High-Altitude Wind to Power Global Energy Needs

A new research from Carnegie's Ken Calderia looks at the amount of power that could be produced from winds. According the study there is more than enough energy that is available in the wind to meet the world's growing demand. The atmospheric turbines have the capacity of producing greater power than ground and ocean based units.

The study carried September 9 in Nature Climate Change was led by Kate Marvel of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

For the study the researchers used models in order to quantify the amount of power that could be generated from both surface and atmospheric winds.

Surface winds run turbines supported by towers on land or rising out of the sea. High-altitude winds can be accessed by technology merging turbines and kites.

For this study they focused on geophysical limitations of these techniques, and not from technical or economic factors.

There is a resistance that is being created by the turbines which removes the momentum from the winds and tends to slow them. Greater the number of wind turbines, greater the amount of energy extracted. This study focused on finding the point at which energy extraction is highest.

With the help of 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.

The study states that currently up to 18 TW is being used. Near-surface winds could provide more than 20 times today's global power demand and wind turbines capture 100 times the current global power demand.

 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."

"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.