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If you feeling a bit out of shape and bored of sitting behind a desk, you can come and help me build some massive towers out of stone blocks. If the convection towers were built from stone, it will take some up-front human labor, but in the end you can say you put together part of a megawatt renewable power station that in the worst case will leave people wondering what we were up to a few centuries from now like we do about Stonehenge.

1. If you have something specific that is incorrect in the calculations or economics, please inform me.
2. The energytower.org project is not-for-profit and is about collecting ideas on a scalable and location independent renewable energy source, presented to draw positive input from others. All of the individual components of the system are in use commercially, but not in a complete system.
3. Many engineers and physics experts have looked at the energytower idea. Negative critism from a /. reader didn't RTFA isn't exactly "debunking" a system.
4. Slashdot is a slashvertisement for Linux and open source. If you want the $6.36 I have made from Google adsense, give me your pay-pal account and I will send it right along.
5. Did you every see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?

1. If you have something specific that is incorrect in the calculations or economics, please inform me.
2. The energytower.org project is not-for-profit and is about collecting ideas on a scalable and location independent renewable energy source, presented to draw positive input from others. All of the individual components of the system are in use commercially, but not in a complete system.
3. Many engineers and physics experts have looked at the energytower idea. Negative critism from a /. reader didn't RTFA isn't exactly "debunking" a system.
4. Slashdot is a slashvertisement for Linux and open source. If you want the $6.36 I have made from Google adsense, give me your pay-pal account and I will send it right along.
5. Did you every see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?

There was about 25 years of research into algae done by the U.S. DOE, as well as some renewed interest from MIT. I put a page together with a drawing of the idea.

I did a drawing of the Compressed Air Wind Electrical Generation System idea.

There were a lot of studies on the idea in the '80's by the DOE, but it was shelved due to low oil prices at the time.

The Seawater Greenhouse is another idea in solar powered clean water supply. So is this.

I wrote a bit about this.

• The existing agricultural system is orientated towards edible food production. Growing, handling and storing crops for energy products is an entirely different industry that currently doesn't exist in North America. Using food production numbers for energy product potential isn't very accurate.
• If agricultural production of energy products had access to affordable and renewable energy, there is a lot more potential for increased production while improving the land as well as better use of by-products than is feasible with the current fossil fuel powered agricultural sector.

Calculations for a moderate climate installation of a controlled wind/thermal storage system.

The design methodology of the project has been to research the deficiencies in current energy sources and to attempt to design a system that overcomes these problems, but the project is still very much in the concept stage.

The real question is, "This is what they have so far, what enhancements to the design are needed to make this feasible?"

Combining Several Low Gradient Heat Source Power Generation Ideas

Some New Ideas in Indirect Solar Electrical Power Generation, Clean Water Capture and Seasonal Heat Storage

The only scalable method of producing renewable and transportable energy products is from agriculturally produced renewable sources. The whole deal lies in removing the fossil fuel dependency in agriculture. Once that is done, renewable and carbon neutral fuels can be produced in the required scale to lower the mobile fossil fuel dependency.

Improving the electrical grid is a good idea and for all of Canada and the northern US, more energy is used by an average family for home heating than personal transportation and home heating can be easily and relatively cheaply converted to electric (electric forced air, radiant heat, etc).
A indirect solar electrical system that is location independent and generating the electricity as close as possible to the market is a much more viable approach and decentrallization of the power generation and grid applies much of the same distributed ideas as the Internet to power generation from a military perspective.

It's still easier and more efficient to transport hydrogen with carbon as in ethanol. If ethanol or biodiesel can be produced with renewable energy, they are carbon neutral and much easier to handle than pure hydrogen.

It's still easier and more efficient to transport hydrogen with carbon as in ethanol. If ethanol or biodiesel can be produced with renewable energy, they are carbon neutral and much easier to handle than pure hydrogen.

It's still easier and more efficient to transport hydrogen with carbon as in ethanol. If ethanol or biodiesel can be produced with renewable energy, they are carbon neutral and much easier to handle than pure hydrogen.

It's still easier and more efficient to transport hydrogen with carbon as in ethanol. If ethanol or biodiesel can be produced with renewable energy, they are carbon neutral and much easier to handle than pure hydrogen.

Finally - if it can be built to a size for a single dwelling, is this something you are pursuing? Are you looking at building a "proof-of-concept", or do you know of others who are doing so?

We are planning a POC based on the ammonia absorption idea and hopefully we can have that worked through in the next year.

Just for reference, the solar updraft tower you are talking about is an existing concept and there was a small prototype built in Spain in the 1980's. There is another large plant planned in Australia. Although a solar updraft tower is simple, the large land usage, limited night time power generation, the infrastructure cost of transporting the electricity and the extremely high tower requirements limit the potential usage.

I agree that the simpler the design the better for all of the reasons you state and many more, but there is nothing simple about constructing 1000 meter towers out in the desert and then building all of the infrastructure to transport the electricity to where it is needed.

The system I am proposing is intended to be scalable and adaptable to all power generation requirements and climates and could be used to generate electricity from geothermal sources and cold air in arctic regions, solar/geothermal/biomass in moderate climates and solar in hot dry climates. The intent of the absorption refrigeration system is to use solar energy to create a much wider temperature gradient (i.e. +30C air and -30C heat exchanger) than is possible with a non-active system and store the captured heat to be used to generate power when the ambient air temperature drops.

The intent of an adaptable design and a standard system beyond the engineering and construction benefits of standardization is to create the investor "warm fuzzy" and once a system is in operation, the same economic investment model can be used for other plants, regardless of location.

The ammonia absorption system in my design isn't much more complicated than an RV refrigerator or absorption heat pump and doesn't require any substantial operational resources. The fluid pumping systems are much less complicated than existing coal and natural gas power generation systems.

Just for reference, the solar updraft tower you are talking about is an existing concept and there was a small prototype built in Spain in the 1980's. There is another large plant planned in Australia. Although a solar updraft tower is simple, the large land usage, limited night time power generation, the infrastructure cost of transporting the electricity and the extremely high tower requirements limit the potential usage.

I agree that the simpler the design the better for all of the reasons you state and many more, but there is nothing simple about constructing 1000 meter towers out in the desert and then building all of the infrastructure to transport the electricity to where it is needed.

The system I am proposing is intended to be scalable and adaptable to all power generation requirements and climates and could be used to generate electricity from geothermal sources and cold air in arctic regions, solar/geothermal/biomass in moderate climates and solar in hot dry climates. The intent of the absorption refrigeration system is to use solar energy to create a much wider temperature gradient (i.e. +30C air and -30C heat exchanger) than is possible with a non-active system and store the captured heat to be used to generate power when the ambient air temperature drops.

The intent of an adaptable design and a standard system beyond the engineering and construction benefits of standardization is to create the investor "warm fuzzy" and once a system is in operation, the same economic investment model can be used for other plants, regardless of location.

The ammonia absorption system in my design isn't much more complicated than an RV refrigerator or absorption heat pump and doesn't require any substantial operational resources. The fluid pumping systems are much less complicated than existing coal and natural gas power generation systems.

Just for reference, the solar updraft tower you are talking about is an existing concept and there was a small prototype built in Spain in the 1980's. There is another large plant planned in Australia. Although a solar updraft tower is simple, the large land usage, limited night time power generation, the infrastructure cost of transporting the electricity and the extremely high tower requirements limit the potential usage.

I agree that the simpler the design the better for all of the reasons you state and many more, but there is nothing simple about constructing 1000 meter towers out in the desert and then building all of the infrastructure to transport the electricity to where it is needed.

The system I am proposing is intended to be scalable and adaptable to all power generation requirements and climates and could be used to generate electricity from geothermal sources and cold air in arctic regions, solar/geothermal/biomass in moderate climates and solar in hot dry climates. The intent of the absorption refrigeration system is to use solar energy to create a much wider temperature gradient (i.e. +30C air and -30C heat exchanger) than is possible with a non-active system and store the captured heat to be used to generate power when the ambient air temperature drops.

The intent of an adaptable design and a standard system beyond the engineering and construction benefits of standardization is to create the investor "warm fuzzy" and once a system is in operation, the same economic investment model can be used for other plants, regardless of location.

The ammonia absorption system in my design isn't much more complicated than an RV refrigerator or absorption heat pump and doesn't require any substantial operational resources. The fluid pumping systems are much less complicated than existing coal and natural gas power generation systems.

The idea is to build a standard low gradient heat platform that can be optimized for a geographical location's specific climate and geothermal features. The specific adaptation for arid regions utilizing absorption refrigeration especially shows promise.

The idea is to build a standard low gradient heat platform that can be optimized for a geographical location's specific climate and geothermal features. The specific adaptation for arid regions utilizing absorption refrigeration especially shows promise.

Open Passive Solar Project

Open Energy Project