Solar Tower Power Generation

Posted on August 3, 2006  Comments (2)

How Australia got hot for solar power

In Australia Enviromission looking to build a 1,600-foot tall “solar tower” that can power 100,000 homes.

The tower will be over there,” Davey says, pointing to a spot a mile distant where a 1,600-foot structure will rise from the ocher-colored earth. Picture a 260-foot-diameter cylinder taller than the Sears Tower encircled by a two-mile-diameter transparent canopy at ground level. About 8 feet tall at the perimeter, where Davey has his feet planted, the solar collector will gradually slope up to a height of 50 to 60 feet at the tower’s base.

Acting as a giant greenhouse, the solar collector will superheat the air with radiation from the sun. Hot air rises, naturally, and the tower will operate as a giant vacuum. As the air is sucked into the tower, it will produce wind to power an array of turbine generators clustered around the structure.

The result: enough clean, green electricity to power some 100,000 homes without producing a particle of pollution or a wisp of planet-warming gases.

View Discovery Channel segment on EnviroMission

2 Responses to “Solar Tower Power Generation”

  1. Curious Cat Science Blog » Wind Power
    February 23rd, 2008 @ 7:39 pm

    Graph of wind power capacity in the USA from 1981 – 2005 (from 10 Megawatts to 9,149 megawatts)…

  2. CuriousCat: Cost Efficient Solar Dish by Students
    June 23rd, 2008 @ 4:28 pm

    “A team led by MIT students this week successfully tested a prototype of what may be the most cost-efficient solar power system in the world…”

Leave a Reply