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What is a Solar Tower?
Michael Anissimov
Michael Anissimov
A solar tower is an environment-friendly way of generating power by exploiting the temperature differential between air at ground level and air at a significant elevation. One design slated to be built in Australia as early as 2006 is a kilometer tall and would produce as much energy as a small nuclear reactor. A proof-of-concept design in Spain is 195 meters tall and was able to produce as much as 50 kW of power.
At the base of a solar tower is a solar collector - a huge (~25,000 acres or 100 square kilometers) transparent circular skirt made of plastic that creates a greenhouse effect and heats the air trapped in the skirt. The solar tower is hollow, like a chimney, and extracts energy from the hot air rising rapidly to the top of the tower using turbines. The taller the tower, the more energy is extracted. The tower works 24 hours a day because the ground underneath the tower retains heat absorbed during the day and continues to release it at night.
The Australian solar tower is forecasted to cost about $500 million and would be the tallest man-made structure in the world, almost twice the size of Toronto's CN Tower. Its construction would be undertaken by the Melbourne-based EnviroMission Limited, with support from the Australian government. It is estimated that the tower would produce 200 megawatts, enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, and keep almost a million tons of greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere annually. A solar tower would be a massive landmark, visible from as far as 80 miles away. It requires a staff of only 15 technicians to operate.
The solar tower is perhaps the most impressive proposed alternative to fossil fuels or nuclear power. It would be an ideal stopgap measure to supply the human race with cheap power until we develop fusion power, improve on fission, find a way to deploy large networks of solar panels, or come up with some even better idea to supply ourselves with the power we crave.
Michael Anissimov
Michael is a longtime TheSolarPanelGuide contributor who specializes in topics relating to paleontology, physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, and futurism. In addition to being an avid blogger, Michael is particularly passionate about stem cell research, regenerative medicine, and life extension therapies. He has also worked for the Methuselah Foundation, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the Lifeboat Foundation.
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Michael Anissimov
Michael is a longtime TheSolarPanelGuide contributor who specializes in topics relating to paleontology, physics, biology, astronomy, chemistry, and futurism. In addition to being an avid blogger, Michael is particularly passionate about stem cell research, regenerative medicine, and life extension therapies. He has also worked for the Methuselah Foundation, the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the Lifeboat Foundation.
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![Currently, power produced through fusion is not commercially viable because it requires more energy to produce than it yields.]()
Currently, power produced through fusion is not commercially viable because it requires more energy to produce than it yields.
Discussion Comments
@istria- In my opinion, the most promising dual use of solar tower power would be in the arid regions of the developing world. The beauty of a solar tower power is the collector acts as a greenhouse for agricultural purposes.
The height requirement of the solar collectors on one of these plants is flexible. In theory, you could turn arid land into land suitable for growing certain crops. The collector not only traps heat, it traps moisture that would normally transpire into the atmosphere. This would increase the natural moisture content of the soil underneath the collector, making it promising for these regions that often import much of their food.
@istria- this technology is not new. It has been explored for at least a hundred years, if not longer. In certain places, the reverse effect is used in a wind tower, which uses a tower to capture wind, thus creating a cool breeze that flows down the tower.
Anyway, solar tower power plants can be sited almost anywhere, although efficiency of the system decreases as you move away from the tropics. If you were to have a solar tower in Canada, you would want to locate the plant on a large hillside so that the greenhouse collector could face south. In Northern locations, it might be a good idea to look into a combined system that uses solar convection as well as solar photovoltaic. This would increase the efficiency of the system per area of land.
This is important because the biggest indicator of the price of generated power in a solar tower system is the cost of land. If you could find a hillside big enough in an uninhabited region, you could possibly generate electricity that is competitive with other forms.
What are the comparisons between a solar tower system and a concentrating solar system? What are some of the disadvantages of solar towers? Do solar towers only work in hot climates or can they be functional in colder climate zones? I live in Canada, and I would be curious to know if we could use this technology in the north.
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