User talk:Rohar1
I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article Bi-directional Energy Tower, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. JdH 14:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Deletion of Bi-Directional Energy Tower page
The energytower.org project is an open design project and group, which I initiated. I am not the only contributor to the project. The article content is in respect to the open project. I have no issue with deletion of the bi-directional energy tower page on the grounds that there is no existing prototype, but you have to delete the water spray downdraft tower page on the same grounds. The existance of 2 patents for the water spray down draft tower and no known implementation since the original 1975 patent doesn't make it any less of a vanity page than the bi-directional energy tower.
- Go ahead, please propose it for deletion: I wouldn't oppose. Neither will I oppose if you propose to delete the solar updraft tower article. There is one difference though: for those proposals there are publications in the scientific literature, and from different investigators too. On the other hand, AFAIK the only source of the Bi-directional Energy Tower is the http://www.energytower.org website; no publications in scientific literature are quoted. In that respect it is quite similar to the Floating Solar Chimney Technology article which was deleted a while back after some discussion.
All of these technologies suffer of the same problem: they have been around for a long time, and are not going anywhere. The simple reason for that is is economic feasibilily: the Cost of Energy needs to be competitive with conventional technology such as coal fired plants; see paragraph on Financial hurdles I stuck into the Talk:Solar updraft tower a while back. All of these, including your scheme, don't even come close. On the other hand, wind turbines are already competitive, and Solar thermal energy in the near future.- The energytower.org project is a fundamental design enhancement as has only been around for 6 months.
If this is some arbitrary feasibility decision on theoretical technology, then the page should not be removed. There are no commercial implementations of either the solar tower or water spray downdraft tower. The water spray down draft tower and the solar tower are limited to arid locations and as renewable power systems are competing directly with SEGS/CSP solar steam plants which have been commercially implemented for more than 20 years. Both the water spray tower and solar tower are not down-scalable and require massive towers and large investment to be non-trivial. Due to the location dependence, competition with existing SEGS technology, lack of electrical power need in the middle of the desert and the cost of long distance electrical transmission, both the water spray and solar towers have not been able to secure financing.
If you are really interested in the technology, examine the Calculations documents. In a hybrid solar steam/convection system, the convection turbine produces only 10% of the power of the steam turbine for a moderate height tower (100m). The solar tower and water spray tower don't have much hope of competing with SEGS systems and cannot be located outside of arid regions. Water vapor is less dense than air, evaporating water to cool air causes it to be less dense than other cooling methods and is not very efficient. This is counter-intuitive for many people and that has made the water spray idea look good on paper, but not in reality.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rohar1 (talk • contribs) 10:37, 8 March 2007 (UTC).
- I would like to suggest the following: Condense the Bi-directional Energy Towerarticle into one short paragraph, and stick that into either the solar updraft tower or energy tower (downdraft) article. And turn the Bi-directional Energy Tower into a re-direct page. JdH 14:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
- If you are proposing that an attempt to take credit for a 30 year old theoretical patented design by a Ph.D who took publicly funded research, patented previous work with no major improvement and then formed a company in an attempt to secure investment somehow has more validity than an open project by someone with over 20 years of practical system design experience, you are probably in the wrong place. Wikipedia runs on LAMP and all 5 of those projects were managed in the same open manner and have been successful where commercial ventures have failed.
- The energytower.org project is currently being evaluated by Saskatchewan Environment, ISES and many commercial entities, give it a chance. On the other hand, I am working on this without hope of personal financial gain, so if you have the overwhelming urge to promote IP theft and help EnviroMission and Sharav Sluices attempt to secure funding, go ahead. If you check, most of Dr. Zaslavsky's links are broken (including energytower.net) and most of the traces of his company have disappeared.
You may want to look at User talk:ScottDavis/Archive 7#solar_tower to see wat EnviroMission employee Flexme thinks of me: in effect he blames me for sinking their Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund (LETDF) application.
But what I think of EnviroMission (or Sharav Sluices for that matter) is not the issue here. The question really is: What is Wikipedia and what is Wikipedia not? Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, Wikipedia is not a soapbox, Wikipedia is not a blog, and Wikipedia is not a crystal_ball.
The problem with what you just wrote is that you just reconfirmed that your article fits all of the above. JdH 16:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
--Rohar1 16:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC) I don't disagree with you, pull all 3 pages. I respect the intent of Wikipedia and I originally posted the content in response to the prior art postings, but I don't think any of them have any place in an encyclopedia. I might have some grounds for an entry for the energytower.org project, but not the design of the system. If we can get to the prototype stage I will consider re-posting the article on the bi-directional tower, but until then it's all just theory, free advertising and "soapbox" and shouldn't be here.
I am not comfortable submitting the other projects for deletion, but I think you are impartial. I honestly respect your effort on this.
- Thank you for that compliment; the respect is mutual. I am not sure about an AfD for the other articles though. I am pretty sure it would not stand; the energy tower perhaps but not the solar updraft tower, no way: there are too many people out there who are very opinionated about it. It may be better to condense solar updraft tower to a single paragraph, but I have tried that before and it only got me in the middle one big brouhaha. The AfD discussion could be very interesting.
Let me repeat my earlier suggestion: Include a short paragraph on the Bi-directional Energy Tower in either of those other articles, with a link to http://www.energytower.org . It looks like that solar updraft tower gets quite a bit of traffic, so it might actually help your visibility. JdH 17:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
--Rohar1 17:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC) I would rather you not put in a paragraph in the other pages. I agree with you that the updraft solar tower deserves a paragraph for the '80's Spain pilot project. The rest of the other articles is an attempt to capitalize on the current green market with some old technology that never panned out. The energytower.org project doesn't have any visibility problems. That is the nature of open source, there have been many appropriate agencies that have hosted links and informational content and there are more every day. Google loves the project. It's not a sub-project of these other ideas, but more related to CSP/SEGS and solar chillers anyway.
--Rohar1 19:54, 8 March 2007 (UTC) One other point on this. I agree that deletion of the water-spray downdraft page will probably stand up. All that happened with that project is patent granting and a few papers published. I cannot see justification for that page remaining if the energytower.org open project should be deleted. The same might be valid for removing the Enviromission or Solar Mission references from the Solar Updraft Tower page. There doesn't appear to be more than press releases from the companies and that isn't encyclopedia information. If you decide to make any changes to those pages, I will do my best to support your position from the fairness of open source vs. commercial project point of view.
- Actually, until a few days ago Solar Tower Manzanares had its own separate article; see deletion log. Perhaps solar updraft tower should be reduced to no more than that. But I am quite sure that there would be a lot of opposition to that. Maybe a first step would be to open an AfD for the energy tower and see how that is going.
btw: come to think about it: Bi-directional Energy Tower may be an unfortunate name for your contraption. When I first came across that I thought it was yet another version of the solar updraft tower or the energy tower. I now realize that what what you are trying to do is capitalize on the large daily and/or seasonal variation in temperature in your neck of the woods; that is quite different from either of those older proposals. JdH 20:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
--Rohar1 21:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC) Live and learn. I originally started out thinking that CSP/SEGS systems were just regular steam power stations with the heat source swapped and that the convection towers were a new and better idea. After 6 months and a lot of reading thermodynamics textbooks and research papers, input from renewable systems specialists and working through calculations, it's almost a full circle. When I started researching solar chillers as a convection cooling method and putting the whole system together in the calculations documents I realized that unless the tower was extremely high, the convection turbine power output is 10% of the steam turbine.
As it sits now, the ammonia aborption system and relatively short tower should be able to double the output of a SEGS/CSP plant and make it more location independent, even without the thermal storage. It would be possible to retrofit the ammonia absorption system to and existing SEGS plant.
I probably will think about renaming the energytower.org project to reflect this. My dog's name is "Lola". If I could get a good reverse acronym, I think that's a good name. :)
Thanks for your effort on this.