Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar tower for AZ

Re:Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar towe... by caf on Sunday July 24, 2011 @11:15PM (#2801160)

99%? No. The Carnot limit is much lower than that for the temperatures at which steam turbines operate.

Besides, the thermodynamic efficiency isn't particularly relevant for technologies like this anyway - you're not paying for the input, after all. The efficiencies you care about here are watt/area, energy payback time and, ultimately, $/watt.

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Re:Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar towe... by sliverstorm on Sunday July 24, 2011 @11:33PM (#2801208)

thermodynamic efficiency should correlate pretty strongly to watt/area because the device harvests sunlight.

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Re:Twice the height of the Empire State - massive solar towe... by caf on Monday July 25, 2011 @08:53PM (#2805482)

For this technology, but not for the competitors that you'd want to compare them with.

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