Solar City Tower
Out of context: Reply #8
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odds - see how the water is coming out from the top?
now, if the tank is full, the water will only be able to come out of the top for a brief period of time. then the water level will fall below that of the top of the waterfall. thus it needs to be pumped higher before it can cascade down. thus, you have to expend energy.
now, consider the volume of water in the mockup photos. how long would it take to empty a thin water tower at that rate of flow?
third. pump water up and then use a turbine to recapture some of the energy as it flows down is all very well. but consider the efficiency lost as the water runs down the outside. how much kinetic energy is lost to spray? to air resistance? hydroelectric turbines use closed water channels to run the water through. how will they capture the energy from a freeflowing waterfall? will they rechannel the water once it reaches ground level into a funneled conduit? what sort of efficiency would that be?
as an engineering graduate, the whole thing seems like 1) it would expend a lot more energy than it would generate. and 2) only be able to operate at full-strength for a very short time before emptying too much of its tanks for the waterfall to run.
so most of the time it would look like a big monolithic block with no water. the rest of the time it would be a very energy-expensive waterfall.
(yes i visited the link)
- i believe the phrase is, "oh snap!"?SteveJobs
- you might be an engineering graduate, but that thing probably generates a lot of energy from the sunmonospaced
- are you also an astrophysicist?monospaced
- mono, go sit downaldebaran
- lolmonospaced
- the site says it only pumps water with extra energy, and if it was continuous there would be a flow, right?monospaced
- ok, I see your pointmonospaced