High-Altitude Wind Machines Could Power New York City

Wind power has been considered a green alternative for a long time but conventional thinking has always looked at ground level. High altitude winds are much stronger. Harnessing them might be a good way to generate electricity without impacting the environment or aesthetics.

The wind blowing through the streets of Manhattan couldn’t power the city, but wind machines placed thousands of feet above the city theoretically could.

The first rigorous, worldwide study of high-altitude wind power estimates that there is enough wind energy at altitudes of about 1,600 to 40,000 feet to meet global electricity demand a hundred times over.

The very best ground-based wind sites have a wind-power density of less than 1 kilowatt per square meter of area swept. Up near the jet stream above New York, the wind power density can reach 16 kilowatts per square meter. The air up there is a vast potential reservoir of energy, if its intermittency can be overcome.

Wired Science

Cool stuff. We really need to switch over to renewable energy if we want to survive as a technologically advanced species. Fossil fuels wont last forever.

There was another thread here that mentioned that they were working on inflatable towers filled with helium that could reach heights of like 10 kilometers. I wonder if they could mount wind turbines on those? Lol they would need to find a way to keep them from blowing over, probably.

Neat story. I doubt anything will ever come of it, though.

They'll just build nuclear power plants, I'm sure, as the dependency on fossil fuels can be easily switched to Uranium.

Nobody owns the wind, so I don't see any titans of industry embracing this idea.

I watched the show where they showed this and I didn't think they needed to go any higher then 300-500 feet they said for these to work.

Cool stuff


[edit on 19-6-2009 by whoshotJR]