TORONTO - Nov. 5, 2015 - PRLog -- Producing electricity day and night from solar energy without batteries has been the dream of researchers for decades, and now an engineer from Toronto has come up with a novel solution: store energy as heat and funnel it to a tall chimney. The U.S. Patent Office also considers it unique, having just granted SolarWall® inventor John Hollick and his associate Dogan Eryener patent # 9,097,241 titled “Transpired Solar Collector Chimney Tower”.
The invention uses a transpired solar collector to take advantage of a well-known phenomenon – warm air rises. The solar updraft tower has three essential elements: solar air collector, chimney or tower and a wind turbine combined now in a novel way. “Mounting the SolarWall panels over acres of land with a tall chimney in the center creates a tremendous stack effect that draws air through each square foot of panel towards the chimney where the moving air turns a turbine to produce electricity. The ground is also heated during the day, and at night the stored heat is released to continue its journey up the chimney,” states Hollick.
Solar Power Towers can also work with conventional PV modules by removing their heat and offering a unique solution for desert climates where conventional PV farms suffer from reduced efficiencies due to extreme desert temperatures.
A small test system has confirmed the system performance and plans are underway to construct a one megawatt pilot system with a chimney hundreds of feet high.
The Solar Power Tower works 24 hours a day, unlike conventional PV arrays, with day time solar heat collected in the acres of ground under the roof of perforated black panels. The heated air moves through the panels towards the chimney, picking up speed, and then enters the turbines at the base of the chimney where it produces power. The warm air then exits the top of the chimney. At night the warm ground continues the air flow and production of electricity.
Hollick is the inventor of the SolarWall transpired collector, which was a landmark invention in solar air heating that has been used on thousands of buildings around the world since the 1990s. In 2014, the SolarWall and John Hollick were honoured by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in New York City in a new exhibit as one of 80 of the best inventions, inventors and engineering feats of the past two centuries along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Willis Carrier, George Westinghouse and the Panama Canal.
Contact
By Victoria Hollick, Conserval Engineering
***@solarwall.com
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