This is the second article I've seen recently about this idea, the other was in Australia(I think). This sure seems to take up an awful lot of space and money for such nominal returns.
You think this is the way of the future?



http://www.livescience.com/technology/0807...olar-tower.html

O yes. This proposal has been around for quite some time. Invented by a German small engineering company.
-> edit: it existed long before, my mistake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

What I think of it?
First, these people are stupid. Proof: they refused to hire me.
OK then, it belongs to the few renewable designs able of storing energy or producing it when needed, which is a go/nogo condition to completely replace CO2-emitting energies.

One shouldn't be afraid of the height and area, this isn't technically so difficult. And gratis area is abundant in many sunny places (why the hell did they go to green Manzanares? Fertile land is precious in Spain!).

I like the price less. 1000 million usd announced costs for 200MW is expensive. Solar cells are worse of course, but real competitors are cheaper. A 1400MW nuclear plant costs 3000 million usd to build, and coal or gas powerplants are in turn much cheaper than nukes per MW. Wind turbines cost about 2M$/MW but produce 1/4 of their peak power as a mean value, so they achieve a comparable cost with a much smaller unit size.

And renewables are very much about a matter of price. It's hard to be as cheap as a gas flame.