Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How Viable Is Large Scale Wind Energy?

Posted by samzenpus on from the blowing-in-the-wind dept.

New submitter notscientific writes "Renewable sources of energy are obviously a hit but they have as yet failed to live up to the hype. A new study in Nature Climate Change shows however that there is more than enough power to be harnessed from the wind to sustain Earth's entire population... x200! To generate energy from the wind, we may however need to set up wind farms at altitudes of 200-20,000 metres. To be fair, the study is purely theoretical and does not look at the feasibility of such potential wind farms. Regardless, the paper does provide a major boost to backers of wind-generated energy. Science has confirmed that the sky's the limit."

6 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by RevDisk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yea, I'll wait for more wind farms to actually be build.

    I know folks that build those giant wind turbines. They think they build a good product (and they do), but not a single one thinks it'll be more than a supplemental. If for nothing else... Not In My Back Yard.

    1. Re:Hmm... by alexander_686 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I know people who work with both the turbines and the energy grid.

      Wind power is ready for prime time. Gas is cheaper, but if you factor in a reasonable cost for it's carbon footprint Wind is right there.

      Storage, on the other hand, is not ready for prime time. Without storage it's going to be hard to break 20%. I understand that some parts of the country have maxed out how much wind they can have. They have to turn on / off the gas turbines to make up for sudden power surges / drops that it's not worth it anymore. There are a lot of interesting ideas but they have yet to prove themselves.

      Give it a few years and then we can see if wind can break the 20% mark.

    2. Re:Hmm... by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Water heaters should not be running at all unless someone is taking a shower. It is called on demand hot water, tank style heaters need to go. Normally this is gas fueled, not electric.

    3. Re:Hmm... by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A little more? We are talking about 25% more.

      You would have to boil the water at 2am and insulate the heck out of the tank if you wanted to have hot water at 10am
      .
      I would imagine more likely we will use a large thermos style bottle connected to an on demand system. At night it would fill the thermos and only then run again if needed.

      Old style thin tank heaters are going away.

  2. While it can be done... by MtViewGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ....No one has actually _built_ a wind power turbine setup that operates at well above the ground. I mean, consider the issues involved:

    1. How are we going to keep those turbines up at altitude?
    2. What are the costs of tethering these high-flying wind turbine installations?
    3. Will these installations become hazards to migratory birds flying at high altitude, let alone passing airplanes of all sizes?

    I'd rather build hundreds of nuclear reactors based on the safe liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) technology instead in the short to medium term, and in the longer term build space-based solar power arrays parked in geosynchronous or near-geosynchronous orvbit.

  3. Re:Consistent availability is the issue by kiwimate · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's being done in the U.S. as well. Also known as pumped storage or pumped hydro.