Talk:Solar updraft tower/Archive 1

Origin

I admit my article Solar power tower was ameturish compared to the many excellent articles in Wikipedia, however this is the common name well established by the Sandia Corp tower near Barstow, California, which is not descibed at all under the heading of Solar tower. The link supplied under solar tower did not finish loading sufficiently to obtain useful information in 30 minutes, which may be the fault of my computer, but more likely means the project is out of money and won't be built in this decade, perhaps never. IMHO, the mirrors are signifcantly more cost effective and the mirror pilot plant is still producing 100 times more power than the Solar tower in Spain which was wrecked long ago in a storm.

The solar collectors for both types of tower are valnerable to storm dammage and reducing valnerability will be costly in both cases. IMHO the Austrailia power tower solar collector (a square mile plus of green house) should be built on a steep hillside (steeply sloped land is less costly and the sun angle will be more favorable) which faces between North and Northwest. The mile tall chimney likely needs to be at the top of the hill to get a proper foundation for it's great weight. It will be more difficult to find multiple suitable locations for power towers than for Solar power towers. I think both will run into diminishing returns on investment before they can be scalled to ten gigawatt hours per year put on the grid, so hundreds of each are needed to help Earth's energy problems significately. Neil — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rncox (talk • contribs) 02:03, 9 July 2004 (UTC)

Old comments from Solar chimneytalk page

The following old comments were moved from Talk:Solar chimney, following the moving of power-generation-related material from that article to this one. --Singkong2005 ^{(t - c - WPID)} 15:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Intellectual property concerns

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Intellectual property concerns

Enviromisson Ltd Australia have made claims to ownership and exclusive rights to solar tower technology, and considerable controversy surrounds these claims to geophysical territorial rights.

H. Alfred Goolsbee owns the Japanese trademark and service mark "Solar Tower" and retains certain rights to the use of the words "Solar Tower" in the United States as well.

This section is specific to the Solar Tower, and already appears in that article, duplicated word for word. Andrewa 19:58, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I left it in both articles because I felt it was useful in each one. Any patents on the technology itself would apply to all "solar chimneys," not just "solar towers." But if you feel this is wrong, that's fine. Rhobite 20:31, Oct 17, 2004 (UTC)

Tricky. Yes, I did see your comment on the other talk page. It's hard to say whether it's right or wrong, they've been so vague about what rights they are claiming. They imply that there was something to patent, but they don't say whether any patent was applied for, or why it wasn't granted if so.

There's a lot left to do before this is a good article. I'd like someone who's a bit more sympathetic to the idea to do some editing. I'm trying hard not to introduce my own POV, but finding it quite difficult. What does other kinetic works mean? Has anyone actually calculated how many kW can be produced by this water? Andrewa 03:25, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am still confused about the intellectual property rights, is this: No patent was ever awarded for the technology, and so similar solar chimneys may be built at anytime, anywhere by anyone so long as local laws and official regulations are observed in the respective jurisdictions something we can rely on? I actually heard that a couple of patents were awarded for a number of "solar chimney"-similar technical constructions - anybody here that can clarify this? Themanwithoutapast 19:17, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some interesting previous content

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It was destroyed by heavy weather and thunderstorms...

It is also suggested that heat produced from the air-conditioning of nearby factories, offices, schools, shopping malls and homes could be funneled to the tower to optimize refrigeration and air-conditioning operations. Thermodynamically, this must of course reduce the power available for power generation at the tower.

That second passage is probably best left out of the article. The sentence about air-conditioning is from the promotional material for the Solar Tower, and the particular site that contained this speculation seems to now be offline, so it's unverifiable. Even if verified, it belongs in the Solar Tower article rather than here. The following sentence, about the thermodynamics of this particular dream, is mine, and they both should go together of course.

But the first passage, about the prototype being destroyed by thunderstorms, is a bit more interesting. Does anyone know whether it is true? It seems both encyclopedic and very relevant, if it could be verified. This power plant operated successfully for approximately 8 years and was decommissioned in 1989 (current article content) is a very different story to It was destroyed by heavy weather and thunderstorms in 1989 and was officially decommissioned (previous version). Andrewa 05:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)