more than 20 years ago, the basic design calls for solar collectors to warm the air near Earth's surface and then channel it up the tall central tower.

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  • sukmydigg, on 07/02/2008, -2/+30Much less of an eye-sore than all of the huge turbine fans they are putting up....Uses less space...and you can hardly compare 400 homes to 200,000 when speaking of efficiency. When do we get one?
    • promovi, on 07/03/2008, -1/+5You could probably build a smaller one in your backyard, unless you have 200,000 homes.
      • gn0stik, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1A smaller one would take up around a football field's worth of space, but it would produce 20KW.

      • GassyTurd, on 07/03/2008, -0/+8Do they make a smaller one? I only have 120,000 homes.
    • Rewebbed, on 07/03/2008, -7/+2Being that it probably costs about a Jillion dollars, probably never.

      A Jillion is a lot.
      • gn0stik, on 07/03/2008, -1/+2you didn't read it, did you?
      • Rewebbed, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Yes. It mentions no price for the unit. but does for the kilowats it will produce.
      • bosssmiley, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Solution: use zimbabwean dollars. They're running out of room for the zeros on their banknotes. :-)
      • bpoteat, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2"A 200-megawatt solar tower would cost upwards of a billion dollars to build."

        Don't know how much an oil rig costs, but I am pretty sure, it's a lot.
    • jabberwolf, on 07/03/2008, -1/+1True but can you imagine how pissed off you would be if you were a pilot flying over it above?!!
    • xptoast, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Better fix:

      Sterling engine in the desert.

      Heat one portion that is supposed to be hot above ground and bury the part that is supposed to be cold underground where it will have a constant cool temperature. I am pretty sure you can get your heat difference with a good amount of output doing that. No clouds...or at least few clouds in the deserts. Also most deserts tend to stay pretty hot.
      • simonbp, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1I don't know about it being less of an eyesore. The greenhouse is more than 2 miles across. The thing is enormous.
      • xptoast, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1simon...how the heck does your comment even relate to mine?
    • brad3378, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

      I happen to *Like* wind turbines.
    • faatbuddha, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1I can imagine the greenhouses at the bottom actually growing food one day.
  • bosssmiley, on 07/03/2008, -0/+7Interesting. Didn't they used to talk about using temperature gradients in the oceans to do something similar?
    • JHW539, on 07/03/2008, -0/+6They gave a good go at trying to implement running a heat engine off the temperature gradient in the ocean and it and it just didn't pan out. Fouling and capital cost issues I think. On the brightside, a deep water intake pipe from one of the attempts is used to great benefit for some specialized aqua farming in Hawaii.
    • brettg102, on 07/03/2008, -8/+1Bury.
    • gn0stik, on 07/03/2008, -0/+6The science was sound, but oceanic currents proved to be just a little to powerful. It was just too maintenance intensive.
  • wynja, on 07/03/2008, -1/+38This technology was proven in the 1980s and we're still not implementing it....... That's just sad.
    • JHW539, on 07/03/2008, -1/+6Energy was still free in the '80s so it's not surprising alternatives were not run down. It's only recently that the price of oil has approached charging for the energy as opposed to just shipping and handling of the awesomely useful ooze literally shooting out of the ground.
      • wynja, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Energy has never been free. In fact, energy was still quite expensive in the 80s after the 1970s embargo. Oil didn't drop in price until 1991, right after we liberated Kuwait from Iraq..... BTW Iraq invaded Kuwait because Kuwait decided to pump oil out of a field that has 75% of it's mass under Iraq soil.
  • spxiii, on 07/03/2008, -1/+21"A new energy concept.... Demonstrated more than 20 years ago..."

    What?
  • jlhoben, on 07/03/2008, -2/+9I thought the future was mortgaged to the Fed and its private shareholders?
    • rexblade, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2It was but then they repackaged it with some other possible futures and sold it again. Slick
  • underthewether, on 07/03/2008, -10/+4this has been on digg at least twice before:

    http://digg.com/environment/Australia_s_1_600_foot ...

    http://digg.com/tech_news/3%2C280-foot_Tall_Solar_ ...
    • Mykol225, on 07/03/2008, -0/+3Then don't bother clicking on the ***** link! This is the first I've seen it.
    • anothrpath12, on 07/03/2008, -0/+0THANK YOU!

      The first I heard o THIS ***** was is 2002 (or was it 2001? can't remember grad school is a complete $#@%&#!! fog).

      Anyway, if anyone wants a refresher in Alt. E tech all you have to do is go back to the 70's!
      Cheers.
  • Otto, on 07/03/2008, -2/+24Call me crazy, but it seems to be that there's still some engineering issues associated with building a half mile tall tube.

    Sure, the idea is sound and it worked on a smaller scale, but the fact that it would be almost twice as tall as any structure ever made strikes me as a bit silly.
    • thegreatgazoo, on 07/03/2008, -1/+6Don't forget the people concerned about birds bouncing off it it, the fact that it is 'ugly' and so on and so forth.
      • YancyFryJr, on 07/13/2008, -0/+2It's OK. If they really did build it in Arizona, it would be the nicest-looking thing around. All we have is desert, at least in the south.
    • gn0stik, on 07/03/2008, -1/+1Solar thermal towers make far more sense and take up less space, store energy through the night as heat, and have already been tested viable, and are in service. These don't really make that much sense in comparison to other technologies. Sure the materials are cheaper and easier to come by, but the scale keeps the price high.
    • GassyTurd, on 07/03/2008, -1/+3Burj Dubai will be a half mile tall pretty soon.
      • Otto, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1No, it won't. It'll be 636 meters tall. It will only hit 800+ meters because they're sticking a 180 meter antenna on top of the thing. Hardly a "structure" like this thing is.
    • cheezintern, on 07/03/2008, -1/+1you're crazy
    • anothrpath12, on 07/03/2008, -1/+0For more details see: Enviromission.
    • billbugger, on 07/03/2008, -1/+2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_tallest_struc ...
    • anothrpath12, on 07/03/2008, -2/+0YES! U R correct. And EnviroMission is solving them
  • zadadka, on 07/03/2008, -6/+2Um.... I'm confused.....which of these phrases is correct?
    "A new energy concept"
    "Demonstrated more than 20 years ago"

    And if it was as effective as the blurb implies, why hasn't it been adopted...........anywhere?
    • sysop073, on 07/04/2008, -1/+1Because our energy needs are perfectly met, we don't need to make any changes. /wink at Republicans
  • Rewebbed, on 07/03/2008, -1/+6"In 1982, a small prototype was installed in Manzanares, Spain."

    WTF is taking so damn long?
    • gn0stik, on 07/03/2008, -2/+2Inefficient, and logistically prohibitive.
    • insanebrain, on 07/03/2008, -0/+7oil greed
    • jabelli, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1This was actually in a fact article in Analog a few years ago.

      They're waiting for the unobtanium to be mined to build the full scale model.

      In other words, we don't have these for the same reason we don't have space elevators: Materials science hasn't caught up yet.
    • Bytesage, on 07/04/2008, -2/+1one word "Bearucracy"

      ... it also doesn't help that the big oil companies propaganda machine has brainwashed the public into thinking that anything besides coal, oil, or gas is either not feasible, stupid, dangerous, or too expensive. they also have a tendency to keep the gravy train going for politicians.
  • wiggles, on 07/03/2008, -4/+2How is TFA different from this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

    These designs have been in use for years.
    • brettg102, on 07/03/2008, -0/+4It's very different. This uses the thermal gradient in the tower to drive a turbine (rising air currents)...that uses concentrated solar power to keep molten salt and use that to create steam.
    • gn0stik, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Read the article and you'll know.
    • intangible, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1I wonder if you could combine the two... hmmmmm
  • evillawngnome, on 07/03/2008, -0/+3There was an article about this concept on Gizmodo the other day. Not solar towers, but heliostats in general. The MIT student's proposal was that it is cheaper to build several small heliostats for a home than it would be to build one large tower. On a small scale, you can use water/steam and batteries. On the large scale, you have molten salt and all the problems of working with it.

    In any event, yes, THIS is the solar power we need.
    • evillawngnome, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1wow, i fail at RTFA. This is some kind of air heating tom-foolery, NOT a traditional solar power tower.
  • ExRe, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2How is this any more efficient than having mirrors heat a liquid which turns a turbine? No need for a huge tower.
    • brettg102, on 07/03/2008, -0/+3I guess if anything, less land taken up...but IMO a .5 mile tall structure is just as disruptive as a few hundred acres of solar concentrators.
  • zhallock, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2So this thing is supposed to heat air on the ground with the sun's energy.... with a reflective surface. Ok, I'm stupid, how does reflecting light absorb the energy?
    • TheOtherOne135, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Well, *according to the article*, there's a greenhouse . . . . The air inside the greenhouse heats up (as a result of all that light) . . . . Then the hot air in the greenhouse rises up the tower, spinning turbines along the way. The hotter the air at the bottom (in comparison to the air at the top), the faster the air rises and the more energy you get out of it.
    • ChileanGoD, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1"solar collectors to warm the air near Earth's surface and then channel it up the tall central tower. Turbines placed at the bottom make electricity from the updraft."
    • jstrelaxn, on 07/23/2008, -0/+0The panels surrounding the tower are glass, not mirrors.
  • Hellothere123, on 07/03/2008, -0/+4It can also be used as a prehistoric clock.
  • samoan27, on 07/03/2008, -1/+14This article had me until the very end when it started trash talking nuclear. Anyone who says nuclear power is not a "fuel for the future" clearly doesn't know how breeder reactors work. When you can power the US for the next 500 years on our nuclear waste alone (no more mining), don't discount it as an unclean, limited resource.
  • verbose, on 07/03/2008, -1/+15I'd rather see my tax dollars go to two of these than another stealth bomber or a few more days in Iraq.
  • RudeTurnip, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1The Decepticons built one of these over 20 years ago and one of the more, ahem, "liberal-minded" Autobots even helped to build it (Hoist I think). I think Devestator knocked it down by accident when the other Autobots found out and attacked.
  • Yoness, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Why don't we just make mega sized version of one of those arm-waving air balloons, like they have in front of car dealerships and furniture stores. It would be much cheaper than a mile high tower of concrete and more fun to look at...
  • erhanaltay, on 07/03/2008, -5/+2I don't see what the big rush is. Oil is basically stored solar energy. Those organisms that died and turned into petrol grew either directly or indirectly through solar energy. Lets just wait till all the delicious oil is used up, and by then the technology for solar and wind will be better anyway.

    Or is it because so many of you twits are falling for that global warming nonsense. All the carbon that is currently inside all the oil in the world was once in the atmosphere. Oil is formed when something goes wrong with the regular decomposition process. There is nothing wrong with a slightly warmer earth. In fact, it would be better for humanity. Siberia. Greenland, Canada are all currently too cold and could benafit from more warmth. Sure some places like Bangladesh will lose out, but the NET gain is great.
    • ghank, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2"Canada are all currently too cold"

      Too cold? it was 35 degrees in the shade here 2 days ago. Contrary to what your Educational system has been teaching you, Canada is not covered in ice and snow, and we don't live in igloos. Also, the 35 degrees I stated is in Celsius, I don't feel the need to dumb it down for you in Fahrenheit.
    • cph1, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Whats the problem with oil?
      Well the first problem is that there is not enough of it. Go look at the price of gas. See the problem? Clearly oil will not be able to sustain humanity's energy needs and thus we need to look into alternatives.

      As far as the climate change nonsense, go ask someone in Iowa if they are better off now that their house is underwater.
    • Sillytuna, on 07/03/2008, -0/+11) A slightly warmer earth means more energy in the system, not everyone just being a bit warmer. It changes the climate, warming some, cooling others, and adjusting areas of extreme weather (somewhat unclear whether there will be more extreme weather but models say yes at the moment).

      2) Yes, you are releasing CO2 most likely in the atmosphere in the past. Just two small problems - it wasn't all there at the same time and 2) the atmosphere and climate were very considerably different. The world will go on, humans will go on, but climate change has big effects. If North America's crops don't grow for example, or entire countries are flooded out, etc.

      One of the reasons humans dominate right now is because the atmosphere and climate are working in our favour. However, the earth's inhabitants created this atmosphere/climate and we're now radically changing the biological systems that got us here. People just don't realise why the atmosphere/climate are like they are. It's no accident, and biological organisms/physical mechanisms really do affect it massively.
  • yosquire, on 07/03/2008, -1/+5Am I the only one who noticed the article says "200,000 homes" then turns right around and says "200,000 megawatts"?

    Nuclear power plants are usually are about 1000 megawatt, so this thing equals 200 Nuclear power plants?

    Hoover Dam, outside of Vegas, only produces 2074 megawatts maximum and it's massive.

    200k homes and 200k megawatts, I don't know about you but I don't think I've ever hit 1 megawatt of power draw at my house. At one megawatt my power bill would be $56,160 for the month.

    Buried since it's amateur hour reporting.
  • legatus, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1Ahem, the article does say the tower is only 1/10 as efficient as current solar panels, so why?
    • cph1, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2If you read the next sentence in the article you'd know (its cheap)
  • stopbrorape, on 07/03/2008, -0/+4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tWlP0knKQU
  • CowDefender, on 07/03/2008, -0/+3How about coating the bottom of the greenhouse enclosure with solar paneling?
    If you're going to have a renewable source power plant you might as well use the structure's footprint to its fullest.
    A Double Solar power plant.
  • Volath, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Didn't they have these kinds of power plants in Sim City 2000?
  • tlo182, on 07/03/2008, -1/+1These are the type of things that people laugh at in 50 years because of how outlandish it turns out to be when something much smaller and more powerful comes along.
    • Bytesage, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1They ran a pilot plant in Spain in the 80's, it was only 50kw, and even at that tiny scale it was profitable. However the main purpose of that plant was to try out different materials and see what kind of problems they might run into. The first surprise they got was that it also works at *night* because the ground gets warmed up during the day, heats up the air at night and runs the turbine.
      http://www.solarmissiontechnologies.com/solar_towe ...
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCGVTYtJEFk

      Besides can you imagine the tourism?! Stick a restaurant and a gift shop at the top and you could probably cover the maintenance cost from that!
  • diggdat, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2They could offset some cost by leasing space to telco's etc.

    May be add microwave and cell tower equipment at various points up the tower.
    But it seems pretty bulky to me for the power output.
  • mk3k, on 07/03/2008, -1/+0How a Giant Solar Tower Could Power the Future?
    With the sun?
  • JCougar, on 07/03/2008, -0/+3If they build condos at the top of these and we can all live like the Jetsons!!!
  • cph1, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1The towers are a cool idea but aren't very economical. For the chimney effect to work they need to be excessively tall, which presents other problems. It would be cool to see one or two built but they wouldn't work on a large scale.
    • CowDefender, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1I think we'll probably want to use a lot of approaches to deal with our energy consumption. There'll be places where these will be ideal. Maybe there'll only be four or five of them in the whole US, but if they do a good job, it'd be worth it.
    • Bytesage, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1How can you say they wouldn't work on a large scale? Have you BUILT ONE?! Do you work for some big oil company? Is this what your corporate masters told you to put here?

      Besides don't you think that maybe, just *maybe* whoever is spending around $1billion would have done some homework to make SURE that it works?

      This is the kind of tech that works better at large scales. The tiny 50kw test plant that was run for 9 years in Spain proved beyond any doubt that it works, AND even IT was economical. They even replaced the generator with a larger one at one point.

      Watch and learn!
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCGVTYtJEFk
      • cph1, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Yes, actually I have a mile-tall chimney in my backyard. Strange no one has said anything about it.

        If YOU did your homework you'd know that there are more efficient, cheaper forms of alternative energy in existence. We already have wind farms that cost twice as much as this supposed project but can power six times as many homes. The prototype chimney achieves an average of 30kw for 1 million dollars whereas the average windmill will provide 1.5Mw for 3 million dollars. thats 500 times the power per dollar on a small scale. If you watched the video you'd know that the area of spain that the prototype was built achieves wind speeds that can get up to 150 km/h. It would have been much more efficient to place a wind farm on that land instead of the chimney.

        On a large scale the chimney becomes more efficient but still less so than alternatives. There are obvious problems with constructing projects that are twice as tall as any structure we have made and 1.5 miles in radius. By producing a chimney of this size you lose the opportunity cost of the land space whereas photovoltaics and wind power can be built in rural and urban areas without taking up land. Photovoltaics and wind power are much more versatile, efficient, and can be built almost anywhere without problems.
  • yhup, on 07/03/2008, -1/+1Oh noes! What's next? Mobile suits?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam_00
  • trollick, on 07/03/2008, -1/+1Inaccurate.
    It will only power 200,000 homes, not the whole future.
  • bigsteve3OOO, on 07/03/2008, -1/+1how am I supposed to strap this onto my Buick?
  • eightyk88, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1it gets hotter closer to earth. the more heat the more kinetic energy it could build up... but ok w/e
  • Rippleeffect, on 07/03/2008, -0/+1So what happens during a thunderstorm? Hail anyone?
  • Hyperion1144, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2I see no capability for overnight energy storage, unlike a concentrated solar system with a working fluid like molten salt that can store the heat overnight to generate power. How is this superior to molten-salt concentrated solar system?
  • 808ethan, on 07/03/2008, -0/+2Planning to build it in the southern states - Fail.

    I know you need sun and all, but they will demolish it either saying it uses witch magic and god only lets it work to test their faith, or that it will take their jobs.

  • ttfkam, on 07/03/2008, -2/+21.5 square miles for 200MW of power? Hmmm, let's see.

    The US averages 57,077,626MW of power consumed at any given time (based on a reasonable estimate of 500 billion megawatt-hours per year). Obviously the consumption is greater during the day than at night, but the math is simpler taking a straight average.

    * 57,077,626 megawatts for just the US
    * 200 megawatts from each solar tower
    * 19.63 square kilometers per tower (based on 2.5 kilometer radius for the greenhouse at its base, a stat listed in the article)

    So that's about 285,388 towers to power the country or 5,602,166 square kilometers dedicated to these towers. Well, that's obviously a low estimate considering that these towers will not be producing peak capacity more than 6-8 hours a day, i.e., when the sun is shining.

    Each tower, according to the article, would cost 1 billion dollars. This comes out to be over 285 trillion dollars to construct. I fairness, let's amortize this figure over 50 years, the expected lifespan of a tower, and we'll ignore maintenance costs for now (perhaps they were included in the billion-dollar estimate). That's 5.7 trillion dollars a year, every year, for fifty years before you start it all over again.

    Me? I vote for nuclear. Over 2,000 MW per nuclear power plant in California -- where we have two of them -- and they each take up about 750 acres, or 3 square kilometers. Diablo Canyon cost $5.5 billion to construct. So for ten times the power, they each take up less than one sixth the area, and that's for only five and a half times the cost. It's time to spend more effort dealing with the nuclear waste processing and disposal issue than putting more and more lipstick onto the solar power pig.
  • Iztikeit, on 07/03/2008, -1/+0Let's just make Wyoming a big solar tower.
  • sephiroth4, on 07/03/2008, -2/+1GUNDAM SEED 00!!!!!!! Where's my freakin Gundam?!
  • Fubarepublic, on 07/04/2008, -0/+1Got to love the Australian Government for pissing on this project...
  • anasuya, on 07/04/2008, -1/+1Solar cells will be 3cents per kwh very soon, these don't make sense. And solar cells can be upgraded as tech advances, this doesn't allow that freedom
  • rxbudian, on 07/04/2008, -1/+1Doesn't anyone ever consider the impact on the climate?
    What it is doing is basically pumping hot air into the sky, that means it is increasing the speed of energy transfers in the atmosphere.
    That will impact the balance of barometric pressure between regions and also affect air movement and wind direction. So one possible effect of this is that you might get less rain (all the energy gets pumped directly up without having the energy evaporate some water and carry it to the sky).
    With the climate is getting messed up, these things might cause a big impact.
  • Ryvenn, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1Not gonna happen. This made it into a 2002 edition of Time Magazine. It has been in the "feasibility study stage" for the project in Australia for the last 8 years. Easily possible but nobody can be ***** actually doing it.
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