Wind power suffers from the fact that wind is capricious, but the higher you go, the more powerful and dependable the wind becomes, suggesting that an answer to green energy could be in the air:
“At 2,000 feet (610 m), there is two to three times the wind velocity compared to ground level,” Moore said. “The power goes up with the cube of that wind velocity, so it’s eight to 27 times the power production just by getting 2,000 feet (610 m) up, and the wind velocity is more consistent.”
Send turbines farther aloft, into the 150 mph (240 kph) jet stream at 30,000 feet (9,150 m), and “instead of 500 watts per meter (for ground-based wind turbines), you’re talking about 20,000, 40,000 watts per square meter,” Moore said. “That’s very high energy density and potentially lower cost wind energy because of the 50-plus fold increase in energy density.”
How do you harness that energy? With turbines on blimps tethered to the ground with strong, highly conductive nanotubes.
So, we may be waiting a while.
Popular Mechanics or Science had an article on this 30 years ago. What’s the over/under on seeing it in another 30 years? There are a plethora of reasonable answers to the supply of energy, but these are not in the benefit of those that own the governments. Cui bono.