Don Quixote tilted at windmills.
Today, some green energy advocates have another quixotic dream involving wind turbines and solar power — the large scale generation of electric power through solar energy regenerators.
Imagine the scene: a large desert basin, in the middle of which are acres and acres of glass panels. In the center of 5-miles-in-diameter ring of solar thermal panels, rising 3,000ft into air is a chimney stack. No smoke or carbon products are emitted from this chimney. Instead, the well-insulated stack draws in the warmed air from the solar collection panels, the heated air in turn drives a turbine, which generates electricity.
A simple and a massive dream. A 5 mile-diameter solar collector in order to generate sufficient heated air and a 3,000 foot-high stack to ensure a pressure differential strong enough to pull in a steady updraft of air to drive turbines, all in order to generate commercial quantities of power (200 MW or more).
It was on the plains of Spain (where it does not rain) that Spanish army Colonel Isidoro Cabanyes had the crazy idea in 1903 of capturing the sun’s energy in a solar chimney power plant, which he then wrote up as an article in La energía eléctrica magazine. German writer Hanns Günther described a working solar tower in 1931.
In 1982 an experimental small-scale solar power plant was built by German engineers in Manzanares, near Madrid. The 600 ft-tall chimney in the center of an 11-acre solar collection area generated up to 50 kW.
In 2007 the idea was floated for the construction of a solar wind tower 750 meters high in Fuente el Fresno Ciudad Real in Spain. If built the plant could produce 40 MW per year, capable of supporting 25,000 households. It would also be the tallest structure in Europe. To date, this project and similar proposals in Australia, Botswana, and Namibia have not got beyond the initial planning stages.
Australian firm EnviroMission is championing the concept of large-scale solar towers. In addition to targeting markets in India and the Middle East, the company is courting US power suppliers. Having established a US office in 2009, EnviroMission approached Southern California Public Power Authority (which represents power companies serving 12 cities in Southern Califirnia) offering to supply it with solar power from a proposed solar tower in La Paz County, Arizona. Company president Chris Davey claims that a 2,400ft tall tower, with a 2,400 acre collection area would sustain a 35-mph wind through the tower’s 32 turbines.
According to a Phoenix Business Journal article citing an estimate by Raymond James & Associates, it would cost about $750 million to construct a 200 MW solar tower facility. By comparison, traditional thermal power plants in Arizona cost between $1 billion and $1.5 billion to build for a similar, or slightly greater energy output.
However, EnviroMission has no solar towers in operation, no other source of revenues, and a history of losing money. Investors should hope that this Don Quixote’s Dulcinea is the real thing and that EnviroMission is not just tilting at windmills.
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Stuart Hampton does provide some facts ie EnviroMission’s intent to commercialise Solar Tower technology specifically in the USA and EnviroMission has a regional presence in Phoenix Arizona. However Stuart Hampton trivialises the scrutiny that surrounds power purchase negotiations with headline entities such as Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA), and references transparent expenditure on research and development as a ‘history of losing money’.
The views expressed by Stuart Hampton cut across broader market appreciation that large-scale infrastructure development is expenditure intensive (particularly in the feasibility, pre-optimisation, optimisation and front end engineering and development phases). The courtesy of a request for an interview with an EnviroMission spokesperson would have supported Stuart Hampton to present a productive view as opposed to his attempt to draw relevance with metaphors shaped on historical fiction.
I invite Stuart Hampton to seek an interview with EnviroMission to better (more accurately) represent EnviroMission’s current status and reasonable market expectations and understanding of a business clearly operating on capital raisings ahead of the prospect for royalties or developer revenues. An interview conducted with journalistic objectivity would avoid further insult to EnviroMission, EnviroMission’s shareholders and business associates and collaborators.