Solar thermal as art
I’ll let the following photos speak for themselves. They were kindly sent to me by Emil Moller, a PhD researcher in the Netherlands, who had a chance to visit the Solucar 11-megawatt solar tower (or solar thermal plant) outside of Seville, Spain. More information about the tower can be found reading this BBC online article, which also has a handy graphic that shows how the technology works. It truly strikes a heavenly pose, and shows the power of concentrating technology. Thanks Emil for sharing these photos with us. It must have been a sight to see in person.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
October 20th, 2007 at 3:55 am
For those interested in the potential for clean electricity @ a lower price as clean coal (what policy makers see as the way to go, together with nuclear), results of a meeting this Friday of TREC in Germany.
The meeting was dedicated to the desalination aspects of CSP. Together with the esthetics of the CSP-tower, the idea that clean electricity implies clean water, makes one’s heart jump.
Interesting to note that the CSP industry in Germany is fully booked for the coming years. Where and when will other entrepreneurs jump in?
The docs are available for 7 days at Yousendit (from end October at http://www.trecers.net/)
Yousendit download1
Yousendit download2
Yousendit download3
Yousendit download4
Yousendit download5
Yousendit download6
Yousendit download7 (interview with Vinod Khosla on why he invests heaviliy in CSP)
Pace e Bene,
Emil M
October 20th, 2007 at 7:43 am
When observing the inherent superiority of CSP, including on strictly economic grounds, one wonders about the extremely low profile of this technology.
One of the fundamental reasons I found is a rampant lack of interest in truth. Perhaps to quite an extent due to post modernism (where truth is always “truth” and even “truth”? hahaha!)
What helps is that in the business domain, ‘truth’ is a strategic phenomenon. Which is twisted, postponed, chopped up, reversed, deluted, etc in a quest for maximal revenues.
This is not to say that long term relationships in the business domain are not considered important. They are, but putting all one’s cards on the table for the sake of it, is considered contra productive and naive.
The political domain doesn’t fare much better.
Also the personal domain is littered with white lies and worse.
These domains cross fertilize (or cross pollute) and in the resulting culture of taking ‘truth’ lightly, with or without the best of intentions, telling one from the other is a tricky endeavour.
And worse: we don’t seem to care.
Add to this
- a rampant chiqueness of being a sceptic versus a perceived naivit
October 29th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Rainwater harvesting as art; windmills as high design; on the streetcar meeting, speaking and connecting with someone you’ve never seen before. These are the kinds of attractive and inspirational feedback loops we need to tie in with the ecological and economic arguments to provide us a prevailing cultural feedback counterforce to the positive climate forcing feedback loops scientists are lining up against us in this race against time and non-linearity, and to prop against those beginning to spout the tact that all is now too late, and/or that adaptation/dealing with emergencies is our only hope.
It looks like a rockstar -what’s cooler than that? People will connect with the beauty of sustainability and its infectious inspiration. Nature itself the artist, holding humanity’s arm as the brush. Okay a little new-age, but look at those photo’s!