Some 300 meters up in the air, enough wind blows to provide 400 terrawatts of power, according to a recent analysis—or more than 20 times more power than the world as a whole presently uses. But getting up that high is challenging; a traditional wind turbine would be too tall. So Makani Power and others are designing alternatives.

Here the California-based company's prototype Wing 7 shows how it could fly guided solely by computer and use its specially-designed rotors both for thrust and to extract power from the wind.

4 Comments

1. 1. sethdayal 12:31 PM 9/24/12

   Nope far too expensive.
   
   More waste of time and treasure, in the potentially civilization ending battle against the fast approaching climate precipice.
   
   Compared to nukes per kwh, wind uses 60 times the carbon intense steel and concrete as nukes and destroy's 10000 times the forest and farm land carbon sink in mountain ridge sites, 5 times sized transmission, and road asphalt surfacing and clear cuts in construction. When the inefficient gas backup run inefficiently is added to the wind carbon equation it actually uses more gas and produces more GHG's than just building efficient gas plant in the first place.
   
   Unsubsidized wind cost fully loaded with gas backup and transmission costs over 30 cents a kwh and once Chinese dumping ends will continue its slow rise over the decade. First of a kind nukes built by primitive construction techniques in the west are costing less than 5 cents a kwh when built by public power twice the cost as building the save units in China now 90% complete using modern factory construction techniques.
   
   The notoriously corrupt antinuclear Obama bought off by Big Oil has scarcely put a dime in Nextgen nuclear development, while the IFR reactor has been design ready to build since 1996 after testing from many years at INR. GE has an offer out - impossible in Obama's bureaucratically crippled USA to build this American designed reactor in England to burn their plutonium stock. It was the other Dem fathead - Big Oil's Bill Clinton - that shut down this project in 1996.
   
   Now the Indians will have one in service next year, at a cost cheaper than new gas plant here.
   
   according to Bloomberg, if the money spent on renewables in the US since 2004 had been spent on nuclear, the US would now be coal free saving the lives of tens of thousands of American's dying annual from coal air pollution.

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2. 2. dwbd 08:12 PM 9/24/12

   Notice SCIAM publishes upbeat articles on every Renewable Energy Pixie power SCAM ever invented. But NO as in ZIP for articles on new Nuclear Tech, like LFTR, the IFR, Focus Fusion, Polywell IEC fusion, ADS fission or Fission-Fusion hybrids. Only time you ever hear SCIAM write about any Nuclear Tech is more fear-mongering Fukushima crap, or some mental midget who doesn't know the difference between a joule and watt trying to trash Nuclear, not even having a clue how it works.

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3. 3. nuboat in reply to dwbd 01:22 AM 9/25/12

   Ask the Japanese and Germans why they are not so keen on Nuclear. These wind machines can not only produce many more jobs per KWH produced but will also engender a more reachable and teachable technology to youth and create a variety of uses and energy storage means which haven't been thought of or which are buried in a thousand old patents now in public domain. In other words there is efficacy of productive employment in inefficiency. These machines can be made of bamboo, cloth and wood or aluminum glass and plastic or any combination. They don't have to produce heat energy only. They can produce compressed air which has been shown to be the most efficient means of power transmission.
   
   I agree with your math but the safety and complexity and potential hazardous lethal waste issues along with the diss-employment due to technical advance, vitiate very strongly against nuclear in my current opinion.
   
   

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4. 4. dwbd in reply to nuboat 10:20 PM 9/25/12

   The Germans & Japanese have a history of being the most easily manipulated and gullible people on this Earth, in spite of their undoubted technological skills. Both bowed down in worship of insane ideologues because their mass-media told them to do so. Big Oil has an unlimited budget for nuclear disinformation, exploiting Fukushima to convince the gullibles that Nuclear is "bad". Notice the Japanese & German media have totally ignored the 20,000 dead due to Japan's TERRIBLE lack of tsunami preparation. But the ZERO DEATH fukushima incident gets non-stop coverage in Big Oil's paid Media. Big Oil expects to get over $15 Trillion in extra LNG sales by 2030 by exploiting the Fukushima incident. Even more including the consequent price rise in LNG. Notice they don't want to talk about the weekly massive, deadly, massive carcinogen belching Oil refinery conflagrations/explosions they have been having. No 1000 yr tsunami & earthquake caused that, just regular run-of-the-mill breakdown and fire/explosion hazard. The bodies are piling up. Maybe they can use the Fukushima area as a massive graveyard for the thousands of Oil & Gas fatalities that happened in the just the past year.
   
   The potentially hazardous lethal waste of Nuclear is safely contained until it can be burnt in GenIV reactors generating several hundred $trillion in clean, green energy vs your million times greater fossil fuel waste which is dumped into our air, land & water with unregulated, reckless abandon. But those carcinogens are "environmentally friendly" - yeah, right. Use some common sense instead of believing what you here in non-stop, 24/7 $billions in Big Oil/NG advertising.
   
   And "..compressed air which has been shown to be the most efficient means of power transmission.." ?!? You're kidding me, right?

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