oilfreeandhappy wrote:
I think the only down-sides are the same downsides as most solar and wind projects:
1. Intermittent energy which requires some type of power storage.
2. A large footprint of land is required, usually in rural areas (in this case the Outback), which requires transportation mechanisms for the employees.
3. System Maintenance could be man-power intensive.
1.
I have read about this type of solar plant that the ideal thing about it that heat can be stored under the collector (using some kind of material underneath the collector) which then is re-emitted at night, so they guarantee that it produces electricity 24 hours a day.
Of course, the power output is not constant, but will steadily rise during daytime, and drop down at night.
I have a website somewhere which explains it better, but can't find it at the moment, so will edit this later and put that in.
2.
The large surface area under the collector is some demirit, but I think it might actually be used for a usefull purpose (agricultural or something).
3.
Depends. It needs to be tested of course how the collector (a plastic material) would withstand wind and rainfall. There obviously would be some repairs.
To me the concept itself seems plausible to me, although I think they scaled it up too quick to a large sized plant. They had better tried some smaller sized one first, and have it operation for some time to test the concept, see where the concept needs adjustments, etc.
Also, it would seem that the determining factor for it's operation comes from the difference in temperature below the collector and the temperature of surrounding air at the top of the tower.
The height is needed because of the lower temperatures.
I wonder if concrete structure would be needed that high, and not some leight weight structure could also work. The structure does not need to support something, it needs only to thermaly isolate the flow of air upwards; perhaps creating a vortex flow of air would be benificial too, cause this - at least when there's no wind - would extend the chimney above the structure.
I assume that the same kind of plant would also work in colder climatic zones, and could also be used as a normal greenhouse to grow plants or vegetables, profiting from the higher temperatures beneath the collector.
Again, I think the idea is good, it has been tested in Mazaneres in Spain a decade or so ago. But the scale on which this projects goes, before further rigid testing of the concept for a longer period of time seems to me to call for problems.
Perhaps that's why they haven't already built it, and why they downscaled the height of the tower from 1 km to something like 400 m.
Environmission website
Solar mission technology
Location of Solar tower (wentworthshire, NSW, Australia)
Solar mission FAQ