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Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

gizmag.com

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Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#71

Post by Groxx »

You mean they're actually going through with it? Awesome! I hope it works as well as planned.

I'm extremely interested in the aftermath of all this. The building itself is clever and all, but what will the ecological impact be? Wind farms kill birds and bats and there's evidence the sound drives many more off, concentrated solar has a nasty habit of significantly heating the air around the plant and hydro-dams are enormously destructive no matter how you look at it. What's a 1/2-mile-tall heat pump going to do?

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#72

Post by Luyt »

nixy wrote: post #63

This is a question out of pure curiosity, I'm not very well read on these subjects, so please forgive me if this is a dumb one. Is there any reason why this can't be built as an underground structure? If it's working on temperature differentials, shouldn't you be able to achieve a more constant capacity by plugging it into earth where temperatures change less?

The sun doesn't shine underground...

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#73

Post by Luyt »

I see two insurmountable problems with this solar tower, in this age of rising environmental concerns and increasing influence of environmental pressure groups:

- The base of the tower covers a huge piece of land, which is now home to various desert creatures. Changing their habitat is unacceptable from the environmental protectionists' viewpoint. The precious creatures (probably some endangered species too) would probably die.

- Visual pollution. Nobody wants to have ugly structures in his backyard, let alone a half-a-mile-high tower which will be visible from a huge area. It detonates with the natural desert views of Arizona.

Because of these two reasons, this solar tower project will face years of litigation from environmental pressure groups, and in the end the project will probably stall.

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#74

Post by adaml_623 »

ajkessler wrote: post #16
knowtheory wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me like you'd need to keep all the glass clean too, which means more manpower & water/air power to get all the crap off. I'd be quite curious what the actual maintenance costs will be. Still, no feedstock into the process means that you'd have to have pretty serious component failure to bring the running costs up to oil plants presumably.

Yes, but that brings up a good question. Anyone who owns a computer knows that air isn't pristine. It picks up all kinds of crap. If this beast has as much suction as the article implies, it's going to be inhaling all kinds of debris. I would guess it gets filtered so you don't damage the turbines, in which case somebody's going to have to be cleaning those filters pretty regularly.

The turbines will basically be the same as wind turbines rather than the steam/gas turbine you might be thinking of. They won't be bothered by dust.

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#75

Post by adaml_623 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #11

Since this seems to work on temperature differentials, could you run it up the side of a mountain? Seems you could get height differences of 5-7k feet in a lot of places with that approach...

If you check out the wiki article then you can see that you are absolutely correct. You can get a system like this working on a mountainside as long as it faces the sun. I think there are some engineering tradeoffs that have to be considered and also environmental concerns. I think it's a lot easier to find a desert with minimal ecosystem compared to a mountainside

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#76

Post by patrickk »

geuis wrote: post #28
ajkessler wrote: post #12

Really? Very cool idea, but some of the claims sound downright ridiculous. First, the zero maintenance claim that is touted at least 3 times by the article seems suspicious. You can't really leave anything out in the desert sun and not have to maintain or replace it. Sun will disintegrate a lot of material, not to mention wind and sand. Anybody have any info or insight into what material they are using to create the…

Desert environments are extremely good at preserving things, particularly technological devices. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Mojave,+CA&hl=en&ll=35... The above link shows an aircraft storage facility in Mojave, California. There are a number of such facilities in the US, and many more worldwide. It was discovered some decades ago that you can leave a plane in the desert for years at a time, and when you come back…

Hey geuis,

I'm the guy who submitted that story ;)

It was in Libya during WWII that it happened:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475048

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#77

Post by adaml_623 »

serichsen wrote: post #59

Big toy. For one, maintenance will _not_ be low. Wind turbines (and nothing else is used here) do have quite some maintenance costs, and additionally, you need to keep the greenhouse clean. The main problem I see is the capacity. 200 MW peak capacity at 60% efficiency translates to 120 MW peak electric energy. If we assume 50% capacity factor (which I suspect is _very_ generous), we arrive at 60 MWe average output. Y…

Wish I could downvote your post for repetition and for just making up stuff.

'200 MW peak capacity at 60% efficiency translates to 120 MW peak electric energy'. This sentence makes no sense. They are building a 200MW plant. That is the amount of electricity it will put out at peak.

You made up the number for 50% capacity figure just then didn't you? You did. I just saw you. So your final figure is wrong.

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#78

Post by estel »

kylec wrote: post #29

The Arizona tower will be a staggering 800 metres or so tall - just 30 meters shorter than the colossal Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world's tallest man-made structure. Is there any reason why this can't be constructed to be 831 meters tall to edge out the Burj Dubai?

By 2015, there will probably be three or four other buildings taller than the Burj.

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#79

Post by savramescu »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #69
ahlatimer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can't only have these things powering US homes because I can't imagine they work that well at night.

They do actually.

Truth be told, the article doesn't say how well they work at night. I don't think that it'll work just as good, but that doesn't mean it won't work at all.

Re: Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

#80

Post by adaml_623 »

I've been following Enviromission for quite a while now (maybe since 2001?). I check out their website once a year or so to see how they are going. They have been championing this technology for quite a while.

I think it's sad that there are so many people doing back of the envelope calculations and wasting time typing them into Hacker News. There are 100s of millions of dollars involved people. Someone qualified will check the figures. And really it's not rocket science.

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