More on Solar/Wind Tower Hoax

Emil comments on my piece lampooning the solar/wind tower that developers claim will soon be built in Arizona, in which I noted that, given the figures they presented, the implied price of electricity was huge.

Well, if you go back just past the linked article to the company’s website, you can see that the 435 MWh is confusingly representing a yearly average of 435 MWh per hour, so at least the theoretical cost per kWh is not completely insane – using your 20 year/no maintenance assumption, maybe $0.02/kWh. However, while I don’t tend to be as blunt as you Craig, I think this one belongs in the “physics challenged, bordering on investor fraud” category, along with Solar3D and V3 Solar. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all interesting concepts, and I would love to be proven wrong, but just can’t see it…

I respond:

Oh, I didn’t see that; I just read the news piece: “The tower would be capable of producing an average of 435 megawatt hours in a year.”  So now I’m supposed to believe that this produces an average of 435 MW, the equivalent of about 300 acres of PV.  Ridiculous. Your statement that it “borders on fraud” is generous; you’re to be commended for being such a gentleman.  I wouldn’t say that it  “borders” on fraud, rather, that it “frolics” in it, or maybe that it “runs barefoot through” it.

For what it’s worth, Solar 3D isn’t fraudulent.  I don’t think it represents a terrific idea in the marketplace, which is why, I expect, that its stock is traded at six cents a share.  But the concept of trapping the incident photon so as to improve the odds of its kicking out an electron is solid science.

I can’t say the same about v3 Solar; that’s world-class malarkey.