Posted on 05/13/2014 6:52:38 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
We cover wind turbine news here on a regular basis, but now this excellent renewable technology, currently second only to solar, may be capable of going towerless. Altaeros Energies has developed a promising buoyant air turbine to harness high-altitude winds and deploy low-cost power from them. A group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed Altaeros four years ago. The company views its invention as “the next generation of wind power.”
(Excerpt) Read more at planetsave.com ...
Kill more Eagles.
Saw this last night - I think on Sky News.
I think it’s an interesting idea. Be more interesting if they scaled it down to the level of a single home - if you’re in a rural area, distributing to 18 homes is probably going to cost more than this device.
Also, what happens in a storm? Do you have to reel it in? What about where it gets cold? Does it ice up and fall to the ground?
The thing reels itself down when bad weather is coming. Amazing.
Just don’t tell anyone where helium comes from.
It comes from recycled birthday balloons! /s
I read about it yesterday. It’s operational altitude is high enough to avoid killing birds, it has transponders and lights to avoid air traffic and is wenched back down during inclement weather.
It sounds rather interesting. I wish I owned a tropical island to test it out on.
Good grief. What a joke. Two thousand feet of copper conductors able to carry that kind of current will cost thousands.
I read about it yesterday. It’s operational altitude is high enough to avoid killing birds, it has transponders and lights to avoid air traffic and is wenched back down during inclement weather.
It sounds rather interesting. I wish I owned a tropical island to test it out on.
I forgot to mention, you can even mount a cell radio to provide cell service to remote locations. It would be pretty good to truck a few of these in for disaster response, power and communications in one small shipping container.
So, they hire buxom young ladies to reel them in?
Not enough caffeine but I like the mental picture.
Faster wench, ye storm is coming.
They are hazards to aircraft at those altitudes though.
1000 to 2000 feet is no where near high enough to be out of bird range. However, if the rotor is low speed < 1/4 Hz. and the blade leading and trailing edges have LED’s the birds will se them & aviod them.
I read it would operate at 4000 feet.
They didn’t mention rotor speed but stated it had lights and a transponder for air traffic safety.
Would vertical wire cost more than horizontal wire?
The only way this could be effective would be to get
it up to the jet stream, other than that and the power
transfer problems, and runaways, and a few other things.
I’m sure I read about this in a 1967 Popular Mechanics...
Perfect height to catch small airplanes.
“Would vertical wire cost more than horizontal wire?”
Okay, I’m going to assume you’re serious. Wire is wire. The size of the conductor is determined by the load it must carry. If they intend to power 16 homes then they are looking at about 3000 amps based on a 200A service. They would need cabling that would weigh tons. How the craft could support that is beyond me.
If they plan to use high frequency generators then they will need inverters on the ground and those are expensive.
This idea has to be a payoff to another crony.
I note that homes with 200A service don’t typically use that much, even at peak. You could probably cut that by 3/4, and use other sources for peaks.
Also, because cable diameter is not a factor, fat, light, and cheap Aluminum would be the preferred cable.
To carry 800A over 1000 ft. would be about 500 lbs. (I assume that there is a steel-cable tether system to keep the electrical drop cable essentially vertical).
Among the challenges will be reliable cable reeling.
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