Arup hired to engineer 200MW Solar Tower in Arizona

November 8, 2010

The Australian company planning on building two 200-megawatt “solar tower” solar thermal power plants in western Arizona has signed Arup to provide engineering services.

London-based Arup has previously engineered some of the world’s most recognizable structures, including the Sydney Opera House, the Pompidou Center and the London Eye.

It also has a background in engineering industrial facilities in sectors including water, energy, waste and mining fields.

The technology being proposed essentially uses solar heat to set up a huge updraft of hot air through a very tall central tower, sometimes known as a ‘solar chimney’.

The solar heat would be collected by a 5,000-acre area of solar thermal panels surrounding the tower, with the system designed to drive air from the edges of the structure toward the center, driving 32 turbines at the base of the tower, before the hot air rises up the tower, drawing in more air behind it.

With the technology trialed in Spain during the 1980s, suggestions are that at the megawatt scale, the central tower would have to be thousands of feet high.

Arup will provide engineering services for the first EnviroMission solar tower in Arizona, a project set to provide electricity for Southern California (see this BrighterEnergy.org story).

“Professional”

EnviroMission’s Chief Executive, Roger Davey, said: “Arup has been engage to provide professional engineering services to deliver site specific Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) for EnviroMission’s 200MW Solar Tower proposed for development in Arizona, that once constructed, will generate electricity for the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) under the terms of a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) approved by the SCPPA on October 21, 2010.”

Due diligence work is currently under way regarding the raising of capital for the Solar Tower project.

Arup has already carried out some initial work on the design and performance analysis for the Solar Tower project, under a previous Memorandum of understanding between the two companies.

Arup Principal for Building Services Ken Stickland said the Solar Tower project would be a “unique engineering challenge”, with every material and dimension having a function in the optimization of the facility’s solar energy generation.

Mr Stickland said: “The iconic features of Solar Tower design will deliver new efficiencies in renewable energy that will be achieved without the use of water typically used yet seldom accounted for in the economics of electricity generation.”