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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.
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??!!
It still is...and it's at the forefront of dupes too.
rj
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
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.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The problem is that the people who find them unattractive or noisy (noisy?? I live near one, i've never heard it. The highway on the other hand...) are the same people who want to get rid of coal (because of the soot), oil (because of the carbon), Hydroelectric (because of the fishes), nuclear (because of the bomb), solar-dynamic (because of the 7-years bad luck), and probably have some kind of cockamamie objection to geothermal, too.
These are the same people that move in near airports (because of the low-prices) and then complain about the noise and occasional fuel dump. THAT'S WHY THE PRICES WERE LOW. The airport's been there for 80 years, so you had to know what you were getting yourself into.
I'm a GW skeptic, but I'm all about buying efficient devices and trying alternative energy, especially if a non-governmental organization has found a way actually make something profitable. I get disheartened and disillusioned with "environmentalism" when the very people clamoring for alternative energy are the ones shooting down the projects.
We should have some kind of survey, and have people check off the kinds of power they don't want near them, and if they check off too many items, they're not allowed to talk.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
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.
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.
I'm happen to be an expert in grammatical structures. Why would you doubted me?