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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Flying windmills
  • Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:07:37 -0500


Flying windmills -- power from the sky

A Worldchanging post rounds up three different airborne power-generation systems -- a flying windmill, a windmill-equipped zeppelin, and a kite-based windmill.

According to their figures, one flying windmill rated at 240kW
with rotor diameters of 35 feet could generate power for less than
two cents per kilowatt hour--that would make them the cheapest power
source in the world. For greater power needs, several units would be
operated in the same location--Sky Windpower says that an
installation "rated at 2.81 megawatts flying at a typical U.S. site
with an eighty percent capacity factor projects a life cycle cost
per kilowatt hour at 1.4 cents." And they would have far better
uptime than most windmills--since the jetstream never quits, they
should operate at peak capacity 70-90% of the time. Output would
also be less dependent on location than it is on the ground, simply
because terrain doesn't matter much when you're at 35,000ft;
however, since the jetstream and other "geostrophic" winds don't
blow much at latitudes near the equator, it would be useful
primarily for middle- and higher-latitudes.

Link <http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004052.html>
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