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I haven't been able to find out what the upflow airspeed will be. If it's large enough one could wear a winged suit and freefall in the funnel. That would be awesome.
This is just so cool. I'm curious about the local weather impact of something like this. Basically, what these guys are doing is creating a continuous, artificial thermal, the same type you use for flying hang gliders and sailplanes. I'm certain the guys have done the math, but I'm wondering if you won't get cloud formation above the tower due to condensation of the hot air rising through the tower. Meteorological th…
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I'm pretty sure that was part of the plot from The Mummy? :) In any case, desert is great for preserving stuff in terms of low humidity (ie things don't rot). Not so good for preserving stuff in terms of them getting sand blasted. Especially in AZ where winds routinely hit 100mph+ during gusts and 60mph during windstorms. Not to mention the haboobs. Also, the prototype of this tower in Spain figured out that the plas…
> I'm pretty sure that was part of the plot > from The Mummy? :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Be_Good_(aircraft)
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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.
I agree the 200MW is output, so no efficient factor should be added, but Enviromission says the capacity factor is 50%: http://www.enviromission.com.au/IRM/Company/ShowPage.aspx?CP... Makes sense, since half of the time it's night...
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But... 'merica.
... fuck yeah! Honestly though, why compete just to show off? There its making money as the tallest structure, here it will be completely isolated, nobody comes here, whoopteedoo. Here it is also all about cost-benefit. There will be no tourism.
I'd want to see it if I am in Arizona! But I don't care if it is tallest structure in the world, I'm in it for the power engineering.
My wife and I live in Arizona (in the mountains) and we are having solar panels installed on our roof in 2 weeks that will furnish 100% or more of our electricity needs for about 10 months a year (and we will often make a little money back selling back power to our utility company) and cover about 50% of our needs the two months a year that we run our air conditioning.
A few friends have been critical of our decision for monetary reasons, and they may be right, but it is something we wanted to do. Also, if prices for energy, food, etc. increase dramatically, then we will break even on costs sooner rather than the anticipated 6 or 7 year time frame.
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Appreciate the analysis, however I believe you made a fairly significant error with the solar capacity percentage. Unlike other solar power, the cool thing about this structure is that it doesn't specifically require constant sunshine to work effectively being that it works off the temperature differential through the tower, rather than pulling energy strictly from solar panels. Because of this, I would imagine capac…
It still needs a temperature differential to run, which will not be there at night, so the best you could get is about 50%. This is the number that Enviro Mission uses.
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 wil…
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. I think it's sad that you think that. One of the fundamental qualities of science is that it can be independently verified, and one of the fundamental qualities of hackers is that they don'…
So I'll change my words to say: I think it's sad that there are so many educated and capable people doing back of the envelope calculations on Hacker News. Half of us are capable of hunting down the original papers on solar towers and running the numbers through the proper calculations.
Also why are we just typing out the equations using text. It's the 21st century! We need a better way to discuss technical matters.
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 pr…