High-Altitude Wind Turbines: Harvesting the Power of the Skies.

Man has been harvesting the power of the wind for hundreds of years, originally with windmills which allow machinery to use energy directly or more recently with wind turbines which convert the wind energy to electricity.

A wind turbine works the opposite of a fan. Instead of using electricity to make wind, like a fan, wind turbines use wind to make electricity. The wind turns the blades, which spin a shaft, which connects to a generator and makes electricity.

While they have been growing in popularity, wind turbines are incredibly expensive to erect and produce a limited amount of energy because of remoteness of suitable locations, the cost of building towers and of course, the irregularity of the wind.

 A new initiative is hoping to take the idea of wind turbines to the sky.  High altitude wind turbines or tethered turbines flown like a kite could potentially harness enough energy to satisfy the global needs for energy a hundred times over.  A worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimated that there is enough energy at altitudes of about 1,600-40,000 feet to establish a potential reservoir of power.

High-density fossil fuels have been the leading source of energy production for centuries.  Unfortunately, green technologies have not yet established a fuel source that can compete and green energy is generally diffuse which means you have to cover a lot of area to get the energy you want. 

Wind power, however, varies with the cube of its speed.  This means a small increase in wind speed can lead to a huge increase in the amount of mechanical energy you can harvest.  Winds at high altitudes are significantly faster, spread more evenly throughout the globe and are easier to predict then terrestrial winds.

This freedom of location would reduce the need to lay expensive power cables to remote areas. One small sight could service a number of generators at a number of heights which would eliminate most of the complaints about wind power. 

Sources:

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:High_Altitude_Wind_Power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine
http://www.thepurehands.org/newwind/index.html

Jennifer Maclellan is a contributing writer for GreenGuideNetwork.com. E-mail her at jenn_maclellan@hotmail.com