Plan to use solar power in Arizona in super-cool power-station is mostly hot air

[Aimless]

And it looks pretty cool:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22907

If you use eg. the super-cool new concrete technology that has a net negative carbon emission it looks even better. You could probably also increase the amount of heat stored during the day and made available during the night for continured power generation.

[Dreadnaught]

The numbers don't really add-up to me. One billion dollars to build a massive tower that will power only 100,000 homes? Nuclear plants could be built with a much smaller footprint with less cost-per-home.

I agree this is much more attractive than solar, but you would need about 50-60 of them to power Sweden.

[Flixy]

The numbers don't really add-up to me. One billion dollars to build a massive tower that will power only 100,000 homes? Nuclear plants could be built with a much smaller footprint with less cost-per-home.

I agree this is much more attractive than solar, but you would need about 50-60 of them to power Sweden.

A 200 MW power plant is not much below average size, actually (for reference, the local nuclear power plant here generates about 500MWe) And one billion dollars isn't insane, IIRC from a case study we did on the university, a 500 MW coal fired power plant costs 5-6 billion, and eats a [i[shitload[/i] of coal every year. I could be completely wrong here, I'll look it up when I get home. I will say that 1 billion for this looks like it's an underestimation, or excludes some infrastructure. Or at least is optimistic. But upkeep should be relatively low compared to coal fired, and possibly nuclear.


Sweden would also be a very shitty location for sunpowered stuff, in general

[wiggin]

Actually, a 2200 MW plant being planned in the US is expected to cost around $10 billion, and this is a 200 MW plant for ~$1 billion. Obviously there are a lot of unknowns about the costs for both plants (estimates are likely to be lower than reality), and who knows what the maintenance costs would be like. But I'd say this probably isn't much more expensive than nuclear plants, though the footprint is a bit smaller and it's obviously only suited for some locales.

[Aimless]

I'd argue for this being a better investment than nuclear power in those locales (not Sweden ). It'll be up in a jiffy and pay off much sooner, you won't have to worry as much about handling waste, personnel costs would probably be lower. 750 million is probably a low-ball estimate but even at 1 billion it doesn't seem to be a bad idea. You can just keep building more and more of these big boys

[Dreadnaught]

The long-term maintenance issue is certainly a big potential difference.

I read somewhere that, if we dam-up Canada's rivers and flood 0.5% of their landmass, we'll have enough power for one whole month.

[Flixy]

The long-term maintenance issue is certainly a big potential difference.

I read somewhere that, if we dam-up Canada's rivers and flood 0.5% of their landmass, we'll have enough power for one whole month.

I am trying to make sense of your statement, but if you dam it up, you presumably get a continuous amount of power for your dam, so how does that give you power for 'one month'?

[EyeKhan]

And it looks pretty cool:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22907

If you use eg. the super-cool new concrete technology that has a net negative carbon emission it looks even better. You could probably also increase the amount of heat stored during the day and made available during the night for continured power generation.

Aims, thanks for posting this, its totally awesome. I love it. No pollution, small foot print, no water usage, capable of working past sun set. Wow.

A further thought - why not combine this sort of power generation into the structures of actual high rise buildings? People could live or work in that thing is what I'm saying. Imagine if half the buildings in Phoenix, AZ had a smaller scale version of this system that produced enough energy to not only run the building but sell a bit of extra power into the city's power grid? Why not? And they could sink a geo-thermal system into each building's foundation too to add more power generation. I'm not sure if you could side the building with solar voltaics or not - it might interfere with heating the air - but if that did not get in the way, bam, you're producing traditional solar power too. Hell, a city with lots of tall buildings in any sun-belt state could produce most of its own power and even partially power its suburbs.

The numbers don't really add-up to me. One billion dollars to build a massive tower that will power only 100,000 homes? Nuclear plants could be built with a much smaller footprint with less cost-per-home.

Nuclear plants have huge footprints. Reading the article, I didn't see where the tower has that big a footprint...

If there is a wide footprint, btw, adding to my extended thoughts above, that could be built above or beneath a parking structure/lot at the base of the building. In any case, while I like nuclear, there is the issue of waste production and the safety systems cost is very high. Maintenane of a nuclear plant is very costly too. This thing, with its wind turbines, is going to require maintenance too, but not like a nuclear plant.

You can just keep building more and more of these big boys

Like a city full of them.

I read somewhere that, if we dam-up Canada's rivers and flood 0.5% of their landmass, we'll have enough power for one whole month.

Not sure if you're for or against this, but damming rivers is generally very destructive, requires a huge footprint, and results in all sorts of unintended consequences.

Take Egypt's Aswan dam as a perfect example. Not only was a bunch of land up river flooded, but the Nile's regular seasonal flooding was eliminated down river from the dam. At the time this was thought to be a great idea for the locals, but the unintended consequence was that the farmland bordering the river no longer got the excellent natural soil renewal - ferilization - that the regular flooding provided. So artificial fertilization was required, which cost money, and required oil to produce, offsetting the cheap and clean nature of the dam's electricity. Worse, and my recollection on this is fuzzy, a certain human parasite found the new river conditions, either above or below the dam, very appealing so the locals suddenly had a new disease vector to contend with. I'm not sure if that was a mosquito or not, I'd have to look it up.

If you did dam up every geographically viable river in Canada to produce electricity, the effect on the environment would almost certainly be as unexpected and problematic as the Aswan dam.

I am trying to make sense of your statement, but if you dam it up, you presumably get a continuous amount of power for your dam, so how does that give you power for 'one month'?

Yes, I agree. Now that I look at it, there's something missing in that thought.

[Aimless]

Aims, thanks for posting this, its totally awesome. I love it. No pollution, small foot print, no water usage, capable of working past sun set. Wow.

A further thought - why not combine this sort of power generation into the structures of actual high rise buildings? People could live or work in that thing is what I'm saying. Imagine if half the buildings in Phoenix, AZ had a smaller scale version of this system that produced enough energy to not only run the building but sell a bit of extra power into the city's power grid? Why not? And they could sink a geo-thermal system into each building's foundation too to add more power generation. I'm not sure if you could side the building with solar voltaics or not - it might interfere with heating the air - but if that did not get in the way, bam, you're producing traditional solar power too. Hell, a city with lots of tall buildings in any sun-belt state could produce most of its own power and even partially power its suburbs.

People are toying with these ideas. I occasionally see some article in eg. tech review about some building with some sort of built-in power-generation tech. One example:

http://inhabitat.com/the-strata-worl...wind-turbines/

There are a couple of design concepts floating around where buildings can be designed to channel wind towards turbines. Couple that with more and more efficient buildings and fairly simple ways to make use of natural light and you've got human structures that aren't just blights

[EyeKhan]

People are toying with these ideas. I occasionally see some article in eg. tech review about some building with some sort of built-in power-generation tech. One example:

http://inhabitat.com/the-strata-worl...wind-turbines/

There are a couple of design concepts floating around where buildings can be designed to channel wind towards turbines. Couple that with more and more efficient buildings and fairly simple ways to make use of natural light and you've got human structures that aren't just blights

It's impossible to have an original idea.

[Aimless]

Btw, since you seem to be interested in renewable candy:

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/...research-53742



I'm guessing they can and will change the design to increase air velocity.

[Aimless]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

[wiggin]

For the record, I think we should think long and hard about maintenance issues. It's all well and good to assume costs will be low due to the fact that it doesn't need fuel, but this is not a simple device and I don't think any of us have a clue how expensive it will be to periodically maintain/replace turbines halfway up a skyscraper. This is probably a worthwhile concept to explore, but I doubt it's a magic panacea.

As for original ideas, Nessus is right - any self-respecting PhD probably had to come up with at least one good idea during the course of their degree.

[Aimless]

For the record, I think we should think long and hard about maintenance issues. It's all well and good to assume costs will be low due to the fact that it doesn't need fuel, but this is not a simple device and I don't think any of us have a clue how expensive it will be to periodically maintain/replace turbines halfway up a skyscraper. This is probably a worthwhile concept to explore, but I doubt it's a magic panacea.

You can have the [main] turbine[s] right near the bottom. I think that's the basic design and it's supposed to be one of the better features And if you have some way to just block the chimney you don't have to worry about being blown away either

In addition to not needing fuel I'm guessing it may require less qualified personnel than eg. a nuclear powerplant, both to build and to run/maintain. If it's built in a modular fashion you may even get it running before the entire structure is complete.

[Khendraja'aro]

For the record, I think we should think long and hard about maintenance issues. It's all well and good to assume costs will be low due to the fact that it doesn't need fuel, but this is not a simple device and I don't think any of us have a clue how expensive it will be to periodically maintain/replace turbines halfway up a skyscraper. This is probably a worthwhile concept to explore, but I doubt it's a magic panacea.

As for original ideas, Nessus is right - any self-respecting PhD probably had to come up with at least one good idea during the course of their degree.

Considering that the lifetime of a Gas Turbine is about 100,000 hours, that would amount to a period of 11 years. If it runs 24/7. Lifetime of the turbines for wind power is calculated to be around 20 years, by the way.

And I think pulleys and levers will be very helpful in that regard. We got it up once, after all.

[wiggin]

@ Khendra and Minx. Yes, I have no doubt that it's possible to do and even maybe very reasonable. The point is that this particular technology has never been actually used before and neither you nor I have any clue how expensive it's going to be on a lifetime basis. We'll only figure that out by building it and running it. Let's not jump on any claim of estimated costs until something has actually been made into a proven technology. The cost per kWh is what really matters at the end, and none of us know what that will be. Dread was wrong to suggest the estimated cost would be grossly more than nuclear power, but you guys are wrong to assume it's going to be magically cheap.

[Nessus]

@ Khendra and Minx. Yes, I have no doubt that it's possible to do and even maybe very reasonable. The point is that this particular technology has never been actually used before and neither you nor I have any clue how expensive it's going to be on a lifetime basis. We'll only figure that out by building it and running it. Let's not jump on any claim of estimated costs until something has actually been made into a proven technology. The cost per kWh is what really matters at the end, and none of us know what that will be. Dread was wrong to suggest the estimated cost would be grossly more than nuclear power, but you guys are wrong to assume it's going to be magically cheap.

To be fair, our society is built to revolve around one magically cheap energy source, and despite our best efforts we haven't found a new one. If an average calorie of food consumed by a Westerner requires about 12 calories of oil to be burnt, we're going to need some way of replacing some of those calories pretty soon. You're perfectly right that this stuff needs to be tested before we can make reasonably accurate predictions on its feasibility, but the point is that we'll need something, and as Minx said this technology might for instance require much less specially-trained maintenance staff. And because our civilization has revolved around a few magically cheap energy sources, we haven't had motivation to min-max these alternative technologies before, but consider how much more efficient modern oil-burning vehicles are compared to their ancestors say 70 years ago.

The unreasonable assumption is that a priori this will be clean and cheap, but I think a reasonable assumption is that the tech will be min-maxed to near-maximum efficiency if it becomes critical to feeding people etc.

[Aimless]

Also excitement costs nothing which is why I can be excited even without hard data I'm filing this under "cool stuff"

[wiggin]

Oh, I agree. If a company believes their cost-projections are good enough to beat traditional forms of generating electricity (mostly coal and nuclear, in the US), then they should go ahead and build it. I just am not going to get all excited until I see real, hard data on costs instead of vague estimates.

I do have a big problem with subsidizing this technology (or any other), though. I buy into the argument that government subsidies of a specific new technology are generally inefficient and may result in the aggressive development of a technology that's not the best outcome. There's some debate on this issue (see the article linked below), but in general I find industrial policy a terrible idea. Did those improvements in car efficiency come from government subsidies to renewable energy manufacturers? For the most part, no. They happened due to consumer demand driven by oil prices, and to a lesser extent by rising CAFE standards in the US. Neither directly tells the industry how to improve matters, just provides an incentive to do so. If we drive up the price of non-renewables by carbon taxes or whatever, we'll have a much better effect on the industry. I just choose not to get too excited about any single technology that may or may not end up working well.

http://www.economist.com/node/21530958

[Nessus]

I think I probably agree to a large extent, but I have to say I haven't given this issue much thought let alone research. I'm in science for the fun of it, not the applications

But as a general principle, it's probably good for governments to subsidize basic or fundamental research, especially in fields where the private corps et al don't have that much incentive to do it themselves. Bell Labs had ample reason to improve communications tech, and let their egg-heads work on problems related to astro-physics or materials physics, but while oil was/is relatively cheap and plentiful, companies won't work on alternatives that vigorously. But governments trying to meddle with the markets for unhealthy reasons (wanting to, say, preserve small fuzzy animals or other non-essentials) probably doesn't benefit anyone that much. Let the more theoretical egg heads find the fundamental concepts like transistors and lasers, and then the corporations can min-max the stuff for the applications. Right?

[wiggin]

But as a general principle, it's probably good for governments to subsidize basic or fundamental research, especially in fields where the private corps et al don't have that much incentive to do it themselves. Bell Labs had ample reason to improve communications tech, and let their egg-heads work on problems related to astro-physics or materials physics, but while oil was/is relatively cheap and plentiful, companies won't work on alternatives that vigorously. But governments trying to meddle with the markets for unhealthy reasons (wanting to, say, preserve small fuzzy animals or other non-essentials) probably doesn't benefit anyone that much. Let the more theoretical egg heads find the fundamental concepts like transistors and lasers, and then the corporations can min-max the stuff for the applications. Right?

I have no problem with funding (not subsidizing) scientific/engineering research; in fact, I think it's critical for the US' continued technological and economic dominance. I have a problem, though, if the research funds are specifically earmarked for X technology (let's say solar cells). That biases research away from what may be better alternatives in favor of a government priority that may or may not be ideal.

Minx: yeah, I know. I just yawn a lot when people find a specific technology and think it's going to be revolutionary/amazing/etc. on the basis of very little information. I have no doubt that there are a lot of good, innovative ideas out there on how to harness solar radiation more effectively, and this might be one of them - I just don't get too worked up about it.

[Nessus]

I have no problem with funding (not subsidizing) scientific/engineering research; in fact, I think it's critical for the US' continued technological and economic dominance. I have a problem, though, if the research funds are specifically earmarked for X technology (let's say solar cells). That biases research away from what may be better alternatives in favor of a government priority that may or may not be ideal.

That's kind of what I was trying to say: Let the more "theoretical" or basic researchers do their thing in gummint-funded (or partly funded) labs seeing how well they can grow organs doing this or that, or finding room-temp superconductors, or new energy materials, or whatever. So long as you do good cum highest level science, you're good, applications don't come into it, so no research is ear-marked for this and that which might help small fuzzy animals or other non-critical things, or might not. And once someone grows a good enough organ, or a good enough RT-superconductor, let the corporations go hog-wild turning them into products.

Now, as a socialist-minded person I have some ideas on how to distribute said products, but that's outside the scope of our discussion

[Aimless]

I don't think it's going to be magically cheap but I think there are reasons to think it will be cheaper and/or easier than nuclear power as well as several other renewable energy alternatives. Don't roll your eyes at me, I was just pointing out that the turbines in the designs I've heard about are situated near the bottom and that switching turbines may not be as difficult as it would be if they were halfway up the tower.

Re. testing the best comparison is with one iffy installation in Spain that performed beyond their expectations for about eight years before the flimsy structure toppled due to corrosion and windiness.

[Nessus]

I guess the problem is, we don't really know how essential all the different fuzzy animals and greeneries are. And that research probably has to be funded by non-market sources because it doesn't have direct applications, and only affects very long-term (from the business POV) considerations. But, that research can be drowned out by "research" done by a biased laboratory funded by a biased source looking for biased results. There's tug and pull in both directions based on unscientific motivations, which bothers me as a researcher!

[LittleFuzzy]

And it looks pretty cool:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22907

If you use eg. the super-cool new concrete technology that has a net negative carbon emission it looks even better. You could probably also increase the amount of heat stored during the day and made available during the night for continured power generation.

Meh. I got excited about that process for getting light oil from rendering turkey offal, but it didn't amount to much. There's plenty of time to get interested by this after it really takes off, if it ever does.

[Aimless]

I dunno 'bout light oil from offal, but some places do something similar in that they get biogas from waste such as offal which is pretty cool

[Dreadnaught]

Okay, I'm sold. Where do I invest?

[Flixy]

EnviroMission is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange on Monday, 6 August 2001.

http://www.enviromission.com.au/EVM/...factsheet.html

Enjoy!

[Dreadnaught]

Eeesh, it's an Australian penny stock...with an $11 million US market cap? How the hell do they plan to finance this...

[Flixy]

Well, I noticed that too. But I'm not familiar with this kind of thing, at all. I can imagine such projects being, well, seperately funded? By big investments, rather than small stock?