With Japan considering putting wind turbines out at sea, and now this MIT troupe putting wind turbines in the air, I am starting to wonder: is it more effective to generate energy at sea or in air? Clearly, solar cells above the clouds have an advantage in solar availability – but what are the costs for construction and maintenance to withstand the two harsh environments? How would power be transported back to Earth? And how reliable are the energy sources employed?
Helium-filled floating wind turbine, renewable energy with style
There’s no doubting that the cause of renewable energy is a noble one. But, ethics aside, it also gives birth to the
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+Prasoon Kumar agree with +John Bump 's comment completely as well. I'm still curious as to how the economics of operation of the various alternatives will work out.
not talking about your article sophie, about Mr John's piece 🙂 … just read it, great post … thanks
complicated laga, aise hi plus one kar diya, will read again …
Water has 1000 times the density of air, so you can get a lot more power density out of it. But as you say, it's a lot more corrosive. Most of the tethered power generation systems I've seen just use the tethers for power transmission, which is fine until a tether breaks, so I dunno. The suggestions I've seen for orbital power generation usually involve beaming it down in a somewhat coherent beam, but then you're right back to the cloud problem (and a transmission distance problem.)
There isn't anything like an easy answer.