Researchers have revealed that there is enough energy available in winds to meet all of the world's demand.
New research from Carnegie's Ken Caldeira examines the limits of the amount of power that could be harvested from winds, as well as the effects high-altitude wind power could have on the climate as a whole.
Led by Kate Marvel of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who began this research at Carnegie, the team used models to quantify the amount of power that could be generated from both surface and atmospheric winds.
Surface winds were defined as those that can be accessed by turbines supported by towers on land or rising out of the sea. High-altitude winds were defined as those that can be accessed by technology merging turbines and kites. The study looked only at the geophysical limitations of these techniques, not technical or economic factors.
Turbines create drag, or resistance, which removes momentum from the winds and tends to slow them. As the number of wind turbines increase, the amount of energy that is extracted increases. But at some point, the winds would be slowed so much that adding more turbines would not generate more electricity. This study focused on finding the point at which energy extraction is highest.
Using models, the team was able to determine that more than 400 terrawatts of power could be extracted from surface winds and more than 1,800 terrawatts could be generated by winds extracted throughout the atmosphere.
Today, civilization uses about 18 TW of power. Near-surface winds could provide more than 20 times today's global power demand and wind turbines on kites could potentially capture 100 times the current global power demand.
At maximum levels of power extraction, there would be substantial climate effects to wind harvesting. But the study found that the climate effects of extracting wind energy at the level of current global demand would be small, as long as the turbines were spread out and not clustered in just a few regions.
At the level of global energy demand, wind turbines might affect surface temperatures by about 0.1 degree Celsius and affect precipitation by about 1percent. Overall, the environmental impacts would not be substantial.
"Looking at the big picture, it is more likely that economic, technological or political factors will determine the growth of wind power around the world, rather than geophysical limitations," Caldeira said.
How much of idiots can the scientiests be?
ReplyDeleteHow the HELL do you harness the wind?
Nice work if they can do it! But they can't.
The Wind is the freest thing there is on Earth.
It comes and goes at Will, doesn't pay taxes, isn't coerced by cops, the TSA the U.S> military or any other, it escapes, and even mocks Humans, ALWAYS!
Good for ya, Wind!
Iranians will capture the wind and hold it hostage because they hate us for our freedom fries.
DeleteHey, I'm all for sustainable energy to cut down on fossil fuel usage, but I work for a railroad in central Iowa and have shipped many, many wind mills used for generating electricity. One such wind farm we pass daily has a wind mill that has one of it's propeller blades bent over like a limp noodle. As far as I know these machines and the accompanying components were built right here in the USA. The windmills have been in place a little over 2 years. I was thinking the other day, while passing the limp-noodle-mill that if this is the kind of shit we're gonna have to pay for, then it'd probably be better to stick to coal.
ReplyDeleteThe earth's weather system is best explained by chaos theory. In essence chaos theory says "a butterfly flapping its wing in the Amazon can cause a hurricane in the Gulf." Just imagine what 18TW of energy extraction will do. This is stupid beyond belief!
ReplyDelete