The Quest To Harness Wind Energy At 2,000 Feet

[knocker]

Ho Ho said Rowley

 

 

Nothing about the grooved, inflatable body taking shape inside Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, resembles a wind turbine. It looks more like a jetliner's emergency ramp, or something you'd tie behind a boat and cling to desperately while bumping across the surface of a lake. But the 14-foot-long structure most resembles what it actually is--an air-filled wing.

 

To be more precise, it's a stabilizing fin, part of a tube-shaped, robotic airship designed to tap the power of high-altitude winds. The blade tips of today's tallest conventional wind turbine, installed at a test center in Denmark this year, stretch to 720 feet. The fully autonomous, lighter-than-air BAT (short for buoyant airborne turbine) will climb as high as 2,000 feet, where winds blow stronger and steadier.

 

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/quest-harness-wind-energy-2000-feet

[Guest]

Ho Ho said Rowley

 

 

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/quest-harness-wind-energy-2000-feet

And the apparent dangers to gliders and light aircraft?