Massive Solar Updraft Towers Planned For Arizona

MikeChino writes "Australia-based EnviroMission Ltd recently announced plans to build two solar updraft towers that span hundreds of acres in La Paz County, Arizona. Solar updraft technology sounds promising enough: generate hot air with a giant greenhouse, channel the air into a chimney-like device, and let the warm wind turn a wind turbine to produce energy. The scale of the devices would be staggering — each plant would consist of a 2,400 foot chimney over a greenhouse measuring four square miles. The Southern California Public Power Authority has approved EnviroMission as a provider, although there’s still plenty of work to be done before the $750 million, 200 megawatt project can begin."

Comments

A better location

[n0tWorthy]

They should build it in Washington DC

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[Nadaka]

Sounds like a pretty good use of stimulus money. To bad hookers and blow don't generate any tax revenue.

I can't help but wonder...

[Rei]

these couldn't be built for a small fraction the price by using an atmospheric vortex engine instead of a tower.

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[elFisico]

these couldn't be built for a small fraction the price by using an atmospheric vortex engine instead of a tower.

Seems like an interesting idea, replacing the tall tower with an air vortex. But I think the risks have to be researched beforehand. What you create here is a giantic tornado, so how is it guaranteed that this tornado won't suddenly rip off the base and start wandering around?!

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[Chris Burke]

What you create here is a giantic tornado, so how is it guaranteed that this tornado won't suddenly rip off the base and start wandering around?!

The fact that the base is where the tornado's energy comes from. Tornadoes aren't self-sustaining. As soon as it left the base, it'd start to dissipate, from the bottom up I would think.

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[dkf]

Seems like an interesting idea, replacing the tall tower with an air vortex. But I think the risks have to be researched beforehand. What you create here is a giantic tornado, so how is it guaranteed that this tornado won't suddenly rip off the base and start wandering around?!

Pack trailer parks around the base. That'll keep that tornado fixed firmly in place.

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[TubeSteak]

these couldn't be built for a small fraction the price by using an atmospheric vortex engine instead of a tower.

It is estimated that it would be possible to establish a self-sustaining vortex to demonstrate the feasibility of the process with a station 30 m in diameter under ideal conditions. Learning to control large vortices under less than ideal conditions would be a major engineering challenge. Developing the process will require determination, engineering resources; and cooperation between engineers and atmospheric scientists. There will be difficulties to overcome, but they should be no greater than in other large technical enterprises.

Translation: I can haz millions for R&D?

OTOH, Solar Chimneys can be built today.
So I'm guessing that's why Arizon isn't using an undeveloped technology that may not even be workable.

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, the trailer park would attract adjacent tornado bearing weather, and those tornadoes would join together to form progressively larger and larger vortexes, and eventually there would be a hurricanes' worth of energy to harvest.

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[Chris Burke]

"Heating the air within the wall using a temporary heat source such as steam starts the vortex. The heat required to sustain the vortex once established can be the natural heat content of warm humid air or can be provided in cooling towers located outside of the cylindrical wall and upstream of the deflectors."

And where does the energy come from for the steam, or for the cooling tower? Yes you can get mechanical energy from convection, that only happens when there's a temperature differential. Where is the energy to create this temperature differential coming from?

That's the point of the greenhouse in the solar tower -- it traps the solar energy to heat the air and create the differential to create convection currents significant enough to generate useful power. That's where the energy comes from. Where does the energy come from to boil the water or cycle it in the cooling towers? That's the input to the system.

If the design assumes a source of steam, why not use the steam to push a turbine directly? That's how most fuels are turned into electricity.

Oh and the other thing I noticed was missing: the place where this kinetic energy was converted to electrical. That's again why the solar tower's operation is obvious -- the turbine goes in the tower where the highest winds are. I wasn't sure but maybe the design showed the generators in the inlet ducts of the vortex generator? Seems suboptimal. Or maybe it just seems that way because that means the entire vortex represents nothing but waste energy. But all the energy in the water gushing through a hydro plant is also waste so...

Re:I can't help but wonder...

[Rei]

Someone failed physics, but applied for a patent anyway.

Apparently tornadoes and hurricanes have failed physics, too.

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[yobjob]

I've been watching Enviromission not build a solar tower in regional Victoria (Australia) for a decade now. Not building one in the United States is a real step up for these guys.

Efficiency

[pete-classic]

Is there some efficiency to be gained by building a four square mile device over, say, 2560 one acre devices? Energy efficiency? Cost? It seems like there's a lot of risk in building one giant unit.

-Peter

Re:Efficiency

[Rei]

Is there some efficiency to be gained by building a four square mile device over, say, 2560 one acre devices? Energy efficiency? Cost?

Yes. Yes.

Re:Efficiency

[dbIII]

Is there some efficiency to be gained by building a four square mile device over, say, 2560 one acre devices?

Yes, by the bucketload. Thermal solutions of all kinds scale up - that is twice the size gives you a lot more than twice the energy. One example is that you can have an enormous rotor that works at low wind speeds because there is so much moving air while a small one can't move at all. Another is in large units where you get power from steam several turbines can be used to get a lot more energy out of the steam while in small units you can only spin one.
Photovoltaics don't scale up - double the area and you only get double the power. That's why the nuke lobby liked comparing their 1960s dinosaurs to photovoltaics since eventually there has to be a scale where nearly anything thermal will pull ahead.

Re:Efficiency

[pete-classic]

Thanks for clearing that up for me, sport.

-Peter

Re:Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with building a 10% scale device is that you can't find as many excuses for not actually, you know, building one. This project is intended to extract money from investors and governments, not extract energy. When the first one you want to build is ridiculously big, you really don't intend to build any.

For instance, in this solar thermal plant they built the first few to prove the concept. Makes perfect sense if you're actually intending to generate power.

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[e9th]

How does this help? Well, it'll help the wind turbine industry.

"Oh, you don't like our hundred foot windmill because the blades are ugly and whooshy and hurt little birds? No problem. We'll just put one of these babies in your back yard."

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[s0litaire]

Hm.. My first thought was "Perfect for one big ass Pot farm..." ^__^

physics FAIL

[RelliK]

This thing does not ADD any energy to the atmosphere. It EXTRACTS energy from it.

Re:physics FAIL

[nobdoor]

No, it traps solar energy from the sun, that would otherwise be reflected back towards space. I am curious as to what effects this will have on local climate. Although there is no carbon emission from this technology, we are surely dumping excess heat into the upper atmosphere that was not there before.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[Locke2005]

That's one protest where throwing rocks might actually be a particularly effective strategy. "Those who live in glass houses..."

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[Red Flayer]

Given that the Greens are already opposing solar plants in desert locations

I call bullshit. If environmental activists are protesting in a desert location, are they not Browns?

Re:Yeah!

[CyberBill]

This DOES (essentially) reduce thermal energy in the atmosphere.

Typically, the solar energy just heats up the ground, and also bounces around in the atmosphere and heats it up. This thing works by trapping the energy in a small area (greenhouse) and then using some of that heat to generate electricity. By the time the air is pumped out into the open atmosphere, it has less heat energy than if the thing wasn't there to begin with.

This really boils down to being just like a photovoltaic panel. Rather than the Sun wasting its energy heating up the atmosphere, we use the energy to make electricity... which we then waste by turning electricity back into heat which heats up the atmosphere. :)

Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[Anonymous Coward]

A nuclear plant would use maybe 50 acres and produce a gigawatt. I think the capital expense is comparable. What is the benefit here?

Regards,
Jason

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[bmk67]

It doesn't generate a shitload of radioactive waste, perhaps?

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[wizardforce]

Most of the nuclear waste in the US is recyclable. The amount of waste produced for a given amount of power is small compared to coal, pil and other fossil fuels. Thorium reactors produce even less waste than Uranium/Plutonium reactors do and is more common as well. There is also the problem of low carnot efficiency of solar updraft towers relative to other solar thermal designs because of the relatively small thermal gradient. The larger the thermal gradient, the higher the efficiency.

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[bmk67]

Most of the nuclear waste in the US is recyclable. The amount of waste produced for a given amount of power is small compared to coal, pil and other fossil fuels.

I don't recall the GP posting anything about fossil fuels. IMHO, nuclear is superior to fossil fuel energy production. We're in violent agreement on that point.

Thorium reactors produce even less waste than Uranium/Plutonium reactors do and is more common as well. There is also the problem of low carnot efficiency of solar updraft towers relative to other solar thermal designs because of the relatively small thermal gradient. The larger the thermal gradient, the higher the efficiency.

I'm afraid you might have taken "shitload of radioactive waste" a little too literally. GP simply wanted to know what the benefit of this technology was over nuclear. Solar updraft technology appears on it's face to not have the environmental concerns of nuclear power. Whether or not is practical remains to be seen I think. Regarding the GP's complaint of land use, desert land is practically free. Nuclear reactors have to be sited close to an abundant source of coolant (i.e. water). Appropriate sites for nuclear power generation are substantially more expensive than desert land.

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[Chris Burke]

Land use is not exactly a big issue in Arizona...

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[QuoteMstr]

The total volume is waste is tiny, and it's not that dangerous. It's not more dangerous than the output of other industrial sites like oil refineries and solvent plants. Considering that the carbon footprint of the nuclear power cycle is staggeringly low (even taking into account plant construction and uranium mining), nuclear power is the best and most obvious solution to climate change. We don't even need thorium reactors. There's enough conventional nuclear fuel to last millennia even without reprocessing. We can extract the stuff from seawater.

The issue here is political: the general populace is frightened of political power due to a 40 year standoff involving nuclear weapons and one terrible Russian nuclear accident. The waste "problem" is fear-mongering.

How can you tell? Ask a nuclear opponent what his criteria for "solving" the waste problem are. What containment technology would win him over, even in principle? You'll find he won't accept anything short of the magical transformation of nuclear waste into hemp.

Education and sanity are slowly winning, but it will be a long time until nuclear power is accepted again here. Until then, we're going to be stuck with coal power slowly strangling our planet.

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[QuoteMstr]

So tell me then, why did the price of Uranium go up?

Because that's how it works. You start with some initial reserves. You mine them cheaply. When you start to run out of reserves, prices go up. The high prices cause exploration. New mines open up, and prices go down. Repeat ad infinitum.

Also, we've actually been using decommisioned nuclear weapons as fuel, which is cheaper than anything else because the uranium there is already mined and enriched.

Regardless, the actual cost of fuel is such a small part of a nuclear power plant's budget that the price could rise twentyfold before you'd notice it at the meter.

the good stuff is scarce

It's called enrichment. Besides, if you're willing to use heavy water (which is non-toxic), you can even use natural uranium in a reactor.

The "good stuff" isn't scarce, and the article I linked to provided plenty of numbers that support my position. Why don't you come up with some of your own?

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[QuoteMstr]

How big are uranium mines, the roads used to transport the uranium, the refining plants, the reprocessing plants, and the mountain that is needed to store the waste for several millenia?

Well, let's see. Coal has an energy density of about 24 megajoules per kilogram, and uranium has a density of 560 megajoules per kilogram. Uranium comes from its ore uraninite, which is UO2 (78% uranium by weight). So let's adjust uranium's energy density to 441 megajoules per kilogram to make up for it.

The density of coal is about 1.05 g/cm^3, while the density of uraninite is 8.725 g/cm^3, that is, uraninite is 8.3 times denser than coal on a weight basis. It also has 18.375 times as much energy.

So, taking into account both the higher density and higher energy density of nuclear fuel, we need 1/(8.3 * 18.375), or 1/152 the infrastructure we need to mine the equivalent amount of coal.

Let me repeat that: for the same amount of energy, we need 153 times as much infrastructure to get it from coal instead of uranium.

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[QuoteMstr]

Dimethylmercury is far more dangerous and it stays around a lot longer than plutonium. How about dioxins?

Like I said, nuclear waste is far from our worst pollutant.

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up on half-lives. The longer the half-life, the less radioactive the substance is. The stuff that will be around for 'millions of years' will only be around that long because it gives off radiation (energy) very slowly.
The stuff that is highly radioactive, on the other hand, 'burns out' much faster. It's more dangerous to us right now, but will will be inert in 'thousands of years'.

Re:Nuclear Would Use Less Land with Higher Output

[QuoteMstr]

You're twisting the facts and you know it.

First of all, some reactors can run on unenriched uranium.

Second, even the reactors that require enriched uranium only need to enrich it up to 3% or so, not all the way up to 100%. You only need to enrich the uranium that high to make a bomb.

My figures were for real uranium you'd actually use. 100% enriched uranium has an energy density closer to 88 million megajoules per kilogram.

Other turbine proposals...

[catalina]

Back in the 70s there was a proposal to build a very tall cylinder (1 mile or so), inject water mist at the top, and let the resulting downdraft drive a turbine a ground level. Interesting idea, fairly well developed and into the engineering stage. Of course, nobody funded actually building one. The engineer who designed it couldn't overcome the skeptics, and nobody thought it would be competitive with cheap natural gas/oil-fired generators.....

Re:Other turbine proposals...

[JSBiff]

This is just a guess. . . but I suppose the theory is something like this:

Natural downdrafts occur all the time. . . The Sun heats up the earth, which then transfers heat to air near the ground, creating an updraft, but eventually, when the air gets high enough up, it loses some of that heat, and then cold air drops down to the ground to replace the air which is updrafting. What goes up, must come down - air is constantly rising from the surface of the earth, but other air is constantly falling down to replace it.

So, instead of generating electricity from the thermal energy of warm air, this other tower concept sounds like it generates electricity, I guess, from the gravitational potential energy of the cold air up high. I think the water at the top of the tower is just to sort of initialize the downdraft, but once it was started, it would probably continue for awhile - like poking a whole somewhere near the bottom of the water tank, once the whole is poked, you don't have to do anything to keep the water flowing out - gravity takes care of that.

Seems like you could design a plant which contains the entire cycle inside of the plant, and generates electricity both as the hot air rises, and as it falls again after it has cooled - like a giant loop or arch with turbines on both sides.

Re:Other turbine proposals...

[Xiph1980]

When air comes in contact with vaporized water, the air cools (by means of evaporative cooling which works pretty much due to the mist vaporizing extracting heat from the air, check up on swamp coolers / mist coolers). Cooler air becomes denser thus making this air heavier, creating a downdraft. This is a well known phenomenon. Back before airconditioning became common, desert homes used to hang wet towels or cloths in a specially constructed tower in their home. This created this cool downdraft that cooled the house.

You can try this yourself by hanging a couple of wet towels on the clothing lines, and lying underneath them. You will feel a cool breeze coming from above.

Re:Other turbine proposals...

[Nefarious Wheel]

you spelled HOLE wrong...

Per hops asia result of depending on spill chick.

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[Rei]

Right! Because I'm sure they're going to import all of the raw materials from Australia and bring in a massive Australian construction force, right?

Does everything have to be 100% USA for you? Amerika Uber Alles?

Re:Yeah!

[wizardforce]

We should be trying to extract the thermal energy we already have

What precisely do you think they're trying to do? Where do you think this thermal difference comes from exactly? Every single process that generates usable electrical power generates thermal energy. Simple thermodynamics dictates that a process must be less than 100% efficient and must create more disorder than order. So instead of converting coal and air into CO2, electrical power and heat; we're converting solar thermal energy into electrical power and waste heat. The thermal energy is already there and is going to waste otherwise.

dumb question?

[girlintraining]

Why not use the sewers? They're supposed to be enclosed anyway -- they're already pretty hot, and if we built them correctly, we could compress, burn, and expel the gas -- which would maybe produce more energy and utilize existing infrastructure than this idea.

Re:dumb question?

[Weedhopper]

Many, if not most wastewater (sewage) treatment plants in the US produce a net energy surplus, which is then returned to the grid.

Re:dumb question?

[cptdondo]

Yup, we do this... We generate about 1/2 of our power from the methane off our digesters. (I work for a wastewater plant).

We still burn off a lot of methane - it's not cost effective yet to bring on another generator.

I've been toying with a waste methane coop and buy the extra methane from the WWTP. It would cost about $1/W to buy in, and then you'd be responsible for your share of O&M, and anything extra would be sold back to the grid.

I need about 200 investors at $3K ea. Think of all the green credits you get.

Re:dumb question?

[MichaelSmith]

Why not use the sewers? They're supposed to be enclosed anyway -- they're already pretty hot, and if we built them correctly, we could compress, burn, and expel the gas -- which would maybe produce more energy and utilize existing infrastructure than this idea.

The system relies on having a high air temperature at ground level so that the hot air rises up the column and remains hotter than the surrounding air as it rises. My suspicion is that the air just above the ground will be hotter than rock 500 metres down, but probably not much further. You need a good temperature gradient to extract heat so you would have to go very deep to get a good gradient WRT the surface air. This might work at night or in a colder climate, but when you think about it it just becomes a normal geothermal system.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[wizardforce]

Only the idealists. The rest of us are generally ok with an imperfect solution that is better than an existing solution. Mostly because we can do the math. Coal plants make up the vast majority of the power plants in the US and are probaly the most environmentally damaging form of energy production on the planet so replacing them with something else is generally a smart thing to do.

the american way...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no, you have it all wrong!

Amerika will pay Australia to buy from an American corporation. The American corporation will in turn import all the raw materials from china and help the Australian firm find a bunch of minimum wage mexicans to build the thing.

The only question is... which south american country will supply the hookers and blow for this project?

Find volcano, run $500,000 pipe of water near it

[assemblerex]

profit! Half mile high tower? Pffft

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[jittles]

A 4 square mile greenhouse in the middle of the dessert?

I, for one, will not stand up to these people interrupting dessert!

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[TopSpin]

I call bullshit. If environmental activists...

There isn't any "if" involved here. Feinstein is sprinkling "national monuments" all over the Mojave to prevent solar projects.

link
link

No development of any kind, anywhere, under any circumstances, ever.

EnviroMission has been failing in Australia for at least half a decade. They aren't going to get anywhere in the US.

Can we still make fun of him in 2010?

[LostCluster]

George W. Bush is already scheming how to dodge the updraft.

Re:Can we still make fun of him in 2010?

[copponex]

Yeah... how dare someone in the government build infrastructure with our tax dollars.

The teabaggers shall not let this aggression stand!

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[Locke2005]

Coal plants make up the vast majority of the power plants in the US and are definitely the most environmentally damaging form of energy production on the planet. Fixed that for you. Coal plant emit more radioactive material (radon) than nuclear plants, in addition to sulphur, other pollutants, and carbon dioxide. Some of this could be cleaned up through better smokestack scrubbers, but from an environmental impact standpoint coal is definitely the most expensive energy source.

Second tallest structure(s)

[yorktown]

If built, the towers would be the second (and third) tallest structure on earth, behind the Burj Khalifa that opened this week.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

"At this point, there are zero solar-energy projects on public land," said Monique Hanis of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. "We are looking for ways to expand the market and reduce barriers ... and get more of these projects moving."

Seems the article's author cut off the last part of the quote. I think it continues

... without having to bother with buying the land we want to use.

You want to use public land? You have to put up with government bullshit. Buy some land, do whatever the hell you want on it.

physics

[bcmm]

energy

You keep using that word...

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[Trepidity]

From a pure stimulus standpoint, sure, but wouldn't it be nice if we at least got something tangible out of our money too, instead of just consultant reports? At least the make-work programs in the 1930s left us with a bunch of improvements to the national park infrastructure, murals in various public places, etc.--- in fact a good deal of that WPA stuff is still in use.

Thanks, Wiseguy

[spun]

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Order it now, and banish piss soaked carpets from your life forever.

I tried this and now my penis looks really blurry and pixelated.

Re:Hot air injection at 2400 feet?

[Lije Baley]

I'm guessing it will kill every rabbit and turtle up there.

Linear thinking

[dbIII]

You are completely wrong. At some point there will be a scale where the chimney will pull ahead.
Double the area of photovoltaics and you only get twice the energy. As turbines get larger the losses are proportionally smaller, and when you have more moving air you can have more blades optimised for different speeds. It's a comparison of a rising curve for the chimney vs a line for the photovoltaics. After the point where they cross the chimney gives you more energy for the area.

Re:Linear thinking

[ChrisMaple]

The numbers in TFA work out to an efficiency of 1.9% for 4 square miles and a 2000 foot chimney. That's probably the limit for what can be economically built. Even if they could get better efficiency for a larger system, it's not going to scale up much. They're already fighting serious problems with airflow resistance. Photovoltaics routinely exceed 20%.

In their favor, storing an hour or more of heat shouldn't be too difficult, so the output will be more regular that photovoltaics.

Re:Linear thinking

[Oddscurity]

Combine both ideas by lining the chimney with photovoltaics
???
Profit!

Re:Linear thinking

[Marcika]

Economically viable (outside NASA type applications) photovoltaics don't exceed 10% much less 20%

Give it 20 years but not now, maybe never. It might just be cheaper to use low efficiency ones and use more of them.

That's not true anymore. Even the cheap-ass thin-film printed CIGS cells now have efficiencies of 10-14% when deployed, current multi-/monocrystalline silicon cells reach 17-22% and the 'NASA-spec' tripe junction cells are at 30+%.

Re:Why can't we address the human factor first?

[QuoteMstr]

I don't accept your premise.

(Or, I find your lack of faith disturbing.)

Though science, we can provide a first-world lifestyle for all those people. We can build enough nuclear plants to provide enough energy to supply them all with power, and desalinate seawater, and still have plenty left over.

Nuclear fuel is that abundant. You can even extract it from seawater. Growth problems go away with the application of enough electricity.

Besides: population growth is self-limiting. Affluent people have fewer children. As we see more people enjoy a first world lifestyle, with its education and contraceptives, we'll see worldwide population sizes level off just as it they have in first world nations.

Seems like a poor energy return per unit of land..

[Rhuragh]

Wouldn't a Concentrated Solar Thermal power plant be a better use of the land, producing more energy and probably costing less too?

Spain Too

[LoudMusic]

Spain is doing something similar. But different.

http://www.power-technology.com/projects/Seville-Solar-Tower/

$750 million for 200 MW?

[jcr]

Anyone have the figures for the cost of conventional generating facilities that, you know... Work when the sun's not shining, too?

-jcr

Re:Should be cheaper than solar

[Nefarious Wheel]

Except 4 square miles of solar panels will generate an order of magnitude more energy than a solar chimney. Solar updraft power plants have a low initial outlay, but are very inefficient.

I'd go with four square miles of solar chimneys, myself. There are places so remote in Australia that even the taggers wouldn't find them. Nobody would find them for years, if they had the good sense to bury the cables. Personally I'd be in favour of any solution that didn't involve burning stuff you had to dig up out of the dirt.

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[pesho]

You vastly underestimate them. In addition to their US and Australian projects they are also not building one in Namibia .

The Namibian project is more ambitious as it will be used also to grow food in the hot and windy conditions under their greenhouse.

Super Flux Capacitor

[Simonetta]

A giant sun tower or two in Arizona is an interesting idea. But it makes more sense to build a huge lightning capacitor.

    There's this place in Arizona where lightning strikes are common and happen nearly every night. Something in the atmosphere, the heat, and humidity.

    So why not dig a huge hole in the ground, fill it with aluminum foil and electrolytic, then quickly and carefully build a huge lightning rod. The lightning will constantly arc to the giant million farad capacitor in the ground. It gets recharged up every night and the 'supercap' powers a small city or suburb.

    Electricity directly from the sky to your PC!

Re:Super Flux Capacitor

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Impractical. Lightning is dramatic(in large part because it wastes most of its energy in hard-to-collect light and sound); but doesn't actually contain that much energy, compared to the needs of even a modestly sized city.

The combination of "hardly enough energy to bother with, once you've averaged it out over the year" and "peak energy high and fast enough to blow a hole through anything not specifically engineered to take it" just isn't very exciting...

Re:Super Flux Capacitor

[Low Ranked Craig]

Not in July and August. http://geoplan.asu.edu/aztc/monsoon.html

Re:Yeah!

[QuoteMstr]

You people have no sense of scale.

The heat our civilization directly produces is utterly insignificant in terms of climate change. The issue is that our carbon emissions act as greenhouse gasses and alter the entire earth's energy balance, greatly amplifying the heat-trapping effects of the atmosphere.

It's solar radiation that's warming the planet, not the heat we directly produce.

This plant doesn't cause any carbon emissions. Even if it does warm the atmosphere, the effect is insignificant next to the greenhouse gas emissions that don't need to happen to generate the same amount of power.

Green Energy?

[Tehrasha]

A giant greenhouse, designed to heat massive ammounts of air, and dump it into the cold upper atmosphere...

So we have given up and are going to proactively warm the earth's atmosphere directly now?

Re:Green Energy?

[The End Of Days]

Maybe there's something I'm missing, but I'm pretty sure all the energy that the sun will dump into these greenhouses was going to end up there anyway...

Re:Green Energy?

[Cassius Corodes]

Probably, but given our habit of causing tomorrows problems with today's solutions it would not be too surprising.

Re:Green Energy?

[CyDharttha]

Good luck solving any problems without causing new ones. Unfortunately for the human race, perfect foresight is fictional.

After reading the earlier comment regarding urination problems (I should have passed it by), I unfortunately read 'foresight' as 'foreskin'. Sigh.

Re:Green Energy?

[osu-neko]

Might I suggest that instead of dumping the warm air into the upper atmosphere, we pump it to Minnesota? Please?

But seriously, this is essentially harvesting energy that's going to waste. Since we're using it to turn turbines and extract energy out of it, technically, it ought to result in a net cooling of the air rather than a heating (although when you consider the waste heat when the energy is used, it probably all balances out in the end -- well, it would have to, wouldn't it, unless you're suggesting the conservation of energy is being violated somewhere).

Re:Green Energy?

[SEWilco]

2400 feet is not high in the atmosphere. 2400 feet is similar to the height of the newly created world's tallest building, so construction obviously will be somewhat challenging. But in the scale of the atmosphere, 24,000 or 48,000 feet would be more impressive. But even those are routine for thunderstorm convection, so are hardly unusual.

Re:Green Energy?

[budgenator]

Real greenhouses work very differently than atmospheric "greenhouse" gases. An actual greenhouse warms because the glazing stops the convecting hot air, not by absorbing or blocking IR energy. This is easy to prove, all you have to do is build two model greenhouses, make one out of window glass that absorbs IR and make one out of a crystallized salt sheet that transmits IR, after exposure to sunlight both will reach the same temperature.

Re:Green Energy?

[deniable]

Why the pointless redirect? This works just as well and doesn't look like goatse bait.

Re:Green Energy?

[gyrogeerloose]

Construction of a simple tube that tall should be considerably simpler.

It was interesting how, in the artist's conceptual drawings, the whole thing looked slick and clean and modern while in the photograph of the real, working power station, it was rough and industrial-looking. And notice the guy wires supporting the chimney that weren't included in the drawing.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a pretty cool thing. I just find the somewhat deceitful methods often used by corporations to sell things to the public by not telling the whole truth rather...fascinating. The Sutro Tower (a 700+ foot high TV antenna tower) in San Francisco is a case in point. The original plans called for a rather futuristic single needle. The actual tower as built was a brutally expedient latticework that San Franciscans hate to this day.

Re:Green Energy?

[symbolset]

Green energy plants in Minnesota to generate cheap heat and light: $7 billion.

Plane tickets, Minneapolis St. Paul to Phoenix departing tomorrow: $147 each or $767,397,771 for all 5,220,393 residents of Minnesota.

I'm going to channel Sam Kinnison here: "Move to where the warm is!" You are dangerously close to Canada.

Re:Green Energy?

[cyn1c77]

A giant greenhouse, designed to heat massive ammounts of air, and dump it into the cold upper atmosphere...

So we have given up and are going to proactively warm the earth's atmosphere directly now?

Don't confuse controlled convection with global warming. The ground everywhere always absorbs sunlight, which heats it and the air near the ground. That air then ruses upwards. All they are doing is putting a roof over the hot ground to channel the air into a turbine. It's analogous to building a dam in a river to harness potential energy that is normally wasted. The earth doesn't absorb any more energy than it normally would... unless they are lowering the albedo of the ground under the greenhouse. Of course, it would be more efficient for them to paint the ground black.

If they did color the ground, you would have increased global energy absorption. (Much like you get frmo using solar panels...) But you would also be generating CO2 free energy, so you could burn less coal. In the end, lowering CO2 values would win out, since with less greenhouse gases in the air, the more heat would be radiated back out to space. And that is ignoring the carbon savings from not having to mine as many coal or hydrocarbons.

They should put these over parking lots in hot areas of the world. Or maybe we could just put a big one over Texas. They all use air conditioning there anyway, so they would never know the difference.

Re:Green Energy?

[fbjon]

A giant greenhouse, designed to heat massive ammounts of air, and dump it into the cold upper atmosphere... So we have given up and are going to proactively warm the earth's atmosphere directly now?

Dumping hot air into the upper atmosphere cools the Earth. As air is circulated higher up it more readily radiates energy out into space, bypassing some fraction of the greenhouse gases of the atmosphere.

Re:Green Energy?

[mcvos]

Dumping hot air into the upper atmosphere cools the Earth. As air is circulated higher up it more readily radiates energy out into space, bypassing some fraction of the greenhouse gases of the atmosphere.

I'm no atmospheric physycist, but this sounds incredibly compelling, actually. So should we build bigger solar chimneys and send more hot air into the upper atmosphere, generating free electricity while cooling the earth at the same time?

Re:Green Energy?

[KlaymenDK]

But seriously, this is essentially harvesting energy that's going to waste. Since we're using it to turn turbines and extract energy out of it, technically, it ought to result in a net cooling of the air rather than a heating

Yes, until you consider that they are probably going to do something to that greenhouse to maximise its heat production (such as painting the entire ground area black or somesuch), so it's not going to be the same as an equal area of varied nature.

Re:Green Energy?

[IndustrialComplex]

I'm no atmospheric physycist, but this sounds incredibly compelling, actually. So should we build bigger solar chimneys and send more hot air into the upper atmosphere, generating free electricity while cooling the earth at the same time?
 

Ever think you could save the world AND get your doomsday mad scientist weapon at the same time? Well here's how.

1. Collect energy from the Earth, either in the form of wind turbines or capturing heat from a system such as this.

2. Use that energy to power a giant laser which you fire off into outer space.

3. The energy of the light which escapes the atmosphere is the amount of energy you have removed from the atmosphere.

Just be careful where you aim it.

The old nuclear lobby killed itself commercially

[dbIII]

Unfortunately we've been buried under decades of "too cheap to meter" and "clean" lies by an industry that spends orders of magnitude more on PR than R&D while picking up enormous amounts of government welfare. In recent years however there have been organisations outside of the nuclear lobby that look as if they will make it a commerical reality. Examples are non US solutions like pebble bed, accelerated thorium and startups like Hyperion (lots of little modern submarine style reactors instead of one big dangerous dinosaur from Westinghouse). It's time for all the liars to get buried by those that really did the R&D.
Don't blame the hippies, they really didn't have the political power you credit them with. The nuclear industry of the 1970s simply showed they were a waste of space and they are still stuck in the 1970s.

Re:Should be cheaper than solar

[dissy]

Personally I'd be in favour of any solution that didn't involve burning stuff you had to dig up out of the dirt.

Hmm, perhaps I should do more market research before finishing production of my dead hooker electrical generator...

Re:Why can't we address the human factor first?

[General Wesc]

Human population will reach 9 billion this year.

6.9 billion, perhaps. We're nearly to 6.8 billion right now and the high UN projection is to hit 9 billion around 2030. Medium projection is 9 billion around 2050, and low is never reaching it. (Source)

The solution is simple -- before fucking with the planet and spending billions of dollars on green efforts, work to limit the population growth.

The good news is that we can actually do multiple things at once. There's no need to completely ignore one issue just because there's another one that you see as more pressing.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[carlhaagen]

There was a pretty big pilot, entirely successful one, built in Spain at the end of the 80s.

Re:The old nuclear lobby killed itself commerciall

[QuoteMstr]

(lots of little modern submarine style reactors instead of one big dangerous dinosaur from Westinghouse)

Your mind is still in the "small is beautiful" rut. Nuclear power plants are big because big plants are more efficient and easier to regulate, which makes them cheaper and safer. Hyperion is a crock.

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[Nadaka]

reinvesting the the old new deal infrastructure that is currently at its end of life would be a better use of stimulus. Put all those out of work construction workers and bankers on road and bridge crews.

The desert isn't a wasteland

[sp3d2orbit]

The project will decimate 2000 acres of desert habitat for 200 megawatts output. Palo Verde nuclear power plant, also in Arizona, spans 4000 acres of desert and produces 3.2 gigawatts.

Nuclear power is 8x more efficient in land use alone.

Re:The desert isn't a wasteland

[canajin56]

If it decimates 2000 acres of desert, you still have 1800 acres left.

Re:The old nuclear lobby killed itself commerciall

[dbIII]

You've misunderstood.
You still have the "big plant" but made up of a lot of little reactors collectively heating up the steam for very large turbines. A big Chenobyl style steam explosion spreading fuel everywhere or even just water in the radioactive loop can't happen in that situation. A current example is the pebble bed powered plant that should be finished by now in China. However the main problem with Westinghouse etc is that they are more than twenty years behind even South Africa and some good ideas have come up over the last few decades.

Re:Why can't we address the human factor first?

[Nefarious Wheel]

This sort of news upsets me... Why do we spend countless dollars on searching for more energy if the basic problem is not addressed first: There are too many humans and until we figure out how to control human population growth we are doomed sooner or later. ...we'll be able to reduce human population to something that Earth can sustain.

Course manouvers. The Universe is infinite, space is big, and it's all out there for us to tap. And considering the scale of the playpen, I have utterly no qualms about invading it with our polluting presence. We could grow to a population of quintillions or more and not even be noticed on the cosmic scale. I refuse to feel sorrow over our biological imperatives. Far from feeling any sort of sorrow, I take a sunny fresh joy in watching people discussing ways to allow us to live and thrive while using what we have in the most efficient possible way, until the time comes for us to leave the nest and fly. Go Technology!

Re:Wet toilet seats a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meatloaf will solve *all* your bathroom carpet dampening needs

Anyone with carpet in their bathroom deserves whatever debris gets trapped in their penis.

Re:The old nuclear lobby killed itself commerciall

[CrimsonAvenger]

(lots of little modern submarine style reactors instead of one big dangerous dinosaur from Westinghouse)

Westinghouse makes submarine reactors, by the way.

Note that the solution to nuclear power phobia isn't thousands of nuclear power plants instead of hundreds of them.

Unfortunately, AGW will have to get a great deal worse before we can think about actually adopting a zero emission baseload.

Re:Yeah, because...

[Guru2Newbie]

Good point. Though any Plexiglas would have to be UV-hardened, else it would get brittle, yellow, and eventually crack in the harsh desert sun.

Re:Wet toilet seats a problem?

[The Snowman]

Anyone with carpet in their bathroom deserves whatever debris gets trapped in their penis.

I hate to nitpick grammar, but I am pretty sure that "penis" is always masculine singular, i.e. "his penis."

Re:Yeah!

[nmos]

Yes. Is all aluminum burning?

Basically yes, it starts oxidizing right away and releases energy in the process. Burning aluminum is just really fast oxidation. I was pointing out that turning aluminum oxide into aluminum is basically just energy storage, which you can see by burning it.

But only for definitions of "eventually" that have nothing to do with the original question of net heat in the atmosphere.

No, the vast majority of electricity use ends up as waste heat pretty quickly, electronics, lighting,motors, heating (obviously), cooling etc. Comparatively little is stored long term and doing that usually involves a lot of waste anyway.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[The Wooden Badger]

While that is all good and true, there will still be government BS on private land as well. I might be off my rocker, but I think they are going to have to get a permit to build something that tall.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[mdmkolbe]

Coal plant emit more radioactive material (radon) than nuclear plants

It doesn't matter whether something emits radioactive elements but rather how much is emitted. Living organisms and granite are both naturally radioactive just not enough to cause a problem.

A quick google finds a study indicating that each year 100,000 times more radon is emitted directly by the soil than from coal[1]. Show me a better study that says otherwise and I'll believe you, but until then the radiation argument against coal is bunk.

The same goes for sulfur. The question isn't whether it is emitted, but how much relative to other sources and is it enough to actually matter.

[1] Table 4 in http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/radon.htm

Los Angeles City Limits

[symbolset]

A sign bearing the subject line, "Los Angeles City Limits" was stolen from the border of LA and hung by the side of the road in my home town in Bishop, CA some 260 miles away. It stood there several years. It was a political statement of the political reach of the LA Department of Water and Power, which at that time extended to leeching every drop of water our of our formerly verdant vally - an engineering feat that required making water run uphill for several miles. Apparently since then the limit has stretched to Arizona.

To the point of your post: if the LA city limits don't yet extend all the way to DC, I misdoubt they will soon.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[evilviper]

Feinstein is sprinkling "national monuments" all over the Mojave to prevent solar projects.

Ole' Ms. Frankenstein there is trying to get certain specific areas of desert protected. Areas which were donated to the government by a private party, and which are known for their ecological importance.

There's nothing sinister about it. It's happening now, because there hasn't been any threat to the areas until solar starting becoming a big thing. And make no mistake, there is TONS of land elsewhere that will do the job just as well... It's just big corporations who didn't give a shit that were willing to destroy a de facto wilderness preserve because it happened to be just slightly more profitable for them.

There's no indication nor even suggestion that Franky will attempt to stamp that label on ANY OTHER AREAS, so there remains enough unprotected desert in So. Cal to supply the power needs of the entire country.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[daath93]

How about So. Cal just supply the needs of their own state, THEN we will talk about them supplying the entire country.

First this IS solar

[Arker]

It's very annoying how many ignorant people throw around "solar" as a synonym for photovoltaïc.

Of course solar energy is actually responsible for all life on earth, and the ultimate source of power behind pretty much everything on the planet, but even solely in terms of conscious human implented technology solar energy is a broad field with photovoltaïcs being one small and relatively new and immature branch. Solar thermal technology is often far more efficient and less expensive, and just as much 'solar' as any other sort. The easiest and most efficient use is direct heating of water and air to displace the use of electricity to do the same job. Solar-thermal technologies also show some promise for power production, although this particular project looks to me far less likely to ever be useful than more conventional "power towers" which do not require such extravagances as 2400 foot chimneys (can you imagine the difficulty not just in building, but in maintaining that?) and convert solar energy to electricity using an extremely mature technology - the steam turbine.

The big savings for the forseeable future is still to be found not in using the sun to produce electricity at all, but simply to displace it. The $750million proposed cost of this plant (which is likely to increase several times before a single watt is ever produced by it) would be much better spent replacing electric water heaters with efficient solar water heaters, for instance. The 200 megawatts this plant is touted to eventually produce is only a little more than was displaced in the US in 2008 alone through installation of solar hot water heaters for domestic use alone (keeping in mind that market penetration for this technology in the US is still miniscule there is room for that to expand many times) and is only a little more than a quarter of what solar pool heating units displaced in the same year. Passive solar home design is another potential area of savings where the current market penetration is even lower, and the potential savings enormous.

Given the relative efficiencies and costs, it really makes no sense to me to be throwing all this money at speculative schemes for electrical generation while there remains so much more potential for displacement. Even confining this to the states where solar energy is most reliable and appropriate - the "sun belt" - the potential reduction in electrical usage is staggering and dwarfs what a project like this could possibly produce. One day when >90% of homes located between southern california and the florida/georgia/carolina coast have passive solar designs and thermosiphon hot water systems in place, THEN it might make sense to start throwing money at solar power generation on a large scale, but for the time being I just dont see it.

Re:Do a small scale pilot first

[DrJimbo]

TopSpin said:

No development of any kind, anywhere, under any circumstances, ever.

and provided this link to an article that says:

The Sierra Club wants regulators to move the site closer to Interstate 15, the busy freeway connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas, to avoid what it says will be a virtual death sentence for the tortoises. Estimates of the population have varied, but government scientists say at least 25 would need to be captured and moved.

I realize I'm not supposed to follow the links but ISTM the article directly contradicts TopSpin's claim. Moving the solar farm closer to Interstate 15 sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Elsewhere in the article it was claimed that the solar plant would generate billions of dollars and the cost of moving the tortoises could be $25 million. I'll tell you what: I'll move those 25 tortoises for half price -- a mere $500k per tortoise.

But seriously, suggesting an alternate location to put the plant is nothing like "No development of any kind, anywhere, under any circumstances, ever." What's wrong with placing the solar farm where they will do the least amount of environmental harm? Are you worried that placing it near route 15 is going to break up the monotony of the drive?

Re:Wet toilet seats a problem?

[deniable]

Lorena Bobbit had a penis. but threw it away.

Re:Wet toilet seats a problem?

[fractoid]

Never been to Thailand, I take it?

I read a book about this once

[symbolset]

It was Glory Road. It was very educational. In it the Galactic Empress' commonest answer to every problem was: do nothing. Almost all problems solve themselves in time, given a wide enough view.

Well worth reading for this and a number of other reasons. It's the best representation of the "stream of consciousness" narrative I've seen, and it's a sexy good story. Actually I have a copy - and no, you can't borrow it. I wouldn't mind seeing what James Cameron could do with it.

You've got to give the Dean credit: whether it was stealing plot elements like the indifference of immortals to the travails of mortals or calculating orbits, the man was not afraid to do his homework.

/ Still hopes Hollywood stays away from Stranger in a Strange Land until I'm dead. I would have to go see it, and what they do to it would be sad.

Re:I read a book about this once

[tmosley]

He who governs least governs best. This is why America advanced from a primitive backwater to being a superpower between 1800 and 1930. Can you name five presidents from that time period? Neither can I.

What kind of nonsense is this question?

[A nonymous Coward]

It's a greenhouse. It has no heaters other than concentrating the sun's warmth. Have you and the moderators lost all sense of reality, forgotten what words mean, gone cuckoo?

Every time I think I've met and accounted for those idiots who confound my idiot-proof programs, I find that nature is preparing the batch right under my nose.

Re:Plenty of consulting dollars to be spent

[imakemusic]

Ass Pot: It's the good shit.