They would have to literally chase it with their generators when it shifts.
Posted on 05/08/2007 5:59:39 AM PDT by Uncledave
Scientists are eyeing the jet stream, an energy source that rages night and day, 365 days a year, just a few miles above our heads. If they can tap into its fierce winds, the world's entire electrical needs could be met, they say.
The trick is figuring out how to harness the energy and get it down to the ground cost-effectively and safely.
Dozens of researchers in California and around the world believe huge kite-like wind-power generators could be the solution. As bizarre as that might seem, respected experts say the idea is sound enough to justify further investigation.
The jet stream typically blows from west to east 6 to 9 miles over the northern hemisphere at speeds up to 310 mph.
By lofting generators into the upper atmosphere, scientists theorize they could capture the power of the jet stream and transmit the electricity along cables back to Earth.
A wind machine, floated into such a monstrous force, would transmit electricity on aluminum or copper cables -- or through invisible microwave beams -- down to power grids, where it would be distributed to homes and businesses. Unlike ground-based wind generators, the high-altitude devices would be too high to be heard and barely visible against the blue sky.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I’m sure there are lots of tracks that don’t pass under any bridges or telephone/power lines or anything like that. </sarcasm>
This is the sort of idea dreamed up by a liberal arts college major, a mathematician or even a physicist.
Focused on the trees and oblivious to the forest.
The jetstream has been a constant forever, as far as I know. I has a role in world climate and weather everywhere.
The existing climate models are prbably 20% complete in identifying the factors that go into weather and climate, and that figure is not likely to be improved any time soon.
Nobody knows what he "doesn't know".
The jetstream is similarly a mystery.
The reality is that, assuming that significant amounts of energy could be extracted, nobody is in a position to know what the effect would be on world climate and weather.
The "energy" idiot has no clue what the magnitude of the disaster that he is triggering can be.
Stupid stupid idea.
Wow. So many obstacles to safe implementation. I know people who have engineered, and mastered on paper, tapping geothermal heat (underground intense heat where it gets “near” the surface) to drive huge turbines, acting like hydropower form huge dams.Constantly available, never fading, but the initial building and drilling costs are in the tens of billions, and the time is not yet right. Time and geopolitics will someday launch this technology.
This is only one practical but costly system already designed. There are many more. There is no cause for panic, never has been. Modern ecowhiners are ignorant and agenda-driven. They actually want only to punish the US for it’s success. Self loathing Westerners.
Conservatives must start a campaign to ridicule American self-loathers. It’s so nineties..
The problem with "entrepeneurs is that they are predators. Very good at dreaming up ways to get rich, but usually (999 out of 1000) totally and hopelessly ignorant of the technical aspects of what they seek to do, as well as of science and cause and effect.
True scientists admit that even in their chosen fields, the feel humbled by what they don't know.
"Entrepeneurs" have no such built in reality check. Never have; never will.
Realistically, you could NEVER get enough energy out of the jet stream to affect the jet stream itself, nor the weather as a whole to matter. (Think of a jet stream some hundreds of miles wide, about 5000 feet “high” ... With no matter how many 100 foot dia rotors spread through it on strings, you’d never get enough energy out to matter. Each rotor nees to be about 10 diameters away from its nearest neighbor to trap a smooth air flow (upstream or downstream) so at most you get only 1/20 the max theoretical flow.
Problem is the dynamics of the current: IT MOVES HTOUSANDS OF MILES season to season. It twists and “loops” randomly through days and weeks: so any single anchor point or receiver is going to be useful only a small part of the time. How do you lunch and retrieve the hundreds (thousands) of rotors needed as the stream moves across state lines? Through cities? How many useless receivers and anchors do you build not knowing how often they will be needed?
If you can’t get guaranteed power to the grid, the utilities STILL need to maintain (and pay for!) the people and machinery to keep the reserve available: 100% of the time. Regardless of how many wind turbines, wind rotors, and kites you need.
Besides: Ever see the loops and swerves a kit make in low breezes? How can you “fly” these kites through airspace (around jets!) and yet keep them “steady” (away from their nearest swerving kite) using a tether 50,000 feet long that threatens to fall across ten miles of farms, roads, and wilderness (trees, rivers, canyons, and hills and power lines) when the wind dies?
Try retrieving a 1000 feet of kite string, re-wind it with NO damage, and them re-use it for your kite. Repeat 100 times.
Then image ten miles of heavy cable falling down randomly across your town, roads, and interstate highways.
Yep. www.mountwashington.org I hit the website in the wintertime every so often as a reminder of why I moved down south.
I too, like big ideas like these. I don't think that they're particularly serviceable or feasible, but they get people talking.
IMHO, I think that the most likely ideas to be implemented are generators that run off ocean waves. PopSci had an interesting article on them.
They would have to literally chase it with their generators when it shifts.
“As bizarre as that might seem, respected experts say the idea is sound enough to justify further investigation.”
Yet another opportunity for a government subsidized Rube Goldberg device that costs gazzilions of dollars to R&D only to find it’s not economical.
Respected experts my A@@!
Who?
Al Gore and David Suzuki???????????
ROTFLMAO!
Great info. Many thanks.
Years ago I sat in my college library researching and penciling ideas for using ocean waves. The ideas came easy, but there were always hitches. As energy costs soar, I believe others will begin thinking into this. Modern day technology should produce a number of new approaches.
They don’t call ‘em the LAWS of Thermodynamics for nuthin’, ya know?
Simple. Obtain a fresnel lens with the surface area equal to that of the ten pieces of steel. Use the lens to focus sunlight on only one of the pieces of steel. Voila! All the energy from the sunlight that would have heated the ten is now directed entirely into the one. Given a sufficiently large lens and a sufficiently sunny day, you can melt that piece of steel.
(It's much easier for us to manage electromagnetic energy than it is to manage thermal energy.)
My method, as posted in #52, solves the problem and doesn’t break the law, either.
Actually, you can already buy solar shingles and they are allegedly cost effective over their lifespan.
Very interesting! It would be a good thing to force Achmed out of his Mercedes and back on his camel.
Your method is attractive for heating and solar power. But solar power is practical for very, very few commercial applications: I can’t GET enough power off of my entire roof - even at midday - for a single welder. Much lights, welder, bender, air compressor, air conditioner, refrigerator, hydraulic ram, computer, plasma cutter.....
And after 2:30 or before 9:30, the solar power is only 25% some-odd of max peak.
Assuming no shade from clouds or trees. Or nearby buildings.
I think part of that first statement hinges on what "affect" means, as well as "to matter". The Jet stream doesn't have banks like a river and is rather negatively stable, with its borders changing by hundreds of miles per day - shoved by "just" minor differences in air pressure. Even the topography of the ground miles below influences its path. Any changes from the wind-power will be subtle, but if there were some way of actually getting the devices up into the stream and keeping them there, they would probably be as disruptive as the hypothesized GHG effects.
Wind turbines at wind farms introduce turbulence (and maintain it far longer than a passing jet), which apparently causes the air's moisture content to change sufficiently to cause local warming (water vapor being the primary GHG). Is that substantial? Well, it is, on a daily basis as substantial as all of mankinds CO2 effects totalled over the last century are claimed to be. So, the debate is severely dependent upon whether or not one is trying to lock in current weather patterns. ...and the other impracticalities you describe.
And, I might add, they also complicate the original proposition with ten bars of metal lying in the sun.
There is a good deal of loss in long wires. Sending the power by microwave would be a better idea than using long wires.
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