Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
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Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#2Wonderful if it works as described! That's quite a bit of power. I'd be very interested to know comparisons in terms of how long a traditional power plant takes to become profitable, and also how much initial investment this project is requiring.
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#360%? Darn. I was hoping for better after the hype earlier in the article. Don't large steam plants approach 99%?
150,000 US Homes
Is that a lot? I hate to (continue to) be a cynic, but it doesn't sound like a lot.
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#4For any other Aussies that, like me, vaguely remember the plans for building this near Mildura but can't be bothered watching the video to find out why it didn't happen, the reason cited is a "complete lack of incentives".
Sad that something like this couldn't get a dime from the Australian government while the US "welcomed them with open arms" (and, presumably, truckloads of cash).
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#560%? Darn. I was hoping for better after the hype earlier in the article. Don't large steam plants approach 99%? 150,000 US Homes Is that a lot? I hate to (continue to) be a cynic, but it doesn't sound like a lot.
99%? No. The Carnot limit is much lower than that for the temperatures at which steam turbines operate.
Besides, the thermodynamic efficiency isn't particularly relevant for technologies like this anyway - you're not paying for the input, after all. The efficiencies you care about here are watt/area, energy payback time and, ultimately, $/watt.
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#660%? Darn. I was hoping for better after the hype earlier in the article. Don't large steam plants approach 99%? 150,000 US Homes Is that a lot? I hate to (continue to) be a cynic, but it doesn't sound like a lot.
The Census says there are 110,692,000 occupied homes in the US, so 150k is 0.136% of that.[1] That means that there would need to be 738 of them to meet demand.
Now, the EIA says there are about 5700 power plants currently operating in the US [2]. Continuing with the back of the envelope math, that's almost 8 times as many as would be necessary if they all produced as much as this one. Pick whatever factor you want for "non-home" energy, but we're dealing with the right order of magnitude.
Combine that with the clean energy aspect of it, and I don't see a lot of reason to be cynical.
[1] http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahsfaq.html [2] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=65&t=2
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#7The Empire State is New York State: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State
Or did the article headline really mean the empire state BUILDING? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State_Building
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#8The Empire State is New York State: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State Or did the article headline really mean the empire state BUILDING? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_State_Building
Lovely, downvotes. Guess we don't have too many New Yorkers in the readership here. FYI, you can't shorten the Chrysler Building to 'Chrysler' either. That's a corporation.
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#960%? Darn. I was hoping for better after the hype earlier in the article. Don't large steam plants approach 99%? 150,000 US Homes Is that a lot? I hate to (continue to) be a cynic, but it doesn't sound like a lot.
99%? No. The Carnot limit is much lower than that for the temperatures at which steam turbines operate. Besides, the thermodynamic efficiency isn't particularly relevant for technologies like this anyway - you're not paying for the input, after all. The efficiencies you care about here are watt/area, energy payback time and, ultimately, $/watt.
thermodynamic efficiency should correlate pretty strongly to watt/area because the device harvests sunlight.
Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ
#10The article insists on the plant's low maintenance costs, so this may be a stupid question, but won't the greenhouse* have to be washed regularly of dust? I imagine the accumulation of detritus would significantly impact power production.
Edit: I previously had written mirrors. The concept art looked misleadingly shiny.