If a skyscraper were built to generate its own power and hopefully more would it be best at this time to simply cover it in solar panels, or could a different system possibly be incorporated such as an out shell that collected heat and ran turbines at the top.?
There’s no way that a skyscraper could generate enough energy to be self-sufficient from solar.
Skyscrapers are long and thin, and they don’t have anywhere near enough roof space to generate enough power (solar power is 1KW/m^2 at 100% efficiency). You could get a bit more power from the sides, but they are going to be much worse, due to very poor alignment with the sun.
It was the sides I was thinking about. AS you say they would have limited exposure.
And wouldn’t it drastically increase the lighting needs for the building, and potentially the heating or cooling costs?
Transparent solar-panel windows are in the works.
I was thinking of clear double pained windows that could circulate air contributing to the tubine effect at the top.
Open windows on a skyscraper is not a great idea.
They would be double paned and enclosed. Only the space between the glass would join with the air moving through a thin hollow shell covering the building that would exhaust through a turbine at the top.
Sounds expensive. Maybe prohibitively.
Safety standards on glass that high up would be very strict.
I don’t think it would ever happen.
Designs for power generating solar convection towers rely on a large area of surrounding land for heating the air. Heating from sunlight impinging on the tower itself doesn’t really help much.
In the end, you can’t get more than 100% efficiency, and no matter what fancy ideas are in play, the surface area intersecting sunlight is a hard limiting factor. Skyscrapers are intrinsically limited, especially in a built up city of other skyscrapers.
You may get some useful efficiencies with passive thermal control by managing convective airflows. That might be a more effective use of the limited solar heating.
Put solar panels on every roof that is vaguely in the right direction.
Do not put solar panels on surfaces that move or are needed for other purposes (looking through them, riding on them etc.)
Everything needs maintenance, stuff with multiple purposes needs more maintenance. Evacuating the 80th floor is a crap way to change out two malfunctioning panels. Just as closing down the road every year to replaces all the panels because salt and snow removal destroyed your panels.
Generating electricity is difficult en important enough to dedicate some space for it. All dual purpose ideas I’ve seen through the years are at best harebrained and at worst an outright scam.
Cogeneration has been efficient since the start of electricity generation.
Sure, but I’m more referring to power generating footpaths, dance floors, roads and other assorted BS.
Plausible sounding but principally unsound ideas are a whole cottage industry. We might be served well by approaching these kind of ideas with a healthy amount of skepticism to avoid the more odious forms of greenwashing.
Combining heat and power generation is of course very much principally sound and is definitely not the kind of stuff I’m talking about.
That would destroy their ability to insulate and and require the AC to run more in summer and the heat to run more in winter to compensate for it.
Also, of the myriad of problems I already see, one big issue is that any heat given up to the building interior (or the exterior as it passes through cooler/shaded areas) will reduce the force of the updraft between the window panes.
You’d also have to either clean and dry the air as it enters at the bottom so this channel doesn’t get filled with dirt/bugs/condensation or design it as a closed system such that the air gets to the top, cools and falls back to the bottom.
Personally, I think you’d be better off sticking a a windmill at the top, and if there’s significant enough updrafts along the side of the building, maybe some there as well (aimed down towards the ground).
Also, most skyscrapers are in heavily-built-up areas and surrounded by other skyscrapers. It’s only the ones on the southern edge of downtown that’d get any significant sunlight at all on their sides.
Okay, that is cool.
I thought not, but good that you cleared that up. Otherwise I agree in general with your assessment.
Looks like you’re not a fan of solar bike paths. Those are paths made of solar panels. If you google for “solar bike path”, you’ll also find some with a solar canopy above the bike path. Those, I expect, you’ll find less problematic.
Solar bike paths, like solar roadways, are a stupid idea. Solar canopies over a path are less stupid, but very unlikely to contrbute significant power.
One area they might make sense is a remote location off-grid, where you could collect solar power during the day to charge batteries to power low voltage lighting at night for safety.
Solar power is diffuse, and to generate a lot of it you need huge collecting areas. Also, you need to minimize cost and material use as much as possible to get the most net energy from the panel over its lifetime. It doesn’t take much in added installation cost and maintenance cost to make solar non-viable - especially in northern areas.
Many places already have enough solar to meet their needs on sunny days. What we really need to work on now are methods for storing solar and wind energy for the times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, which happens a LOT. Lack of storage creates a fundamental limit on how much solar and wind the grid can use - and we’re just about there already. Storage is key.
Good point. I did, however, find this interesting blurb:
Semi-transparent glass that generates energy from the sun could be commercially available within the next five years. Technology is being developed today that could turn every pane of glass in a skyscraper into a floor-to-ceiling photovoltaic panel, providing an estimated sixth of the building’s electricity needs.
As nifty as this sounds, though, 16.6% isn’t much, although better than nothing.