High-Flying Windmills Blow Away Their Ground-Based Cousins

Next-generation turbines may catch all the energy we need, thousands of feet up.

By Fred Hapgood
Sep 24, 2008 5:00 AMNov 12, 2019 4:14 AM
kiterotor.jpg
Kites with rotors could fly to where the winds are strongest and send electricity down their tethers to users on the ground. | Image courtesy of Sky Windpower

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Wind power has long been touted as a major energy resource, but for decades no one knew how much energy it could actually yield. Then three years ago Stanford University atmospheric scientists Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson did a detailed calculation based on known patterns of air motion. Using a conservative approach, they counted only the energy that could be generated from winds blowing over land at an altitude of 80 meters, the approximate height of a typical modern wind turbine. Under perfect conditions, the total would be 72 trillion watts.

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