The makings of a very bad idea...

[Phil]

Remarkable. Tell me, do windmills fall 1500 ft dragging one-third-mile long cables with them when the wind stops? How much effort does it take to get them back up again?

Phil M1GWZ



On 10 Nov 2012, at 23:36, Mark Whittington wrote:

> 
> 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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