In 2007, the entire electrical capacity of the US was one trillion watts. Stanford University atmospheric scientists Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson estimated through detailed calculations of current air patterns the potential wind power under optimum conditions would be 72 trillion watts.
This number, however, only takes into account wind blowing at an altitude of 80 meters, approximately the height of most wind turbines.
Bryan Roberts, an engineering professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia has come up with a plan to harvest more powerful winds at higher altitudes. A few miles up, a wind generator could produce 250 that amount of power, according to Discover magazine and infoniac.com.
Roberts and his team are designing "kites" with rotors that fly like a helicopter to altitudes where the winds are strongest. The rotors then switch to generator mode and send energy back down the tether that also keeps them from just flying away.
The contraption essentially looks like a flat H with rotors at each of the four points of the "kite."
There are a few things that do need to be worked out, however. How will severe weather affect the generators? What if a few of the tethers become entangled. Not to mention the fact that a "no-fly zone" would have to be established to keep airplanes from slicing through the tethers or worse, crashing.
Unfortunately, the idea is so new and revolutionary that no one seems to be biting. The US throws hundreds of millions of dollars to fusion experimentation, but these electricity-generating kites are apparently just too wacky to take seriously.
This number, however, only takes into account wind blowing at an altitude of 80 meters, approximately the height of most wind turbines.
Bryan Roberts, an engineering professor at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia has come up with a plan to harvest more powerful winds at higher altitudes. A few miles up, a wind generator could produce 250 that amount of power, according to Discover magazine and infoniac.com.
Roberts and his team are designing "kites" with rotors that fly like a helicopter to altitudes where the winds are strongest. The rotors then switch to generator mode and send energy back down the tether that also keeps them from just flying away.
The contraption essentially looks like a flat H with rotors at each of the four points of the "kite."
There are a few things that do need to be worked out, however. How will severe weather affect the generators? What if a few of the tethers become entangled. Not to mention the fact that a "no-fly zone" would have to be established to keep airplanes from slicing through the tethers or worse, crashing.
Unfortunately, the idea is so new and revolutionary that no one seems to be biting. The US throws hundreds of millions of dollars to fusion experimentation, but these electricity-generating kites are apparently just too wacky to take seriously.
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