Solar energy is often seen to be an efficient, clean and sustainable way of supporting this energy-hungry world. At the recent American ARPA-E conference (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy), a much-admired new system called the Solar Vortex was displayed. The technology’s potential for generating and supplying cost-effective power has sparked interest in the solar energy community. So what exactly is this Solar Vortex? How does the complex-sounding yet simple concept work, and could it be effective in supplying power to the world?

Meet the Solar Vortex

Georgia Tech (or Georgia Institute of Technology), is behind the clever idea of generating power from what it has termed the Solar Vortex. This concept could potentially provide cheaper energy at three quarters of the price of regular wind-driven systems, and it could be 60% cheaper to operate than solar power systems.

How Does the Solar Vortex Work?

Dust devils were the inspiration for the Solar Vortex. These small-sized twisters can form in dry, hot, dusty areas, due to the combination of the hot earth and the cooler air above it. The thin layer of air next to the ground is heated, and is therefore less dense than the cooler air above it, which causes it to rise. Uneven heating of the ground surface results in the warmer air rising in bubbles. The cool air higher up descends to fill the sudden pockets where the warm air used to be, and it turns and twists into a vortex. The middle of the vortex contains air at a lower pressure, so more is forced in and the spiralling wind system is reinforced and continues.

Georgia Tech’s display model at ARPA-E consists of a short, wide cylinder with a dark-coloured surface at the base which absorbs heat and is around 47 degrees Celcius (166 degrees Fahrenheit). Vanes are placed in a circle around the cylinder’s interior, angled so that they encourage the hot, ascending air to spiral upwards and create a vortex. Fan blades are positioned at the top of the machine. When they are moved by the wind, they create electricity through a generator.

Current plans indicate that Georgia Tech’s Arizona site could hold a 50 kilowatt life-sized Solar Vortex machine by 2015. Commercial-sized versions could be only two to three metres tall, but up to ten metres wide.

Could the Solar Vortex be Effective?

Some parts of the world suffer from an extremely hot climate but do not have much wind, and the Solar Vortex would work well to produce energy in such a situation, seeing as it can generate the wind itself.

The machine is designed to be relatively cheap to build and also quite cost-effective and potentially simple to maintain. This makes it an attractive option, especially when compared to the difficulties of running and fixing expensive wind turbines which are very large and difficult to reach.

If manufacturing costs can be kept down, and if it generates sufficient cheap energy, the Solar Vortex could become a popular and perhaps even commonplace power source in the future. Watch this space to see how this innovative technological concept develops over the next few years.