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Harnessing High Altitude Wind Power
jakosc writes "The Economist has an interesting article about increasing the efficiency of wind-powered generators by turning them into flying wind farms. These tethered generators would harness high speed jet stream winds above 15,000 ft and in theory could give outputs of 40MW per generator (PDF). The developer's website has more details of some of the safety, technological, and economic issues."
Not only is this a dupe (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/ 04/2142232) but there are much better ideas.
Check http://www.magenn.com/ for example. And much less dangerous.
Our dependance on foreign oil is killing us. It handcuffs us politically and makes our balance of payments a disaster. Never mind if global warming is due to CO2 or not. Projects like this are good because they get us off the oil.
Taking out 40MW of wind energy per wind farm from high altitude winds may not be such a good idea; that energy is doing something right now: mixing the atmosphere, generating heat, etc., and chances are that whatever it is doing is probably important for keeping the atmosphere the way we know and like it.
Won't someone please think of the Cessnas??!!
I, for one, welcome our high-flying wind-powered overlords!
Seriously, it reminds me of a flying isle Laputa from the famous Jonathan Swift novel...
I had a feeling of being in a time loop until you pointed that old article out :)
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
the article's dated 3rd april 2007. what happened to slashdot being at the forefront of news for nerds?
a while ago somebody proposed floating off-shore wind turbines, now flying wind turbines.
who knows, maybe in a couple of years there will be underground wind turbines, that will harness the strong winds in caves
what's wrong with keeping them on the ground?
funny pics
Changing the flow of high altitude winds by clogging them up with wind generators sounds like yet another "green" energy fallacy, Following in the footsteps of hydro-electric power and tidal/wave power, two of the most environmentally devastating energy technologies ever conceived. So they're carbon neutral; they ain't green. California has already seen local environmental changes around large surface wind farms. Probably a good bet the farther up you go the more far-reaching the effects will be. I hope the VC community and energy companies ignore this one, because while it doesn't sound as scary as carbon sequestration (where we kill ourselves 100 year from now in a cataclysmic release of CO2), it doesn't sound at all smart.
If we extract lots of energy from the wind that would make the atmosphere cooler I guess. So this would work against global warming in two fronts.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
That's like saying we can raise sea levels by pissing in the sea. Just do the math ffs...
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
We'll need an unbreakable diamond tether to make it profitable...
You used megawatt which is a SI-compatible unit and therefore breaks a very long and stablished tradition of using braindamaged units. Please use any other US-exclusive (that is, one which no one would be so stupid to choose) like HP or BTU/h.
Oh, I see, by using half Imperial Units and half SI, one can make confusion a lot more, huh, er, confused... a master strategy, if I may...
Kirov reporting ...
OK, so I want the government to continue to invest in this. Are there any letter writing campaigns I can get behind?
No matter what you make wind powered stuff from, it will take MORE energy and resources to ever pay back the initial investment in time, materials and ecological drain !!! Same with solar et al. Do the analysis. Figure it out.
You cannot even afford to produce pencils.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_balloon
Have gnu, will travel.
If the discussion were about substituting current consumption only, I would agree wholeheartedly. But first, we are talking about a growing number of people, and second, most of these people would like a better standard of living, which means a higher energy consumption.
If the rest of the world had the same standard of living as the upper middle class of the USA, the world would consume at least ten times more energy than it does today. Any discussion about alternate energy sources must consider that we need a supply that's much bigger than the current level.
And let's not get lost in that "reducing usage" argument. A considerable fraction of mankind today has such subhuman energy consumption level that's impossible to reduce it further, no matter how efficient you get. Yes, by all means, let the rich Americans share subcompacts instead of each driving an SUV, but there's very little that the peasant that walks from his hut to his field which he digs with a hoe and a shovel can do to reduce energy use. And these are the majority of the people in the world, we must both increase energy production *and* use it more efficiently at the same time.
Even a hundred or do feet up there's almost a constant stream of air blowing around. I say this as one who is a radio amateur (ham) and have been up in high places several times. In each time, regardless of the season, there's always a breeze once you get up about 70 feet.
But I do like the idea of getting 40mW of power out of flying platforms. Put it this way, about ten of these would supply the city I live in.
Let's be realistic. Anything in the atmosphere that's tethered to the ground is in for trouble. Be it a 40MW generator, a space elevator, an advertisement, or whatever, sooner or later it's going to get violently disconnected. Odds anyone?
Heard any good sigs lately?
They remind me of my ex-wife. It doesn't matter what you suggest,try,do, they will always find fault in some aspect of anything.
I these are the people who are perennially unhappy. They will never be satisfied.
Many years from now, when we have eradicated poverty, war and hunger, when we have unlimited source of clean power, blah, blah, blah. Guess who will be out protesting something? Yes, these very same kind of people.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Just wondering aloud here...
Instead of putting the generators in the air, perhaps they could just put a big kite up there with carbon nano-fibers connecting it to a base station on the surface of the ocean. The cables could connect to a pulley system at the bottom of the ocean. As the jetstream yanks the kite about, the cable turns wheels connected to a generator on the ocean surface. They also submerge huge bouys that go to the bottom of the ocean.
The idea of the bouys is to capture the energy that would exceed the generator's ability to capture energy from the cable that is feeding out to the kite. Then when the jetstream is less strong, the bouys are released from the bottom of the ocean to reel the kite back in closer to the base station. Then the process begins again.
If this could work, let me know. I'll order the carbon nano-cable get to work building it on monday.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I live in a small house and I've added lots of extra insulation. We have shades on the windows to prevent heat gain in the summer. When I drive it is in a Toyota Echo. We changed all the bulbs in the house to compact flourescent a long time ago. The computer I am writing this on uses about 25 watts, excluding the (non-crt) monitor. I don't drive with Osama. I do waddle the waddle. I'm definately working to reduce my environmental footprint. http://www.myfootprint.org/
This could make a great historical demonstration of Ben Franklin's lightning/kite experiment when lightning "improves" the efficiency of the system by finding the shortest path to ground by dropping 500MW for 1 sec down a 40MW cable. (Don't touch the key hanging on the end). The instant heating to 28,000C might also cause a few issues. Lightning can be formed in man circumstances, so watching out for cumulo nimbus clouds and pulling down the system isn't a sure bet.
The only thing I could find on lightning in their information was in the pdf:
I am a proponent of Open, Renewable and Baseload Reliable systems.
Is anyone else concerned that there will be a "Doc Ock" working with a high energy device?
Of course, the anchor tether will have to be stronger than spider's silk, so there should be someone on hand to keep Doc Ock in check!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Good God, in 50 years we will start hearing from Al Gore types about "Global Spin-down". It's never going to stop with them.
These devices don't remove wind energy uniformly across the whole globe, they remove one very specific kind of wind energy at a narrow range of altitudes over a specific range of terrains. Dismissing concerns, as the authors do, by saying that it is "not expect to have adverse environmental consequences" is hardly sufficient.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't explore these options, but with future energy options, we should study the environmental impact a lot more carefully ahead of time than we did for coal, oil, or nuclear.
Sorry to be confusing. The ocean-based generator is stationary. It doesn't move. Instead, the kite moves around taking up and letting out cable, which spin gears connected to a generator on the surface of the ocean. The bouys act as a counter weight to drag excess cabling back in when the jetstream's fury is reduced.
The reason you go with a bouy system is that it is extremely scalable. You could just have a huge weight going down a hole, but then when the jetstream's force pulls the weight all the way up to the top of the hole, you've reached maximum capacity and the kite will likely suffer. With bouys, you could have a thousand or more on a multi-mile lenghth of cable spaced out from one another. They all are floating, and as the kite pulls out cable, the close ones are pulled down towards the pulley at the bottom of the ocean. As the wind relaxes, the bouys raise back to the surface of the ocean pulling the cable back down. The generator is geared to also harness this motion. Electricity is produced on the pull of the kite and the recoil of the bouys. Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
It's suggested as an alternative.
Two kites, with control surfaces to allow them to make less drag when on the retrieve leg. Much better plan then pulling a (very strong) buoy deep under water.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They should just shovel all the B.S. that comes out of Congress into giant bioreactors, generating electricity AND excellent fertilizer at the same time.
In the winter, they should hold open-door meetings, so that all the hot air they blow can flow out through the doors into the city, and keep the Eastern Seaboard nice and cozy during those nasty winters.
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Dilbert: "If I do that, the Special Interests win. The integrity of out democratic process will be violated. Our Founding Fathers would spin in their graves!"
PHB: "Spinning you say? We'll strap magnets to 'em and use them to generate electricity, if it makes you feel any better. It's CLEAN POWER!"
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Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I'm happen to be an expert in grammatical structures. Why would you doubted me?
It's generating electricity, there has to be a net loss in the atmosphere.
I'd be happy to give you my work number offline so we can discuss what we respectively do and don't know. If your mom will let you use the phone.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Gotta love the idea of what will happen when those high altitude wind farms come falling down. They will. Airplanes do. They crash into homes and buildings. Messy. These things will be even bigger and they will fail and they will make bigger holes. I don't want them up over me, or of to the side, etc. Let's keep the windmills down on the ridge lines please.
I'm happen to know that mine dad can beat up you're dad.
a. Glad to see you admit you're just guessing. b. Why do you care anyway? c. So what do you think? Is the concept viable or not? Or did you forget what we were talking about and focused on the error in grammar. d. When will I learn. To not to talk to people like you.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller