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An innovative approach to making electricity from the wind
- nwrk 7y agoUnpaywalled: https://outline.com/uPXtNv https://outline.com/uPXtNv
- sunkenvicar 7y agoWind is a second-order force. It’s even worse than solar - hard to believe!
- bash_profile 7y agoSecond-order force?
- ncmncm 7y agoDoubletalk.
- sfink 7y agoI'm not sure what you mean exactly, but I think 2nd order force is a fair description. Except you diss solar, so I'm a little confused. To me, solar is first-order. Solar leads to wind, so it's second-order. (Though really, solar heats water and air, producing wind, so it's kinda third-order.) Oil is... uh... the sun grows the plants which die and get compacted, then we pump up the remnants. I'm not sure what you'd call that. Uranium is, like, zeroth order then. Fusion in the Sun produces solar. And yet, none of this really means much. Unless you're constructing Dyson spheres, it really doesn't matter how efficiently you're capturing the max theoretical energies. If you don't believe me, stop eating. Try replacing food with sucking on a power cord.
- sunkenvicar 7y agoI’m referring to energy density. Because civilization requires ever-increasing amounts of energy to grow and prosper. Solar, even concentrated desert solar, is no good at all. Wind is a distant derivative and much, much worse. Hydrocarbons and nuclear are the fuels of today and tomorrow because they are orders of magnitude more energy dense. These energy sources are so dense they double as energy storage.
- adrianN 7y agoCome back with your concerns when we fully exploit the potential of wind and solar and run out of energy. Right now covering single digit percentages of the world with solar panels would satisfy our energy needs.
- sunkenvicar 7y agoI am concerned now because covering the world in solar panels and wind turbines is unsustainable. Each siting location by definition is worse than the one before. The vast land area required will cause tremendous societal and environmental impact. Problems of energy storage, rotating mass, and baseload power remain unsolved by wind and solar. We need to get on nuclear. Then we can help poorer nations with nuclear power so they can undergo their own Clean Industrial Revolutions. In 80 years we all want the world’s ~11 billion plus people to live far better than we live in the West today.
- adrianN 7y agoEnergy storage and baseload are in fact solved problems: a good grid (because it's always windy somewhere), and a combination of batteries for overnight storage and power-to-gas for long term storage. I'm in favor of nuclear power too, but it takes too long to build.
- realusername 7y ago> Energy storage and baseload are in fact solved problems: a good grid (because it's always windy somewhere), and a combination of batteries for overnight storage and power-to-gas for long term storage. That's far from solved, countries close to each other have very similar weather pattern and wind electricity is especially unreliable. We're also very unlikely to have a massive breakthrough in turbines since we're close to the theoretical maximum already.
- dredmorbius 7y agoSolar has a maximum uniform density of 1kW/m^2, roughly, at Earth's surface. Wind, though a 2nd-order form of solar energy, concentrates at some points on the surface. Since both forms work by way of building some form of collection capital and recovering energy, wind allows a higher site-specific EROEI than solar, given favourable siting. Not in all locations, but in some. That's why wind power makes sense. Though I'm skeptical of airborne / kite-based generation.
- gniv 7y agoHere's a video explaining it, from the same company: https://youtu.be/3VKFJ2_cQmM?t=147 https://youtu.be/3VKFJ2_cQmM?t=147
- tobinfricke 7y agoHello! I work at Makani (https://makanipower.com https://makanipower.com), which is mentioned in the article: > Nor is it absolutely necessary that the electricity generation is done on the ground. Makani, a firm recently absorbed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has a different approach. It is lifting the generators into the sky, on board a pilotless aircraft with a wingspan of 26 metres. This craft has eight rotors, which act as propellers for take-off and landing. Once at operating altitude, however, they become miniature turbines. The electricity they generate (600 kilowatts at full capacity) is sent to the ground through a power line encased in a tether nearly half a kilometre long. Makani’s prototype has been tested in Hawaii and, later this year, a further series of tests from an oil platform off the coast of Norway are planned. I'm excited to report that we really did pull off the offshore test a few months after this Economist story went to print. Video of our recent offshore test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6NW0QeKLZA (I know it almost looks like a rendering, but it's for real!) And a company blog entry about the test: https://medium.com/makani-blog/makanis-airborne-wind-power-system-takes-flight-offshore-907fd4c9af86 https://medium.com/makani-blog/makanis-airborne-wind-power-s... Makani was funded in part by ARPA-E earlier in its existence, and they recently also made a video about Makani that might be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ly6na58e0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ly6na58e0
- abdullahkhalids 7y agoHow visible are these things from the ground? Edit: Ignore the following line. It is too early in the morning. --A single one is producing 600KW, so you need a few per household, and many thousands for a town.--
- jdc 7y ago600KW / (1500W / microwave oven) = 400 microwave ovens See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour#Confusion_of_kilowatt_hours_(energy)_and_kilowatts_(power) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour#Confusion_of_kil...
- homero 7y agoThat's kw hours. A big house running air conditioning is only 6kwh.
- vezycash 7y agoI hope something comes out of this one. Kitegen has been around 2006 and nothing to show for it.
- ncmncm 7y agoI prefer the method of releasing ions to be carried away by the wind, producing charge separation that can be used to perform work. No-moving-parts windmills should be the future of wind power. It doesn't need any exotic materials, and it scales up to unlimited size. Stretch a mesh between a pair of tall buildings, or between pylons of old, worn-out windmills, or, yes, across a kite. Alvin Marks patented a version of it in the 80s. He didn't say how to make the ions. Some materials spontaneously give up surface electrons to wind, so you might get away with streamers of the stuff tied where warp meets weft, if it is made slightly conductive.
- AstralStorm 7y agoI wonder why none of the projects is trying balloons... Or are they?
- dredmorbius 7y agoMass vs. lift. For the stated generation model, the kite's lift is being directly used to create electricity as it is reeled out and in. For lofted generators (Google's power kites), you're putting the turbines and generators in the air. Both are more effective with kites than balloons, as in the first you get more lift providing generation directly, and in the second a far smaller wing can support a much larger weight than is possible with a balloon. Frankly I don't think any of these approaches is very practical in the long term at scale. Too many fiddly bits.
- Jedd 7y agoA few years ago a similar story about similar technology popped up, and I referred [1] to a New Scientist story[2] from 2000 that described something remarkably similar, being designed and built by an Australian researcher called Bryan Roberts. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9222149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9222149 [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16722574-800-reach-for-the-sky/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16722574-800-reach-fo...
- hannob 7y agoI see such things with a lot of skepticism. Here's why: With varying intensity I've been following renewable energy development for many years. I've seen many proposals for new forms of wind energy, many of them looking promising. Same for new forms of solar, new forms of water power and many other things. The Kite approach isn't new either. However the reality is that the only thing that's been successful for wind energy is to do almost the same thing they've been doing in the past, just bigger, better and cheaper. The biggest efficiency win in wind energy is to build similar technology, just with bigger wings and larger towers. The biggest innovation was to bring costs down. Technology got better in the details, the basic "three blades that spin around" stayed the same. I know this is pretty boring. But it's successful. I'd bet on "make wind energy cheaper and larger" more than on any fancy new tech.
- namanyayg 7y agoI feel that way with a lot of tech, the best way to upgrade is to make it larger and reduce costs. But we still gotta try other approaches on the off chance they work, don't we? Without that don't we lose on innovation? I could be biased because I do not want to live in a world where we're mainly making incremental updates, but it seems like that's what it is.
- logfromblammo 7y agoThe other factor being "put the bigger, cheaper turbines closer to where the wind is blowing". That has driven offshore wind farms, kite turbines, and placement patterns such that turbines can be placed more closely together without stealing wind from each other.