Energy for the future

The world's first commercial solar tower plant gives a breathtaking glimpse of the future of power generation. What's stopping the technology's widespread adoption?

spain-solar-towers video

Located in the Andalusian countryside in the municipality of Sanlucar la Mayor, the 40-storey concrete tower collects sunlight reflected by a field of 624 huge mirrors. The light is so intense that it lights up dust and water vapour in the air. The project has been widely described as looking like something out of a sci-fi movie

It will collect more sun energy, because the solar tower/sun tower's wall mirror (1) reflect sun energy to the other sun panels, which are in the ground (2) / floor, than they collect from the sun direct too? And efficient / stronger sun energy goes to the top? (3) (sources: http://current.com/green/88811653_put-mirrors-to-the-solar-towers-wall-more-potential-more-capacity.htm)

A field of 600 mirrors reflects the rays of the sun to a heat exchanger at the top the tower. The heat exchanger converts the solar energy into steam. The steam drives the turbines to produce electricity. 6000 homes are being powered through this tower. Amazing!!!

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems use very different technology than photovoltaic systems. CSP systems use the sun as the "thermal heat" source as opposed to the photon energy of the sun as PV systems do. Most electric power plants use some form of fossil fuel as the thermal heat source to boil water into steam. The steam then spins a large turbine, which drives a generator to produce electricity. The three main types of CSP systems are parabolic trough, power tower, and dish Sterling engine systems. All use the thermal energy from the sun to generate electricity. CSP systems are marketed mainly to utilities as they take up a fair amount of land and require mechanical maintenance. The parabolic trough technology is very mature and accounts for about 90% of the installed CSP base.

Sources:

http://solarcellcentral.com/csp_page.html