MASSIVE Solar Tower in Arizona Will Be World's 2nd Tallest Structure, page

An Australian company named EnviroMission is using an extremely basic principle of physics - the fact that warm air rises - to spearhead one of the biggest engineering projects the world has ever seen.

The 2600ft tall, football field sized, "Solar Chimney" would generate 200MW of clean, renewable energy (enough to power 150,000 homes) with an expected structural lifetime of 80 years.



The way the whole thing works is really simple: use a ginormous canopy (2 mile diameter!) to trap hot air warmed by the intense Arizona Sun. That air would then be (naturally) forced to escape up through the half-mile long tower in the center. As it rushes through the structure, it would drive turbines that generate electricity.



It's sort of the exact opposite of a hydro plant that uses water and gravity to drive turbines - whereas this uses air and buoyancy instead.

As for the cost - a cool $750 million. But it's expected the plant would pay for itself in only 11 years, as the design is so simple it has barely any operating costs.

The beauty is that there are very few moving parts, so it doesn't cost much to operate, and because the area under the canopy heats up so much and there's still going to be a significant temperature differential between the bottom and the top of the tower, it can continue to produce power at night.

Source


Here's a promotional video, involving a smaller version of this technology that has already been built in Spain:




Also to get an idea of just how tall this thing is, here's the tallest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is less than 100 ft higher than what the projected height of the Arizona Solar Tower would be:



Crazy!

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

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Yeah for sure, $750 million of capital might be a pretty hefty sum to start, but with only an 11-year return on investment that makes it almost a no-brainer. All that follows is ~70 years of CHEAP, clean energy afterward

It's interesting too in that promotional video they point out that the land underneath the canopy becomes very green because of the warm air and condensation at night.

It makes me wonder if they could use these things - effectively giant greenhouses in the desert - to maybe also grow something like switchgrass, which is a potentially viable biofuel, just to add that much more bang for the buck.

reply to post by mc_squared

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Well regardless of how expensive it will be to build this, I am very glad there are those out there who are still coming up with original and innovative ideas that will help our race move forward.

This idea is very similar to the idea I had about mass solar dishes and solar farms in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada. All of which have thousands of acres of unused nearly uninhabitable land which would be perfect for such experiments.

Originally posted by mc_squared
An Australian company named EnviroMission is using an extremely basic principle of physics - the fact that warm air rises - to spearhead one of the biggest engineering projects the world has ever seen.

Ah yes, the exact same company that was going to build one here in Australia, near Mildura, and nothing has emerged after about 10 years of nothingness.

They came up with pretty pictures for that one too.

I've no doubt the technology works, I'm just doubting that company has any money.

Originally posted by SirMike
$750 million ... I'll beleive that when I see it

All it is is a giant plastic canopy, a very tall cylinder and some turbines. I don't think $750 mill is all that unreasonable. It's not like we're talking about the LHC here or something.

There's also this little factor too:

the project will cost $750 million to construct, an effort that will create about 1,500 construction jobs.

Source

An update: this project is moving forward. Expected to break ground in late 2012, be operational by 2015.

Local news video here.

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