Here’s a novel idea. The Economist magazine has an article on Flying wind farms. Now we’re not talking about ordinary, land based windmills here. We’re talking about actual airborne — up to 7miles up in the sky — wind farms intended to harvest the immense supply of energy in the jet stream. The jet stream has winds that sometimes exceed 200 miles per hour.
On the surface, the idea seems a little nutty but, in fact, San Diego based Sky WindPower has apparently thought their concept through pretty thoroughly and believes they can not only make this work, but do so profitably.
The article discusses several other ideas for high-flying wind farming including a Dutch proposal to use pairs of kites to drive a generator.
This could bring a whole new meaning to Chico’s Kite Day or maybe we could park one of these over Bidwell Ranch