The makings of a very bad idea...

[Mark Whittington]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Bob Bruhns <bbruhns at erols.com> wrote:

> I think a windmill would be a better way to get energy from wind.



You may think that, but the engineers on the product present an argument to
the contrary.  From the article:

According to the teams working on the project, kite technology is better
than other wind farm technology such as turbines because turbines depend on
rotors. Since wind levels increase with altitude, kites are able to harness
higher wind speeds resulting in more energy. A wind turbine’s rotor tip
turns at a maximum height of only 650 ft (as opposed to the 1,500-ft
altitudes the kites reach). If you’re able to double the height, you can
harness eight times the energy.

“Depending on wind conditions, eight kites with a combined surface area of
up to 300 square meters can equate to 20 conventional 1-megawatt wind
turbines,” said Joachum Montnacher, engineer at the IPA.

Kites also do not have to deal with wind inconsistency the way turbines do
as a result of increased wind speeds at high altitudes.

While a 2-MW wind turbine produces around 4-gigawatt hours per year, just
24 kites in the team’s “NTS” system, as its being called by developers,
could generate up to 120-GW hours per year. The team estimates that an NTS
system could replace 30 wind turbines and power approximately 30,000 homes.
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