Thermal Solar Plant To Be Erected In Australia

connect4 writes: "An article from the bulletin explaining a plan to erect a 1km high solar convection wind turbine in outback Victoria - the worlds tallest construction. Projected output per tower: 200MW. Cost to build: A$670m. Footprint of tower: 20sq km ."

Comments

Re:Why the height?

[waimate]

It needs the height because there is a 1 C temperature differential for every 100m of altitude, so 1000m = 10 C, which is what creates the 'draw' and makes the whole thing go.

It's like saying "why have hydro-electric generators at the bottom of a long fall of water.

Re:More info

[Goonie]

This is why not:

1. The Liberal and National parties, which currently form a coalition federal government, receive much of their funding from mining companies.
2. The Labor Party, which is the major opposition party and controls most of the state governments around the nation right now, is an offshoot of the union movement. Guess in which industries the union movement is strong, and thus which unions exert considerable clout in the ALP? Yep, that's right, mining and electricity.

Re:Is this the time for renwable energy

[Richard Kirk]

The solar chimney is a really neat idea for reasons that do not transfer to wind power.

All the moving bits are at the bottom (well - within 40M of the bottom). This means that you can get to service them without having to scale the chimney. You can swap out the generators for more efficient ones when they are developed without having to redesign the rest of the scheme.

There are windmill designs (the Savonius rotor) that have the generator at the bottom, and don't need pointing into the wind, but these are a design compromise between efficieny and servicability. The wind farms in Scotland have a dynamo with a windmill on top of a big stick. I remember the 'Tomorrows World' presenter going up it, and going rather green: the really big ones are pretty scary places to work.

The chimney can also generate power when it is half-built. It won't be as efficient, but this may allow the building loan to be spread out. Once you have built the chimney, it may then make finiancial sense to expand the greenhouse area. A windmill is either there or it isn't.

Don't get me wrong - I like windmills, and a solar chimney in the Orkneys simply isn't on. However, the Orkneys windmill is paying because regular electricity was over 4 times the cost on the mainland. However, IMHO, the solar chimney is in a different league to windmills and tidal stations. I do hope it gets built.

Re:Pretty useful in near-tropical regions

[maaaaanis]

Check a map of autralia...
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/
Notice the climate, it's got more tropical, near tropical, desert, savanna etc etc than any other country. Better still, it's bigger than india and has less than 1/50th of the population, more available space, if native title issues ever get sorted.
In central australia there is an average of 11hrs sunlight a day all year which is the most important factor when using a greenhouse.

Re:More info

[Nikau]

The Liberal and National parties, which currently form a coalition federal government, receive much of their funding from mining companies.

That may be, but Australia is bound by the Kyoto protocol to control its emissions:

But burning more brown coal would compromise Australia's obligation to reduce its greenhouse emissions under the Kyoto protocol, which requires it contain its emissions by 2010 to within an 8% increase of 1990 levels.

So basically building the tower would help the emissions situation, since building the tower instead of another coal plant (another power plant seems inevitable judging by the article) will be hitting two birds with one stone... New power plant, no extra emissions.

Also, we have this paragraph to consider as well:

By 2010, Australia's energy supply companies must purchase 10% of their electricity from renewable sources. The figure is now 8%, most of it from hydro-electric power. Emerging solar technologies are likely to provide much of the 2% increase.

Building another coal plant doesn't exactly help them reach this goal, now does it?

The Labor Party, which is the major opposition party and controls most of the state governments around the nation right now, is an offshoot of the union movement. Guess in which industries the union movement is strong, and thus which unions exert considerable clout in the ALP? Yep, that's right, mining and electricity.

OK, so the mining industry seems to have a chokehold on 80-90% of Australia's government. Whooptee-doo. What's the projected output of the tower? 200MW. According to the article, what's the overall output of Victoria's power plants?

...to replace Victoria's current 7672MW generation capacity.

So... 200MW from a solar tower vs. 7672MW from mostly coal plants, and the mining industry feels threatened? And remember, this is just for Victoria and its vicinity, never mind the rest of Australia.

I don't think the government or their mining industry friends need to worry. The government wants to build another plant to provide jobs, that's great. But building a solar tower will help Australia meet its other obligations, not to mention other benefits - tourism, potential farming opportunities in the greenhouse... I doubt there will be a sudden rush in the construction of the towers, but it'd be neat to see at least a few...

Re:Lets put this into perspective..

[Grond]

whanau said:
"Currently its $348 million US, which is about the TOC of a nuclear reactor of the same capacity."

US$348 million will buy you a nuclear plant in the 1.5 Gigawatt range. It would cost about $300 million to build a new reactor comparable to the one about 5 miles from my house (Arkansas Nuclear One) which produces a total of 1694MW. Nuclear power is far, far cheaper than solar, wind, hydroelectric, you name it. Now, whether it's better is somewhat open to debate, but it is by far the most efficient way to produce really large amounts of electricity, both in terms of cost and in terms of space (the cooling tower on Unit 2 is big, but it ain't 1km big).