doing the numbers

A 200MW single tower generates power for 200,000 households per the EVM announcement.

There are approximately 6,000,000 Australian households
(ABS http://tiny.cc/mtn88)

30 Solar Towers could therefore generate the power for 100% of Australian households.

The Solar Tower that was planned for Mildura was going to be 1km tall and the solar collector was going to have a collector surrounding it 5km wide of about 20sq kms (3.14 x 2.5^2)

30 solar towers would therefore require 600sq kms.

Australia has a total land area of 7,692,024 sq kms
(Geoscience Aust http://tiny.cc/j2nhy)

30 solar towers would therefore require less than 0.01% of the land area of Australia to power all 6 million Australian households.

Estimated capital cost is $250 million to build one Solar Tower ("Seeking Alpha" article http://tiny.cc/y5btg)

According to SMH today, "The government spent a total of $1.1 billion installing 107,000 rooftop solar panels.... All the systems installed reduced Australia's emissions by just 0.015 per cent" (SMH http://tiny.cc/nk6hb)

For $1.1 billion the Federal government could have fully funded 4 Solar Towers, or could have provided 15 x $75m government grants suggested in the Seeking Alpha article to build 15 Solar Towers in a public/private partnership with EVM.

For $1.1b Federal government grants (plus $2.6b contributed from investors), 15 Solar Towers could provide base load power for 3,000,000 of the 6,000,000 Australian Households.

Australia's total annual CO2 emissions are estimated at 374 million tonnes per annum (wikipedia).

The Annual CO2 saving from a single Solar Tower is estimated to be 900,000 tonnes per annum (EVM website).

For $1.1b, 15 Solar Tower could save 13.5 million tonnes of CO2 per annum or 3.6% of Australia's annual CO2 emissions.

For $2.2b (or $100 per person) 30 Solar towers would save 7.2% of Australia's total CO2 emissions and provide energy to every Australian household.

$100 per quarter is less than the monthly energy bill for most Australian households. And this is just for the capital cost of the grant to EVM. Once built, the Solar Towers should be very inexpensive to run.

Once 100% of energy requirements for household energy are taken care of, then we need to address energy requirements for industrial and commercial purposes.

"In 2001-02, according to electricity supply businesses, 127,095 GWh of electricity were supplied to industrial and commercial customers and 53,309 GWh were supplied to residential customers." (ABS http://tiny.cc/etlm4).

In other words commerce & industry use approximately 2.5 times the energy of households.

If we need 30 Solar Towers to supply energy to every Australian Household, then we need an additional 75 Solar Towers to provide energy to Commerce & Industry as well - or 105 Solar Towers in Total.

105 Solar Towers fully funded at the estimated $250 million construction cost per Solar Tower would cost $26 billion or $1,200 per person in Australia (if fully funded by government).

The Federal Government has estimated that the National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout will cost $42 billion.

I'm sure that there are some holes in my numbers, but based on the links that I provided, I don't think they are that far wrong. The biggest rubbery number is probably the cost to build to plant (2006 Seeking Alpha article), but I can't see any current reference to the cost to build on the EVM website.

If EVM can provide Solar Tower baseload power to all Australian households, industrial and commercial premises for less than the cost of the NBN why wouldn't we do it?

And why won't the Australian Federal Government get on board?