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."

Comments

Dupe.

[frakir]

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.

Re:Dupe.

[florescent_beige]

I'm happen to be an expert in aircraft structures and based on what I said in the original thread, I really wonder if they know what they are talking about. The Economist article talks about aluminum tethers and from what I can tell such cables would be physically impossible. That is basic stuff to get wrong.

Secondly, a winged platform with horizontal-axis turbines would make more sense. Their helicopter-ish layout uses a lot of rotor structure to present a little area to the airflow. You cannot tilt the platform to present more rotor area to the airflow because the lift vector has to be parallel to the anchor cables where they attach to the vehicle. Those cables which will be nearly vertical, that is basic catenary physics and there is nothing you can do about it unless you use other lift vehicles to hold the tether up (the way high-altitude kites work.)

Thirdly, the jet stream meanders around. Are they thinking about moving the turbines to follow the jet stream? How would that work? Would they move their restricted airspace region to follow them? And what kind of ground station would be massive enough to bear the large forces this thing generates and be portable enough to drive on roads?

Fourthly, it will have either be certified by the FAA or will have to fly over uninhabited areas. Flying things crash, they always crash, and a 10 kilometer cable whipping down on you from the sky is a nasty thought. Certification has killed more than a few projects that otherwise seemed like good ideas.

I'm not saying it's all impossible. Just unlikely.

Re:maybe not...

[Oriumpor]

Because this argument was prevelant the last time this was posted. (read: dupe, dupe,dupe, editors wake up, it's another dupe.) I'll repost the rebuttal: the energy removed from the slipstream is estimated at 1/10th of 1 percent if the entire planet were to be powered by these devices.

And to reiterate my rebuttal in the last dupe: The energy removed from the atmosphere when the planet's coal plants were disabled might far overshadow the energy harnessed and reused...

Wind energy is prevelant, replenished by the sun, and available around the globe. If we can use even a small portion of the wind's energy I'm all for it.

Re:And what about the environmental impact?

[vertinox]

California has already seen local environmental changes around large surface wind farms.

Care to site sources? From my understanding most new wind farms don't seem to make much difference as far as environmental impact because of the slow moving blades.

As in... No noise. No dead birds. Etc etc.

If you have the older systems, I think you may face more environmental issues.

And if you are talking about energy being removed from the system causing global cooling... Well... We can build a few more cattle farms to offset the heat lost with head gain, but seriously there is so little impact when you consider all the other things we do to the environment.

Personally, I like to advocate solar and wind over nuclear not because nuclear is more efficient, but because these type of non-nuclear resources can be put into the hands of the individual rather than government regulated industries.

Unless Uncle Sam is going to let me build a reactor in my back yard any time soon... I'm stuck with either wind or solar for my own usage.