I proposed some 15 years or so ago the microwave idea to a professional journal and was rejected then. Now the shrinking oil resource and fossil fuel pollution hazards made that proposal closer to an acceptability level than before.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Gar Lipow" <the.typo.boy at gmail.com> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 12:40 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Flying Wind Turbine - surveying a possible new industry
> http://www.grist.org/article/flying-energy-generators-a-breakthrough-ready-to-happen
> http://tinyurl.com/flyingwnd
>
> Flying Energy Generators: maybe the next big thing.
> More than pie in the sky
>
> There is a nascent industry that may be on the verge of generating
> inexpensive, and most importantly reliable, electricity from renewable
> sources - requiring comparatively small amounts of public funding to
> push through to success.
>
> An untapped wind resource
>
> Wind power on commercially developable sites could supply 72
> Terawatts, many times the power the world consumes today[2]. U.S wind
> resources are among the world's richest.[3]. But much of this
> potential is far from where electricity is consumed, requiring
> expensive new transmission to become usable. Further, because wind
> power at an individual site is variable, to ensure availability of
> wind power when wanted requires even more transmission, so that wind
> from one site can be used when no power is available from another.
> Even more expensive are requirements for storage and backup, to
> provide power when no wind site happens to be generating. None of
> these requirements are impossible to meet. The additional expense of a
> system including such stabilizers could be more than paid for if the
> slightly more expensive electricity generated was used more
> efficiently than we use power at present.
>
> But if wind power could be generated less expensively, and generated
> in a way that required less transmission, less storage and less backup
> that would be extremely useful. It happens that there is a source of
> stronger more reliable wind.
>
> The wind resources mentioned are at 100 meters of height or under. The
> higher the altitude, the faster the wind blows. Other factors being
> equal, the power available from wind is the cube of its speed. Wind at
> 1 kilometer can generate a bit less than twice the energy of a turbine
> at 100 meters. A turbine at ten kilometers can generate eight or more
> times the energy of a turbine at 100 meters.. Estimated high altitude
> energy potential is about 100 times all energy human civilization
> currently consumes.
>
> At first glance, the potential of high altitude wind power appears
> tantalizingly out of reach. While we could probably build one
> kilometer wind towers, the cost of towers that size are unlikely to
> ever be low enough that doubling generation will come close to paying
> for them. And if a one kilometer tower is impractical, a ten kilometer
> tower seems even less plausible.
>
> Fortunately, giant towers are not the only means we have to reach high
> altitudes. Kites have been used for millennia, balloons for centuries,
> motorized planes and helicopters for more than 100 years. Put turbines
> on an automated kite, plane, balloon or helicopter with no human
> pilot. Run a tether to transmit the electricity to the ground, and in
> (in many cases) to provide power for the initial launch. The result is
> a flying energy generator, a wind turbine or turbines on a flying
> platform that can provide higher energy density and higher energy
> reliability and capacity factor than ground based wind turbines at a
> lower cost. Many developers claim that such flying energy generators
> (FEGs) could produce electricity with a life cycle cost of less than 2
> cents per kWh with a capacity factor of 70% and above (comparable to
> the capacity factor of coal plants.) This is not merely an idea. A
> number of companies have working prototypes. It has been proven
> possible, though not yet practical. The only way to determine
> practicality will be for someone (either the government or venture
> capitalists) to fund the transition from proof of concept prototypes
> to quarter scale commercial prototypes and finally to full scale
> commercial prototypes. Any one of the companies working on this could
> probably be fully funded for the cost of the stationary budget of the
> Department of Energy.
>
> Read the whole thing at:
> http://www.grist.org/article/flying-energy-generators-a-breakthrough-ready-to-happen
> http://tinyurl.com/flyingwnd
>
> Please comment at Grist if you feel like it - including critical comments!
> --
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> Grist Blog: http://www.grist.org/member/1598
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>
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>
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