The World on Wind Power

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Permalink Reply by Truman Leung on April 29, 2008 at 7:29am

This is a fascinating topic, Dan. Renewable energy is of interest to me. China is going to be the next great economic power. Their energy consumption is already huge and rising. (However, I think American use something like
seven times the amount of energy per capita than the Chinese.) Currently China uses coal as its primary source of energy. Their cheap antiquated coal burning plants pump out a lot of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide which carried on the jet streams reaches all the way to the western United States. It goes without saying that if this cheap renewable wind power can be developed, everyone would benefit. For convenience, I've added their artists rendering of their design for tethered Flying Electric Generators (FEG).

Photo source: http://skywindpower.com/ww/index.htm

It would be interesting if robotic FEGs could be designed with high capacity batteries so they do not have to be tethered. The robot could respond to a command center to fly to the areas with the highest wind velocity without colliding with other FEGs. I wonder if it is possible to mount onboard microwave lasers that can periodically beam down microwave energy to a land based receiving station. Perhaps one day it would be possible for a network of these untethered FEGs could span out across the ocean. FEGs not over the land base could forward their energy via microwave laser to the closest FEG which would in turn forward that energy to the next one all the way until it reaches the land based power station. However it'd be the stuff of a scifi/anime movie if the network of FEGs were hijacked by a hacker and all the FEGs were instructed to fly into a city to kamakaze attack a building or all fire their lasers at a certain site.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on April 29, 2008 at 7:39am

I saw this design for the first time in Scientific American a few months ago. Very interesting stuff!

Currently China uses coal as its primary source of energy.

You may find this interesting: Wind Power Cheaper Than Coal, a study by Stanford's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Speaking of China and renewable energy, have you heard about Dongtan? I read about this project in the Economist. A similar city is planned in Saudi Arabia.

Permalink Reply by Truman Leung on April 29, 2008 at 8:06am

Thanks for the links. Interesting articles. Did you know that the U.S. has the world's largest coal reserves and is only just behind China as the worlds #2 coal producer and consumer. Almost a quarter of the U.S. energy use is fueled by coal.

BTW, I discovered this interesting page on wireless microwave power transmission.

Thanks for the link on Dongtan. I hadn't heard of it. Perhaps it would a great place to live being on the ocean ... probably has less air pollution. Apparently it will be open in two years.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on April 29, 2008 at 9:09pm

Wow - Dongtan looks amazing. The Economist article didn't have any pics. Its very interesting that the two countries with concrete plans to build carbon neutral cities are China and Saudi Arabia. I hope the next president gets us off our ass in this area.