Student offers powerful idea for clean energy
04 June 2009
An engineering student may have found the Holy Grail of renewable energy as part of his final year university project, according to a spokesperson from the University of Portsmouth (UoP). UoP student, Claus Volkening has designed and laboratory tested a solar energy storage system, which is claimed to produce cheap electricity for all, even at night. His working model of a solar updraft tower uses water storage tanks to solve the problem of existing solar power plants, which only generate electricity when the sun shines.
A prototype solar updraft tower was built in Spain and later destroyed in a storm in 1989 but Claus is the first to build a working small-scale model that continues to generate electricity at night.
He says that by using water tanks to store the sun's energy through the day he can smooth out the energy available from a solar power plant. With his model ,even when night falls and temperatures drop, electricity is still available and reliable.
"Mine is the first working model that has proved this can be done," he says. "Though more work needs to be done, including an investigation of other materials to be used as storage elements before it could be used as a blueprint for solar updraft tower plants around the world."
Claus's scale model is based on a 1km high tower surrounded by glass or plastic above water tanks across a 16km square area to recreate a greenhouse effect. Existing solar updraft towers work by collecting heat energy from the sun and sending the warm air up through the tower which houses a turbine. When the turbine turns, it generates electricity as long as the sun shines.
After sunset, the updraft drops and the energy output effectively stops, but in this model, some of the solar energy is removed from the air flow process to heat the water and this is then released at night. This avoids a peak during the day and smoothes the overall output.
By using water to store some of the heat the amount of electricity generated at various times of the day or night can be changed by adding or removing water tanks.
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