Student’s bright idea means solar power at night
Posted on 15. Jul, 2009 by admin in Mechanical & Design Engineering, Technology
An engineering student may have found the Holy Grail of renewable energy and even help solve global warming as part of his final university project.
Claus Volkening, 23, of the University of Portsmouth, has designed and laboratory tested the first working small-scale model of a ‘solar updraft tower.’ It uses water storage tanks to store the sun’s energy, making clean, cheap electricity available to all, even at night.
Claus Volkening with his scale model solar updraft tower
He said: “The problem with existing solar power generators is that the times of peak generation of energy – during the day – do not match with times of peak need at night. With my model even when night falls and temperatures drop, electricity is still available and reliable.”
Claus’s scale model is based on a 1km high tower surrounded by glass or plastic above water tanks across a 16km square area. It would generate 100MegaWatts, enough to keep 80,000 British households supplied.
He hopes his design could be built in deserts all over the globe to generate clean, green electricity.
Claus is a German scholar studying for his BEng (Hons) at Portsmouth’s Department of Mechanical and Design Engineering. He said: “Energy is fascinating; it keeps everything moving. I’d love to work in industry and get the opportunity to help solve the problem of the world’s energy consumption.”
“The demand for power is rising, fossil fuels will run out and more than a billion people still haven’t got a regular power supply. Global warming isn’t the only problem which could be solved by this technology.”
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