JUL 14

Putting solar panels on the roof (or side) of your skyscraper is so 2008. If you really want some efficiency without all those complicated photovoltaics. If you really love renewable energy, and you also like EXTREME temperatures, you should just buckle down and put a solar power tower at the top of your skyscraper.

And that's the idea of the Almeisan Tower that's been designed for Za'abeel park in Dubai.

The tower would be a home to an observation deck, a cafe, a children's library and community meeting space, and would produce enough electricity to power itself, and several neighboring buildings. The solar power portion, at the top, would simply be a bunch of rotating mirrors that focus the sun's light on a point at the peak of the structure. That point would get so hot that water pumped through would vaporize, and turn a steam turbine to create electricity. It's not a new idea, eSolar is building several of these plants in America now, and Abengoa's solar thermal towers have been producing power in Spain for years.

But I've never seen anyone planning on sticking one on top of a building.

Solar thermal power is generally more well suited to centralized power generation, where lots of energy can be produced off-site on cheap land in sunny areas. But I'm not going to fault the building's designer, Robert Ferry, for thinking outside the box. I hope this thing gets built, if only because it's kinda awesome.

Via Inhabitat

Comments (8)

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written by Meagan, July 14, 2009

This is amazing.

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good
written by supra shoes, July 14, 2009

Thank you very much. I am wonderring if I can share your article in the bookmarks of society,Then more friends can talk about this problem.

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written by Fi, July 14, 2009

Why haven't they done this before. There is soo much surface area in the cities to make use of. I guess, out of sight, out of mind..

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Wow!
written by Green Investing Now, July 14, 2009

That looks like a space ship of a science fiction movie :-)

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written by Fred, July 14, 2009

This is interesting for dubai. It will a benefit for them there.

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written by Christopher Reeve, July 14, 2009

What an ugly structure! Looks like all concrete and very little usable space. Think of the amount of energy it will take to build. This is no solution to our energy problems. This is just an extravagant monument.

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Tower not Skyscraper
written by Carl Hage, July 14, 2009

It's just a restaurant on the top of a tower, not a building, so the word "skyscraper" is misleading-- it's not like putting mirrors on the top of the world trade center. This is an art project, meant to supply renewable energy. One issue would be whether the energy generated would ever pay back the energy cost of the concrete and steel required to elevate the mirror disk. So it's touted as sustainable, but it doesn't seem possible. Competitions like this (as does LEED) should include submission of the sustainability and energy cost of the building materials.

1 m3 of concrete requies about 16MWh of energy. The tower might produce 3MWh/day or ~70 m3 of concrete/year. The 100m pillars look pretty thick.

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