EnviroMission Limited

Recent Media Releases

11 September 2002

Wentworth Shire Council
Media Release
Date: Wednesday, 11 September, 2002
FILE: S182

Solar Tower web stampede

RECORDS continue to be broken as interest in Wentworth Shire Council’s Solar Tower information web pages continues to soar!

Interest, measured by the number of visitors the pages receive, reached an all time high on Monday when more than 10,564 people logged on.

This eclipsed the former record of 4,183 for last Saturday (September7)!
The highest number recorded before that was 900 visits in one day on Thursday, August 8.

Mayor, Cr Don McKinnon, has once again welcomed the statistics, describing it as convincing evidence of the increasing interest in the multi-million dollar landmark development from around the globe. (The Solar Tower site has more than 100 subscribers to its news service from around the world).

The Saturday interest spike was generated by a news article and discussion forum originating on the www.wired.com site in the United States, while Monday’s was a similar forum originating in Japan.

The Solar Tower pages are now easily the Shire website’s most frequently visited information service, significantly outstripping the Australian Inland Botanic Gardens pages and the Shire’s news service.

The website’s tower information pages are linked directly with those of EnviroMission, the Australian-based company driving the project, delivering a comprehensive overview of the project.

The Shire’s website is becoming an increasingly popular medium for information dissemination. It was received more than 24,000 visits to date this month and a whopping 50,000 so far this year.

The site received nearly 5000 (4,912) visits yesterday (Tuesday, September 10). And until 3pm today had been visited by more than 2000 people.

"It really shows the value of our web site as an information source," Mayor, McKinnon said.

"Our experience with the Solar Tower pages is showing that it is a great way for the municipality to reach its residents and keep them informed."

Mayor McKinnon said there was "a buzz" in the community about the project with more and more people wanting additional information.

"And the significance of this project can not be overstated," he said.
"It will be an economic boom for everyone directly involved and the wider community too!"

Construction of the world's largest solar-powered electric generating plant could begin on Tapio Station as soon as January 2003.

EnviroMission, the Melbourne company seeking to undertake the mammoth project, has committed to Tapio Station as it's first preferred Australian site.

EnviroMission owns the exclusive Australian licence to the revolutionary German technology that can generate 200MW of clean, green, renewable energy for about 200,000 households.

More than $US37 million has already been invested to prove the viability of Solar Tower technology through research and development, pilot plant operations and feasibility studies for commercial plant construction.

The figures for the project itself are equally impressive. The tower complex cost, without attendant infrastructure, is estimated at $700 million. The tower itself will be one kilometre high - the tallest man-made structure on Earth and incorporate 700,000 cubic metres of concrete; while the accompanying 'green house' will have a radius of 3.5 kilometres, cover about 10,000 hectares and require 38 million square metres of covering.

The project is expected to generate 2700 jobs, many of them for local laborers during the 34-month construction phase and provide between 15 and 40 ongoing jobs.

Ends.

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