Namibia looking into building 1.5km tall solar updraft tower
Kevin Spiess - Thursday, September 11th, 2008 | 11:30AM (PT)
Giant solar power generating turbine towers in the desert
The government of the Republic of Namibia (a country in south western Africa) has put money towards a $780,000 feasibility study on building a giant solar updraft tower. If built, the tower would be an incredible project -- costing at least one billion USD, and stretching 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles) into the sky.
A solar updraft tower this big could conceivably generate 400MW of power -- enough to power Windhoek, Namibia's capital city.
There are two main components to a solar updraft tower: a huge greenhouse at the bottom of it, a sort of massive 37 square kilometer tent where air is heated using mirrors, and the tower itself. The heated air is then piped through the tower, which has many large turbines which convert the motion into electricity. The massive greenhouse could also be used to grow crops, or even form part of a desalinating seawater greenhouse. The updraft tower can also generate some power at night.
The idea of building a solar updraft tower has been around since the early '80's. But it has only been until recently that the huge cost of the project has been made feasible due to the rising price of more traditional energy sources, such as coal. In order for a solar updraft tower to be effective, it has to be really, really big; so building small ones isn't worthwhile at all.
Namibia is a perfect place for such a thing because their deserts receive high amounts of sunshine for about 300 days out of a year. If built, the updraft tower would be the tallest structure in the world by a long shot, conceivably making it a bit of a tourist attraction as well.
Many engineers and scientists feel the project is good idea, but the massive cost might be a tough sell to the Namibian nation. It would take a long time indeed for the tower to produce enough energy to offset the billion dollar price tag of the project -- but after that, Namibians would have virtually free energy.
Here is a video of a smaller solar updraft tower that was built in Spain by a German company in the 1980's:
And here is a promotional video on a newer design of a solar updraft tower:
This company seems to be planning to build a 1KM solar updraft tower in Australia.
In terms of potential solar power sources in the Asia-Pacific region, none beats Australia, because we recieve plenty of sunshine and we have a lot of deserts for future solar experiments.
Any way, we have to properly utilise the nature-given energy from our giant sun, haven't we? Otherwise, we will be fools, at least for a while, Hee Hee!!!
They only wanna do this cuz the Chinese want to build a nuclear power plant there. The catch? Only the Chinese can work there. Damn them! BTW if you wanna hunt, Namibia is a great place to go, went last summer.
Wouldn't such huge structures be subject to incredible amounts of physical stress, making them prone to catastrophic damage from even the simplest forces at the higher altitudes?
im not the best Math guy here... but it would take almost 100 years to cover the cost of the project. We have a rate of 56c a KW in South Africa so Nam should not be far off. thats 0.56/7.5 roughly USD. The only thing im not sure on is that you say 400MW...is that per day??
grayfox -=> You've been hunting in Namibia? Dude how cool is that. Must have been quite the trip.
Red -=> Seems like that would be a huge problem. There isn't much to the tower (like its basically a big chimney) so there doesn't seem to be anything that address this problem, which is a huge issue for buildings twice its height. I would guess that because the tower is mostly hollow that this would not be as much of a problem, but I don't know... maybe they'd build it on a bed of springs or something.
Loot3r -=> It would take a long time but I think a big problem with your calculations is that they don't take into account the amount costs will raise over the next while. I'd say if it took about 50 years or so before it paid for itself that'd be great.
As for the output, the 400MW is -- I assume -- continuous output. I believe that is how like, say a coal plant is measured (i.e a 100MW plant outputs when running 100MW's.)If anyone knows better than please correct me.
I was just googling this now and found some good videos, so I tossed them into the story.
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