UNB, Dhaka :
Two Californian scientists have worked out how to achieve a wind-powered world that provides the entire planet with wind energy without spoiling the view with turbines on every hilltop.
The answer: Take wind farming onto the high seas. The force of the winds sweeping across the open ocean would be enough to generate 18 billion kilowatts – which is about the global annual energy demand right now.
The scientists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that although the best that wind farms on land can deliver is electricity at the rate of 1.5 watts per square metre, the mid-latitudes of the North Atlantic could do much better: up to 6 watts per square metre. In a calculation
that is overtly hypothetical, they evaluate winds as so much kinetic energy to be exploited. Ocean wind speeds are at least 70% higher than wind speeds over land.
Surface winds in the North Atlantic can reach 11 kms per second and 13.5 kms a second in the Southern Hemisphere, and these would be enough in theory to take generating rates up to 20 or even 80 watts per square metre. Research at this level does not answer the world’s energy problems: instead it sets out, once again, the viable possibility of a world driven by renewable energy, rather than the fossil fuels that drive ever-higher greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, and potentially catastrophic global warming and climate change.
Two Californian scientists have worked out how to achieve a wind-powered world that provides the entire planet with wind energy without spoiling the view with turbines on every hilltop.
The answer: Take wind farming onto the high seas. The force of the winds sweeping across the open ocean would be enough to generate 18 billion kilowatts – which is about the global annual energy demand right now.
The scientists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that although the best that wind farms on land can deliver is electricity at the rate of 1.5 watts per square metre, the mid-latitudes of the North Atlantic could do much better: up to 6 watts per square metre. In a calculation
that is overtly hypothetical, they evaluate winds as so much kinetic energy to be exploited. Ocean wind speeds are at least 70% higher than wind speeds over land.
Surface winds in the North Atlantic can reach 11 kms per second and 13.5 kms a second in the Southern Hemisphere, and these would be enough in theory to take generating rates up to 20 or even 80 watts per square metre. Research at this level does not answer the world’s energy problems: instead it sets out, once again, the viable possibility of a world driven by renewable energy, rather than the fossil fuels that drive ever-higher greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, and potentially catastrophic global warming and climate change.
