(Old Post) Renewable Energy: Want to fly a kite?

In the topic of renew­able energy, there is a heated debate about whether solar, wind, and other environmentally-friendly tech­nolo­gies will ever pro­vide an alter­na­tive to coal-generated power. The key issue at stake is whether the renew­able sources pro­vide suf­fi­cient energy with enough reli­a­bil­ity to replace coal in the pro­vi­sion of ’base load’. In case you’re new to the topic, base load refers to the min­i­mum amount of energy required by our cities. It is the baseline-level required to ensure no parts of our cities and rural areas have a black­out. Think about it as the min­i­mum wage required by our elec­tric­ity needs.

The prob­lem with base load is that we need to ensure our gen­er­a­tion facil­i­ties always pro­vide at least that amount of power into the grid. But the sun doesn’t always shine; and the wind doesn’t always blow. There are sev­eral arti­cles that explain in detail the prob­lem that this poses for the devel­op­ment of a sus­tain­able, renew­able energy gen­er­a­tion sys­tem (link). There is a team of sci­en­tists based on Cal­i­for­nia that believes there is an alter­na­tive. I found out about them via Robert Cringely, a pub­lished author & colum­nist who has been writ­ing on the Tech­nol­ogy field for over 20 years. In his weekly col­umn ’I Cringely’ of the 12 of Octo­ber 2007 (link) , Bob describes the approach that ’Makani Power’ (link) is taking.

The basic idea is sim­ple enough: They want to build a super-kite to be flown at stratos­pheric alti­tudes, where the wind always blows at high speed; and attach power-generating tur­bines to the kites. If they suc­ceed, the area required to gen­er­ate ’base load’ for the whole of the US will be entirely within their means, as it will be for many other coun­tries — Aus­tralia included.

This is very excit­ing news for those of us wor­ried about global warm­ing; and it was fas­ci­nat­ing to read that of all the com­pa­nies that could have invested into Makani Power, it was an unlikely investor that took the plunge. Their name? Google

The con­cept is sim­ple; more than enough money has been pro­vided; there are tech­ni­cal experts that are lumi­nar­ies in the field; and the com­pany back­ing this new ven­ture is renowned for an unprece­dented level of suc­cess. The only remain­ing ques­tion is When will it be ready?

For our own sake, I hope the answer is some­time very soon!