Seems to me that there is an awful lot of structure being built to run one or two turbines. There are likely many places to get cheaper electricity.

How is it that the world has almost completely ignored the most promising solar tech of all (IMO), Solar Updraft Towers, AKA Solar Chimneys. A 200MW plant of this type is being built in Arizona. It is unique among solar power plants in that it also generates some electricity at night, at a reduced rate of course. Base loads anyone?

Solar Chimneys are a combination of well known, tried and true technologies and are far more reliable than PV or CSP. With the added advantage that they scale *economically* from 50KW (the test plant, 30 years ago in Spain) to 400MW. The operation is simple enough, a large greenhouse collection area collects sunlight, which warms the air beneath it. The warm air is funneled to the center where a turbine or turbines are situated at the base of a large chimney. The height of the chimney keeps the warm air from diffusing too quickly, harnessing its buoyancy to provide power. Basically a combination of greenhouses, wind turbines, and we already know how to make chimneys and large cooling towers. Making a hollow chimney is much easier than building an inhabited sky scraper, the chimney doesn’t have to hold up anything besides itself.

As for the nighttime power, the sunlight also warms the ground under the greenhouse during the day. At night the ground warms the air and the process goes on at a reduced rate.

Even better, using 2/3rds or more of the collection area for orchards or other agricultural uses will produce far more income than the electricity by itself. Almost any crop, year round, frost free. In larger plants, the inner 1/3 is too hot to grow anything.