Wind Power from... the Jet Stream?

Many believe it's possible, and even more viable than land based turbines:

Companies look for power way, way up in the sky

BOSTON – The world's strongest winds race high in the sky, but that doesn't mean they're out of reach as a potentially potent energy source.

Flying, swooping and floating turbines are being developed to turn high-altitude winds into electricity.

The challenges are huge, but the potential is immense. Scientists estimate the energy in the jet streams is 100 times the amount of power used worldwide annually.

Cristina Archer, an atmospheric scientist at the California State University in Chico, said there's "not a doubt anymore" that high-altitude winds will be tapped for power.

"This can be done, it can work," she said.

The question is, when? Some companies project their technology will hit the market by the middle of the decade, but Fort Felker at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory says the industry is 10 years away from making a meaningful contribution to the nation's electricity demands.

[...]

The lure of high-altitude wind is simple: Wind speed generally increases with its height above the ground as surface friction diminishes. Each time wind speed doubles, the amount of energy it theoretically holds multiplies by eight times.

The world's most powerful winds circulate in the jet streams, which are found four to 10 miles off the ground and carry winds that regularly break 100 miles per hour.

The dream is to eventually tap the jet streams, but high-altitude wind companies are focusing for now below a 2,000-foot ceiling, above which complex federal air-space restrictions kick in. Adam Rein, co-founder of the Boston company Altaeros Energies, said his company calculates winds at the 2,000 foot level are up to 2 1/2 times stronger than winds that can be reached by a typical 350-foot land turbine.

High-altitude wind advocates say their smaller, lightweight turbines will be far cheaper to build and deploy than windmills with huge blades and towers that must be drilled into land or the sea floor.

Those savings would mean inexpensive energy. With wide-scale use, advocates see a range of prices, from something comparable to land wind's current 9 or 10 cents per kilowatt hour down to an astonishingly low 2 cents per kilowatt hour.

"They are projecting crazy numbers," Archer said. "I'm not saying that it's true. ... But it's really the lowest, the cheapest energy source, possibly." [...]

It goes on to point out some of the obstacles that need to be overcome, but many believe it's doable and practical. Clean and cheap energy for our Brave New World.

     

Cap and Trade: following California's example?

Green nonsense
The 'cap and trade' bill would cost much and deliver little

[...] Waxman-Markey is, ostensibly, a "cap and trade" bill, which would impose substantial costs. One is the direct cost to business to purchase from the government "credits" to emit carbon dioxide, a cost which, presumably, would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Consumers would have to pay much more for electric power, in particular, since it's much cheaper to generate electricity from carbon-emitting fossil fuels than from wind and solar, the sources favored by the Obama administration.

The whole point of cap and trade -- which President Obama is careful not to make explicit -- is to make fossil fuels so expensive we will use less of them.

The president won't call this a tax. But his most prominent supporter in the business community, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, thinks it's one which will devastate an economy already in "shambles."

"It's a huge tax and there is no sense calling it anything else," Mr. Buffett said in a CNBC interview June 24.

We rely on fossil fuels for 85 percent of the energy we use to run our automobiles; to heat, light and cool our homes and offices; and to power our factories. The problem with wind and solar is not just that they are much more expensive than coal, oil or natural gas, but that they can't begin to replace the amount of energy we get from fossil fuels. [...]

California tried to "Go Green" when Gray Davis was Governor. I remember it well, because we lived in California then and owned a restaurant.

The state invested it's money in solar and wind projects, instead of building new power plants. The solar and wind projects were expensive, and failed to produce the needed energy. We ended up with high energy costs and "rolling blackouts". California had to scramble to build additional power plants, the ones they should have built in the first place, but now at great additional cost to the taxpayers. The rolling blackouts were so bad, that many businesses left the state, which also decreased the tax base.

Try running a business with "rolling blackouts". With skyrocketing energy costs, and soaring taxes too. We, like many business owners, couldn't do it. We had to start borrowing money just to stay open. That was the beginning of the end. We closed our restaurant, sold our assets and moved to Oregon.

Meanwhile in California, Gray Davis was removed from office in a recall election. But the state's economy was badly damaged, and has never fully recovered. Trying to "go green" using technology that can't as yet replace fossil fuels, was one of the big contributing factors that has put California into the severe financial distress it finds itself in today.

California has showed us where this path leads. And yet, now we, as a nation, are now going to follow same path, and expect different results?


Related Links:

Harsh Truth About California. And Our Nation?

Green Energy, Blackouts, California and France

Nuclear power now!