High Altitude Wind Energy

Came across this interesting TED video on high-altitude wind energy. Its amazing that we are just scraping the surface of alternate energy. We are just getting started with wind power as an energy source and currently less than 1.5% of world's energy comes from wind. This is one of the most rapidly growing alternate energy source. Along with solar, wind represents the only renewable source of energy that is substantially larger than the world's current energy needs(72TW capacity vs 15TW global consumption today).Most of the wind energy we are harnessing today is in the lower atmosphere (ground level) where the efficiency is low. This video talks about harnessing wind power at higher altitudes. This is a green field technology with high potential.

High-altitude wind energy has the largest energy per square foot of all of the renewable energy technologies (wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric, biomass, geothermal) and a very low cost. Capturing a small fraction of the global high-altitude wind energy flux could be sufficient to supply the current energy needs of the globe. This is achieved through the use of high altitude kites & Air-borne wind turbines. Technologies exist today to harvest this in a large scale and this has potential to change the energy landscape.

About this talk

In this brief talk, Saul Griffith unveils the invention his new company Makani Power has been working on: giant kite turbines that create surprising amounts of clean, renewable energy.

About Saul Griffith

Inventor Saul Griffith looks for elegant ways to make real things, from low-cost eyeglasses to a kite that tows boats. His latest projects include open-source inventions and elegant new ways…

Photo Credits: Ronnie44052

World energy resources and consumption

My latest topic of research has been about energy. I was trying to check out regarding the global energy production and consumption and came across this very interesting article in Wikipedia. This is a one stop shop for all macro level details regarding energy.

Its amazing to know the potential of renewable sources of energy, specifically Solar and wind power(areas where we have current capability/technology). Even if we harvest a very small fraction of it we would be able to meet the global energy needs. This article also provides details on the projected lifetime of some of the known energy sources like oil, gas, coal, uranium etc. Overall i don't think we have too much time left both from resource availability and environmental damage perspectives. I see a drastic change in our energy sources in the next 50 yrs. Of our current energy sources oil & coal would definitely be on the way out, gas usage would have peaked and would start to decline.

It will also be very interesting to see how we master nuclear fusion technology and start using that as a clean energy source. The time horizon for nuclear fusion technology is atleast 50-100 yrs.

World energy resources and consumption - Wikipedia

Alternative energy Cars

I came across this interesting article in the net. There are lot of alternative energy research projects going on - Fuel Cell, Electric, Solar, Hybrid - combination of these etc. This is the first time I am coming across the idea of using air as fuel. This seems to be a very innovative and novel idea.

Conceptually it looks to be pretty simple and straight forward. In terms of technology and operation as well this looks to be simper compared to other technologies. It will be interesting to see what the net energy efficiency ratio for this technology is - This is the ratio of energy used to compress air Vs energy generated by compressed air. If this ratio is positive this technology has a great future. It is very early stages to ascertain the viability and sustainability of this technology. However given the current trend of hybrid vehicles(multi-fuel sources) i think this might be a good option in addition to one of the proven fuel sources.

One other thing that struck me with this article was that Tata motors was in the forefront and trying to build some concept cars based on this technology. Way to go Tata's!! Over the last couple of yrs I have become a big fan of Ratan Tata for this vision and global strategy for expanding Tata group. I see them breaking into the Global top 5 conglomerates in the next 10 yrs. It will be interesting to watch how Tata leverages the Jaguar/Land Rover brands to grow in the current market conditions where gas price is going up and market is moving towards smaller, fuel efficient vehicles.

Check out these below links

http://www.autoextra.com/article/articleid-207
http://www.theaircar.com/acf/