In a remote area of New South Wales is being built with support from the Government of Australia, the world’s tallest structure. There will be a communications tower, which rises as 555 meters above the ground in Toronto, or offices, such as the Petronas Towers (452 meters) from Kuala Lumpur, but a solar thermal plant that provides electricity to 200,000 homes.
The most dramatic component of this plant dedicated to the production of energy is a tower nearly 1,000 feet high and 130 meters wide, which can be spotted from more than one hundred kilometers. This gigantic reinforced concrete tower will be hollow like a chimney and is surrounded at its base by a circular structure of 4 kilometers in diameter, made of transparent material, acting as the roof of a greenhouse. The solar tower technology was designed by German engineer Jörg Schlaich, that experienced in the 80s in a pilot plant of 180 meters high and 50 kW of energy output, built in the town of Manzanares (Ciudad Real).
Hot wind
The engineers of the Australian company EnviroMission, promoter of the project, the future plant will produce 200 MW of energy when the sun’s radiation will heat the mass of air present under the roof of transparent material, forcing their ascent at a speed of 15 meters per second as a hot wind (60 degrees) for the high tower a thousand feet, but not before passing through 32 turbines [of 6.25 MW each] designed with ultra-light materials that generate electricity in the bottom of the tower .
The plant will be operational in 2009 and will provide power for 24 hours a day from a battery system that ensures a constant flow of wind up overnight. This project is heavily promoted by the Government of Australia, which gets 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources, while being one of the great powers that has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. EnviroMission says its solar tower each year will prevent the expulsion to the atmosphere of about 830,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Although the pilot plant that operated in Spain between 1982 and 1989 demonstrated the conceptual feasibility of solar tower technology, is yet to clarify if this way of producing solar thermal energy will be economically profitable. Some experts suggest it could be an expensive way of producing electricity when compared to the performance of wind power plants. But the goal is EnviroMission current electricity production. Please everything is as it should, this company will build another 4 more.
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