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Company Wants To Put Power Plants In the Sky
Zothecula writes "Harvesting power from the wind and the sun is nothing new. We've seen flying wind turbines and solar power plants that aim to provide clean renewable energy. UK-based New Wave Energy has a bolder idea in the works. The company plans to build the first high altitude aerial power plant, using networks of unmanned drones that can harvest energy from multiple sources and transmit it wirelessly to receiving stations on the ground."
Tesla was doing wireless energy over long-distances. The problem, for him as now, is that the process is horrendously inefficient.
There's really no point in flying solar cells, they don't work any better than down on Earth
Actually, they do. Solar irradiance increases with altitude, at a rate of about 8% per 1000m.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
It just terribly inefficient.
The understatement of the century, references to Tesla aside. Transmitting power without wires is indeed possible, but unsuitable for any kind of industrial level power transfer. Getting a few more than a fraction of a watt though free space on an electromagnetic wave is going to be really difficult and extremely inefficient. Doing it at an industrial scale will be pretty much impossible.
BTW, your Hawaiian island reference.. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/visionary-beams/
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Wind turbines on an aircraft brings up images of Donald Duck blowing air at the sail on his boat. That's not a good sign.
Contrary to what a simple interpretation of physics suggests, it actually is possible to propel a sailboat with a fan in that manner. However, it's highly inefficient and you'll get far better results by taking down the sail and pointing the fan in the other direction.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The Fukushima problem is not contained yet, and it appears people were covering up the damage, so it might be wise to wait a while, until all the data is in, before saying it is a non-disaster. Things could still go really badly.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."