![Altaeros_Wind_Turbine_Wide[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/altaeros_wind_turbine_wide1.jpg?quality=83)
From NCAR, some wind pie in the sky.
A mother lode of wind power
Mapping the potential to harvest high-altitude wind
May 28, 2014 | What if all the energy needed by society existed just a mile or two above our heads? That’s the question raised by researchers in an emerging field known as airborne wind energy, which envisions using devices that might look like parachutes or gliders to capture electricity from the strong, steady winds that blow well above the surface in certain regions.
While logistical challenges and environmental questions remain, scientists at NCAR, the University of Delaware, and the energy firm DNV GL have begun examining where the strongest winds are and how much electricity they might be able to generate.
Their key finding: winds that blow from the surface to a height of 3,000 meters (nearly 10,000 feet) appear to offer the potential to generate more than 7.5 terawatts—more than triple the average global electricity demand of 2.4 terawatts (as of 2012, according to the study). Among the areas where such winds are strongest: the U.S. Great Plains, coastal regions along the Horn of Africa, and large stretches of the tropical oceans.
This type of research could prove critical if airborne wind energy takes off. The growing industry now includes more than 20 startups worldwide, exploring various designs for devices that could be tethered to ground stations and then raised or lowered to capture the most suitable winds at any point in time.
“From an engineering point of view, this is really complicated,” said NCAR scientist Luca Delle Monache, a co-author of a new study examining these issues. “But it could greatly increase the use of renewable energy and move the U.S. toward the goal of energy independence.”
To estimate the potential of airborne wind energy, Delle Monache, with Cristina Archer at the University of Delaware and Daran Rife at DNV GL, turned to an NCAR data set known as Climate Four Dimensional Data Assimilation. It blends computer modeling and measurements to create a retrospective analysis of the hourly, three-dimensional global atmosphere for the years 1985–2005.
The research team looked for various types of wind speed maxima, including recurring features known as low-level jets. Such jets can be ideal for energy because their speed and density is as high or higher than jets at higher elevations that would be beyond the reach of tethered wind devices. They also blow more steadily than winds captured by conventional wind turbines near the surface, potentially offering a more reliable source of energy.
Low-level jets blowing at 30-50 miles per hour or more can be found at several locations worldwide, often close to mountainous terrain or to persistent atmospheric features that help focus and channel wind. One of the strongest low-level jets on Earth flows from the Gulf of Mexico north across the Great Plains.
A study by the scientists, published last month in Renewable Energy, focused on winds in January and July. The team is now looking for additional funding to provide a more complete picture of the potential of higher-level winds. Their main goals are to estimate the strength of the winds year round and to build an interface that would enable users to explore the strength of the winds over specific regions.
“It’s important to understand the magnitude of this resource and what might be possible,” Delle Monache said.
No dams on Mother Earth’s wild winds!
Hmm, kevlar cables and microwave transmission of electricity like the Solar Power Sat people propose? Yeah I know the whole idea is nuts. I like SPS better for the side benefits – a real spacefaring civilisation.
Couple of counterpoints to the naysayers: tethered balloons already exist in practice along the US/Mexico border and on coastguard ships around Florida. They are routinely operated to 10,000ft and carry radar and other instruments, and have a tether stretching to the ground.
However, the proposal for wind turbines is a doozy because:
1. The aerostat has to be staffed 24/7. It must be retrieved in high wind or storm conditions. This would require the use of winches powered by a reliable method of power (fossil fuel powered generators or mains electricity). Also required would be:
a. Office and other accommodation
b. Maintenance facilities due in part to the necessary requirement for isolated areas for implementation of the aerostats.
c. Power supply to the above facilities
2. It cannot operate for long in snow or ice conditions without either storing in a hangar or having staff remove the snow with ropes or some some other method. The weight of the snow and/or ice will destroy the aerostat.
3. The weight of the cable by which to transfer electricity to the ground would be prohibitively heavy. The generator would be comparatively small and almost useless.
4. The systems would be unlikely to operate in hurricane areas. Without indoor protection, or the ability to rapidly move the systems 100’s of miles in a 24 hour period, they will be destroyed on the ground by a hurricane.
The aviation industry is overwhelmed by dreamers with big ideas. Just add these idiots to the pile.
This stupidity reminds me of some TV show I watched on the idiotic theories of Erich
von Daniken about alien visitations in ancient times. One segment put forth the
theory that the 20 ton blocks that were used to construct the pyramids were lifted into
place with gigantic kites, yes kites!
Any kite large enough to accomplish such a task would no doubt collapse under its
own weight. I cannot think of an engineer who could accomplish the task who would
not say why bother, the ancient Egyptians had the wedge, the inclined plane, the wheel
and draft animals!
I actually worked with a fellow Millwright and von Daniken believer who worked with me
on a job where we rolled a straight 8 industrial engine weighing 90,000 pounds on
schedule 80 pipes that was then loaded onto a trailer with a portable crane. The
guy asserted that there were no cranes in existence (1988) that could have lifted
those blocks to build the pyramids. I did not have the heart to tell him that cranes
existed back then that could lift millions of pounds.
Here is a little crane that is used to change out the 600,000 pound coker drums
at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo:
The ITER Scientists will want to play with their new ITER Tokamak toy for a while after it starts up in 36-48 months from now. But only for a little while, like 10 -15 years before they try to put actual fusion fuel in it and make actual useable Energy, as it was designed to do. (By that time the, Chinese will be mine /importing a half ton of 2He3 dust from the Moon’s surface that will make the ITER completely radioactive free,and enough to power the entire World for 10,000 years.)
I predict that then they will want to modify ITER to use the Chinese 2He3 fuel for another decade or so, before turning it on.
They all went to the Government financed BOONDOGGLE School, the rest of the CAGW scammers attended.
Meanwhile, Sen. Moron Markey [D MA], will sponsor a bill to fund research on the Skynet Wind turbines and Afirmative-Action abuser, Sen LiarWatha [D MA], will gladly co-sponsor it, as long as the research funding is earmarked for Cambridge, along with a rider specifying it can’t be erected in Hyanisport or Nantucket, just like Cape Wind.
President Obozo will heartily endorse it whenever he returns from his perpetual vacation on Martha’s Vinyard.
An incredibly stupid idea.
They’d make great barrage balloons though.
Leonard Jones says:
August 14, 2014 at 7:07 pm
——————————————————————————————
Can you move the Baalbek Trilithon stones? And then set them? There are structures on this planet that log rollers and ropes just cannot explain. Perhaps one day we will know for certain, but until then just enjoy the mystery.
I’ve worked professionally on kite wind power. As someone who has actually analysed these systems there are lots of incorrect assertions above. John Brignell’s critiques are based on some incorrect assumptions about some systems and relationships he doesn’t have sufficient knowledge of. Kite lines aren’t a show-stopper, their weight is minor, and their drag issues diminish with larger scale. Kites with bridles are predominantly tensile structures and are scalable to enormous sizes (unlike wind turbines dominated by tower and blade bending loads). Power can be transferred to ground either as electricity generated aloft through conductors, or as tensile force in cable as it is paid out. Nothing prevents the use of 2 lines attached to the two wing tips of kite, so you can then use very small conductors in each line operating at very high voltages and low currents with no insulation required – but this is a solution that is only viable in larger sizes due to higher drag of 2 lines and need to keep them separated during manoeuvring which is difficult if the lines are relatively long and their separation relatively small (as is the case for current demonstrator systems).
Due to R&D costs + tech risk first generation demonstrator systems are small (100’s of kW) and so only targeted for a few hundred meters altitude due to line drag, but economics and wind strength/power improve with scale (and height) and fundamentally there is nothing preventing GW scales operating in the Jet Stream. Finding consistent strong winds below 3000m is great news.
The big problem for kite wind power will be getting past the economic penalty of small scale systems (just as for wind turbines that are only sort-of economic at MW scale) to develop the truly low electricity cost large systems will likely cost 100’s of millions to billions in R&D. It is sensible to walk before running, but that is the ultimate intent. Large scale makes off-shore siting economic to avoid nimbys and airspace restrictions.
Personally I think that kite wind-power could be great for primary production of Aluminium, Cement, Steel, Chemicals, maybe even liquid hydrogen production or other power-hungry industries, on big ships that can move around to follow the wind in the roaring 40’s and furious 50’s and screaming 60’s of the southern ocean. The energy is there, but the users are not.
Kites as sail replacements for ships are a non-starter due to economic necessity for consistent point-to-point 20kts ship speed, and relatively weak winds, Germany’s Skysail was always a foolish approach. Ships generally have headwinds more than 70% of time. But a kite wind power system on a ship could work a larger proportion of the time as wind-turbine powered craft can go any direction including directly upwind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind-powered_vehicle at up to about half of wind speed.
Oh they’ll capture electricity alright.
Yawn…
You can’t beat burning wood for energy then regrowing trees from sunlight. Zero waste!
Wood energy all the way!
Hurricanes, tornadoes, microbursts, lightning, static charge surges. It should be great fun to see these things crashing down and destroying people and all they own. Idiots.
Apologies to Godwin of course, but I can’t resist the impression that talk of new super-technologies to generate electricity sounds very like the Naz1 leaders near the close of WW2 voicing hopes in super-weapons as a vehicle of denial of the total inevitability of their impending defeat.
Several questions come to mind which I suspect have been thought through by the advocates:
The first has to do with the physics of a very long cable. Assuming the cable is tethered at the top and at the bottom, the length of the cable is limited by the strength of the material and it’s density. For a very long vertical cable supported from the top, the top of the cable must support the weight of all the cable below. Even without considering other loads a cable has a maximum length where the stress in the cable (just from weight of cable) will reach the material yield strength. Further increase in length will at some point cause the cable to fail.
Second, the long vertical cable passing through horizontal wind velocity will be exposed to lateral forces due to drag which will deflect the cable horizontally adding tensile stresses in the cable itself. A horizontal load on a vertical cable is magnified in it’s affect on the tensile stress in the cable. It’s somewhat like a catenary cable except the cable is vertical and the loads are horizontal. Wind gusts would introduce vibration loads in the cable that increase the possibility of failure.
Obviously and optimum cable would have a very high strength to weight ratio which means that the material is more expensive than normal cables, but every material will have a length limit.
Not going to work. 3,000 m high at 60 degree angle, cable length = 3,464 m. At 52 mm diameter, the cable weighs 1,405 metric tons plus 95 tons turbine and generator. total weight = 1,500 tons. To lift all that, the balloon must be 140 m in diameter. wind speed = 69 mph. dynamic pressure of wind on balloon transmitted to steel cable = 3,140 MPa. This far exceeds the tensile strength of strongest steel cable. Cable made of carbon nanotube is strong enough but not yet commercial. The balloon is so big you can fit 6 jumbo jets inside with plenty of room to spare. All these engineering problems just to generate 1.5 MW power.
They could dig their equipment deep into the ground, which would solve several issues immediately. It would be much safer that way, with no tethers, no danger of crashing, no interference with weather patterns, air traffic or bird life, while maintaining an absolutely pristine surface. Underground winds may be substantially slower, but they never change, so one could maintain the same level of output indefinitely, which could be collected completely by a virtual thin grid. Also, the control system would need no energy, because it could be based on unary logic, built of universal ignorators whose output does not depend on input and could be run at zero Hz clock frequency. An additional benefit is that software written for unary logic can’t possibly have bugs, because with our current binary logic all bugs are based on the wrong bits in the wrong place. With no choice left, that danger is ruled out.
With sufficient subsidies this business could be made wonderfully profitable.
Some genius out flying a kite with his kids thought “Hey,I could get a grant out of this”
Sorry wrong calculation. The steel cable only weighs 60 tons. So the balloon is not too big. The engineering can be solved. The problem is cost. The power generated is little more than land-based turbine as it is a function of turbine size and wind speed. But a lot more expensive to put the turbine in a balloon with 3.5 km long cable.
nickreality65:
At August 14, 2014 at 5:09 pm you ask about hot rocks
I answered that in my reply to the snake-oil salesman, Edward Richardson, which I provided at August 14, 2014 at 2:24 pm and it can be read here.
I there wrote
The snake-oil salesman attempted to portray geothermal power as being hot rocks and – in dispute with milodonharlani – at August 14, 2014 at 3:22 pm went so far as to assert that molten magma is hot rock. This misrepresentation ignored the part of my post to him that said of hot rocks
Which all supports my first post in this thread (at August 14, 2014 at 1:40 pm ) which began by saying
Richard
LOL, this actually makes the solar roads look like a good idea. I tried asking a friend who was convinced the koch brothers will block solar roads, why we wouldnt just put them on all our buildings instead, surely this is cheaper and there is enough space. He just got mad. You gotta admit it does sound cool to be able to collect endless energy a mile off the ground. Super hip.
Re moving big blocks…
http://www.offgridworld.com/man-moves-huge-blocks-by-himself-using-simple-tools-ancient-knowledge/
Why not avoid all the cable/tether issues by building mile-high sky scrapers and put the turbines on top?
These rent seeking CO2 obsessed crazies are as ignorant as some medieval religious fanatic.
@ur momisugly Berényi Péter says:
August 14, 2014 at 11:26 pm
+1
Indeed, the climate obsessed are supplying their own parodies.
Do we have a consensus on the problem? No wonder there’s no consensus on the solution.