The GreenTower Solar Power Project is still looking for international investors with “the billions of money” to join the project, one of the project’s director Fritz Jeske told the Economist this week. “Nothing much is happening at the moment. But we are talking to a number of people and we are positive,” he said.NamPower is expected to pay half of the money needed for the pre-feasibility study once investors decide to go ahead with the project.

Last year, local and foreign investors made a presentation on a proposed GreenTower Solar Power Station to NamPower. The designers are trying to sell the idea to NamPower, which they say is capable of producing 400MW of electricity using solar energy.
The basic concept consists of a glass-covered collector covering several square kilometres with a 1500 metre high flue in the centre. As the sun heats the air below the glass cover, the expanding air travels to the flue, creating a considerable draught inside the chimney. This airflow drives several low-speed turbines which generate electricity.
The company behind the so-called solar tower, GreenTower Ltd, has been refining their concept for the last 10 years in collaboration with German and South African engineers. One of their key findings was that the tower needs to exceed a certain height, in this case 1500 metres, and the collector needs to exceed a minimum size, for optimal power generation.
The designers claim this is the cheapest and cleanest form of industrial electricity generation available. Detailed calculations showed that electricity can be generated for a wholesale price of around 7 US cents per kilowatt hour provided that the entire project exceeds a critical size.
The idea has already been tested in Spain but needs to be carried out on a large scale if it has to be economically viable. At present there are in total 40 institutions/leading experts involved to enhance the development of all GreenTower technologies.
If the project, had to take off it would cost N$5 billion. Despite this enormous sum of money being required, a lot of international financiers would ready to fund the project as long as there was government guarantees.
The project called GreenTower (GT) is said to be a reliable, environmentally clean, sustainable and economically pure solar power generation system.
In addition the project offers, desalination of large quantities of sea water, 2500 hectares of green house agricultural area can be incorporated, approximately 30 000 work places can be generated and large quantities of carbon dioxide can be absorbed through special agriculture.
According to information supplied by Bicon Namibia, one of the local companies involved in the project, the GT works by way of visible radiation from the sun and overcast sky heats the air inside a glass covered collector, the buoyancy of which causes an up draught inside the centrally situated tall chimney base.
The present solar to power efficiency is 4% which is an equivalent to 400 MW output. On the outer area of the solar collector, 60% can be utilised as a greenhouse for agricultural cultivation. The heat in the inner area would partly be used for energy storage to provide continuous capacity on a 24 hour basis and could also be utilized for solar sea water desalination.
GreenTower solar power plants are highly suited to be positioned in the Namib Desert. The wide and open plains offer ample space and solar energy potential.
In a letter dated 17 November last year, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Joseph Iita expressed his ministry’s support for the project provided the ministry assumes no commitment or obligation.