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  • From: dwoodard@becon.org
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Flying windmills
  • Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2006 07:53:47 -0500 (EST)

The jetstream wiggles around a lot, by many hundreds of miles. I don't
see a tethered turbine in one location being in it more than a small
fraction of the time.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


On Wed, 1 Feb 2006, Keith Johnson wrote:

>
> 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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