Monday, August 27, 2007

Seville's Solar Tower

I heard about this in an NPR story and followed up by watching a video from the BBC. This thing is incredibly cool! I'd love to see it in person. This "solar tower" uses 600 mirrors to focus the sun's rays on a single point at the top of the tower where water is heated for turning turbines. I had heard of a different "solar tower" design that used panels and convection for moving air-driven turbines, but this one was new to me.

(Rhetorical question) Why isn't the US involved in more research like this? Each of these designs comes from other countries.