{"id":19780,"date":"2017-01-06T11:47:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T06:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/?p=19780"},"modified":"2017-01-06T11:47:08","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T06:17:08","slug":"watch-the-worlds-tallest-solar-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/2017\/01\/06\/watch-the-worlds-tallest-solar-tower\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch The World&#039;s Tallest Solar Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: justify;\">Will Solar Power Tower Ever be Successful<\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A <strong>Solar Power tower<\/strong> is a tower used to receive concentrated solar power. It is usually surrounded by heliostats or flat movable mirrors that capture the sun&#8217;s rays and reflect it to the Solar Tower in the middle. Below you can watch a video of the tallest Solar tower being constructed in an Israeli Desert. This tower is encircled by 50,000 heliostats and should reach a height of <strong>250 meters<\/strong> once completed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.ooyala.com\/static\/v4\/stable\/4.7.9\/skin-plugin\/iframe.html?ec=M2azdyODE6t1Gyhs0uaD1TuIjr1umjxK&amp;pbid=ZTIxYmJjZDM2NWYzZDViZGRiOWJjYzc5&amp;pcode=RvbGU6Z74XE_a3bj4QwRGByhq9h2\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2017\/01\/05\/worlds-tallest-solar-tower-construction-deep-israeli-desert\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Telegraph<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, whether these power towers will ever become successful? We at Greenworldinvestor had sounded the end of the <strong>solar<\/strong> <strong>thermal<\/strong> technology\u00a0years ago, saying that the technology was no longer competitive with silicon solar PV technology. Today the prices of mainstream silicon has fallen and is already competitive to the prices of traditional sources of power. Many of these towers are being replaced with solar PV technology.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/2016\/03\/28\/is-the-failure-of-the-ivanpah-the-final-death-knell-of-the-solar-thermal-technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ivanpah Solar Power plant<\/a><\/strong> which was constructed in California by Brightsource Energy costed $2.2 billion is already running into trouble. The\u00a0power tower has failed to generate the required power as per the contract with Californian utilities. These\u00a0power towers are still a niche technology and on\u00a0top of it is the falling solar PV costs, which makes this technology look even worse.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Here are some of the Disadvantages of Solar Thermal Energy<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0<strong>1) High Costs<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Solar Thermal Energy costs at least Euro 3.5\/watt and has not declined too much in the last 3-4 years. However these costs are too high \u00a0when compared to solar PV technology which has witnessed rapid falls in prices lately and should continue to do so in future.<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>2)<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>Future Technology has a high probability of making CSP Obsolete<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Solar energy has become a hotbed of innovation with daily news of some new breakthrough in materials and process in PV Technology. This has made PV solar the popular choice amongst masses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>3)<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>Water Issue<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Solar Thermal Plants use lots of water which is major problem in desert areas. Using non-water cooling raises the cost of CSP projects too much. While using sea water has been proposed it remains to be seen if it possible to implement this solution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>4) Ecological and Cultural Issues<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 The usage of massive arrays of mirrors is noted to heavily impact the desert \u00a0wildlife harming the endangered species. The mirrors create an effect of water bodies, which naturally attract birds and animals who eventually die because of high temperatures in the vicinity.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>5) Limited Locations and Size Limitations<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Solar Thermal\u00a0 Energy can only be built in places which have the high amount of solar radiation. They can be built in deserts mostly and require a large land area. This means its not possible to build them in populated areas. Solar Thermal Energy also can only be built in large sizes which are at least 50 MW in size to be economical. This contrasts to Solar PV which is sold in sizes as low as 5 Watts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>6) Long Gestation Time Leading to Cost Overruns<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 The gestation time for permitting, financing, drilling etc. can easily take 5-7 years to develop a concentrated solar thermal power plant. Compare this to 6 months for a small wind farm or 3 months for a Solar PV plant.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>7)\u00a0 Financing<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 is the biggest problem in developing projects particularly for small solar thermal developers in this industry.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Solar Power towers are still in a conceptual stage and we shall wait for\u00a0the technology to find its foot hold in niche areas of power generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Will Solar Power Tower Ever be Successful A Solar Power tower is a tower used to receive concentrated solar power. It is usually surrounded by heliostats<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[83,45],"tags":[3231,5027],"class_list":["post-19780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-csp","category-solar-renewable-energy-greeninvest","tag-ivanpah","tag-solar-power-tower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}