20160830【 Airborne Energy 】

Airborne Energy
The answer just might be blowing in the wind

Over the last decade, environmental concerns have generated a race to discover clean, renewable energy.

Some runners of this race believe they might find a winning solution through the widespread potential of wind power.

Wind farms

Today, wind power is largely harnessed by enormous wind turbines on towers with extremely long blades.

Often grouped into "wind farms," these are usually placed in remote locations away from the population , sometimes even offshore.

However, these mechanical monsters create significant noise pollution and require transmission lines to carry to towns and cities.

Endangering wildlife is also often noted as a problem, but technological development and placement have mostly resolved that point.

Flying machines

Many agree that the promise of wind power would be best realised by reaching stronger winds at higher altitudes.

Different concepts including kites,turbines in floating helium doughnuts and flying generators33 have all seen development.

However, regulations complicate these ideas by limiting the height such machines are allowed to reach.

The strongest winds are found seven to 16 kilometres above ground, but some U.S. states have laws that require machines to stay below 0.6 kilometres.