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The katabatic wind is the wind that flows down off the ice massif of the Antarctic and to a lesser extent, the Arctic.
To my knowledge there has been no serious attempt to harness it yet, for power generation, despite it being one of the most reliable and fastest winds on earth.
Simple clean
exploitation of a natural resource, largely maintaining the Antarctic in a practically pristine state.
Penguins are unlikely to fly into the turbine blades!
Below the sea...
http://www.newscien...s.jsp?id=ns99994188
Norsk Lunar Tech [PainOCommonSense]
Better yet with Cool Image!
http://news.nationa...1009_moonpower.html
Norsk Polar Lunar Power [PainOCommonSense, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 06 2004]
Better yet with Cool Image!
http://news.nationa...1009_moonpower.html
Norsk Polar Lunar Power [PainOCommonSense, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]
Sweet sweet electrical arc movie
http://www.youtube....watch?v=D9PGUYlfy4c
This is amazing. I link it here because I occasionally think about Kadabatopolis. [bungston, Dec 16 2006]
Another Halfbakery idea realised!
http://www.newswire...y2007/11/c5203.html
UnaBubba was always ahead of the game... [ConsulFlaminicus, Jan 18 2007]
[link]
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Interesting concept but I'm not sure who would harness it and how they'd get it to anywhere useful. It'd also probably stir up all of those territorial scuffles again. |
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I initially read this as Kabbalistic wind power generation which scarily made more sense <grin> |
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if implemented on large scale for generating significant power, it would alter natural wind currents & in a way or the other adversely affect global environment/ climate. |
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mad: that would be harnessing Madonna's singing perhaps? |
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I don't know about exporting the power being a practical thing.
However, this seems like a lovely idea for explores and scientists down there. People in the research camps could use it to get whatever power they need. I'm sure its much better for the enviroment there to get your energy from the wind than burn fuels. Overall, + |
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Just to clarify, the idea is: put windmills near the South Pole? |
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That's what it sounds like to me. |
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//Penguins are unlikely to fly into the turbine blades!// Ha!+ |
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can anyone please inform the maximum, minimum and average wind speed that would be used for power generation ? |
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Perhaps if you could get the Old Ones to settle down long enough, you could use the windmill to charge a superbattery or otherwise accumulate the energy in such a way as to make it portable. |
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Alternatively, you could position energy intensive, dangerous technologies in the Arctic and power them off these windmills. For example, the windmill could be hooked to a series of gears and gradually raise a mountain-sized mass up a few feet. On letting the mountain suddenly descend, the energy would be captured in a trebuchet-like device and used to hurl objects into orbit. One could probably hurl every 2-3 years. If the device went haywire only the operator and a few hundred penguins would suffer. |
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Probably not, [bungston]. There are no penguins in the Arctic. |
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And if there were, the Canucks would club them to death. |
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Just found this quote on the subject: "The mean annual wind speed is 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour) and maximum measured wind velocities exceed 320 kilometers per hour (almost 200 miles per hour)!" |
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I believe that the Arctic & for that matter Antarctic explorers already use wind power to recharge their electricity supplies using very small dish sized aero generators. But short of marching pylons all through out the artic circle I can't see much other use for this idea (other than perhaps Greenland communities who no doubt also harness wind power already). |
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I don't know a thing on wind power and maintenance and exporting....so I give this a thumbs up. |
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To elaborate on my brief comment above: the idea here is, essentially, to put windmills in places where there's lots of wind. That's not in any way an original idea. Obviously there are reasons why, in spite of the abundant wind, windmills aren't situated in these regions. A suggestion of how to deal with these problems might count as an original idea. Otherwise, this is just a WIBNI. |
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[spacemoggy] what are those reasons ? i had mentioned one of them earlier "it would alter natural wind currents & in a way or the other adversely affect global environment/ climate". |
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it would take a hell of a lot of turbines to effect any global weather pattern. |
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//what are those reasons?//
see [evildave]'s anno above. |
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On a similar note could underwater hydroelectric plants be built that would utilise natural ocean currents? |
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Norweigian under water Baked. |
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The moon is responsible for lots of the currents & weather patterns. It is unlikely that we could set up enough wind or sea turbines to effect it's orbit. Big up the renewable sources Germany's 15% & Denmarks 20% supply !! Just don't bother to make them so far away. They look good and they are super safe, they don't effect air traffic (danish radar). They look better than pylons and they don't cause lukemia and if you put them in the back garden they reduce the need to transport HV electricity. Hurray for Wind. Check the links. |
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Transmission capability would be improved by running cabling along the sea floor. Colder wire means better transmission. |
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Nothing gets fried if you use insulation on the cable. |
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I cannot imagine how many turbines would be needed to alter natural wind currents. |
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[spacemoggy], I have never seen this proposed, therefore I believe it to be original. Wind power is not original but very few of the inventions here are truly original. My idea is simply to harness the katabatic wind, which is very reliable and very fast. No-one has ever canvassed the idea before, to my knowledge. [Florida Manatee] would know. |
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I have devised the extra bit which makes this idea workable and profitable. The Katabatic mill powers a series of cyclotrons, which convert elements easily available in the Antarctic into gold, platinum and other valued commodities. The only reason not to do this now is that the energy costs more than the end product is worth. |
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Where would you construct the wind turbines? I'm just recalling a big chunk of something frozen floating away not too long ago...other than that, sounds dandy. |
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If the berg where your mills are built breaks away, you could fix the mill blades, then use your millfield as a sail, and pilot the berg to Southern California where it can be sold for the water content. Unless the pirates take it from you and sail it to Bermuda. |
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<scratching head like Homer Simpson> Mmmm.... Ozone.... <shlhs> |
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/Jacob's ladder/ - I am liking this more and more. There would be ample energy left over to run an enormous pipe organ, for the solitary engineer to cheer himself on those howling sunless winters. You would want to be careful that the charge did not pull down the Aurora Australis around your windmill field. That would be sure to wake up any ancient races under the ice. |
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Like many areas of abundant power, this katabatic region is very isolated. I believe it was Heinlein who contended that there is no power shortage, only limited technology for storing and transporting it. I would propose that this idea will be completely bakable as soon as hydrogen storage improves, and most of the developed world makes the first steps towards a hydrogen based infrastructure. What I love about this idea is that it combines a truly pervasive and readily tappable power source, with two of the main requirements for a hydrogen storage system: cold temperatures and unlimited access to water. Big + to you, Zanzibar. |
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Thank you. It also works quite well in the Antarctic, as there is a solid continent under all of that ice. |
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//it would take a hell of a lot of turbines to effect any global weather pattern//
1) ok. spend millions of dollars to reach the site & install few turbines that would generate few kilowatt or a few megawatt of power. forget about economy of scale while laying thousands of km of power transmission cables.
2) install wind turbines on all the hillocks & mountains in residential areas where there is reasonably high average wind velocity. no need to lay thousands of km long power cables from antarctic. no need to visit the remooo.....te place for preventive maintenance or breakdown maintenance. and of course, to hell with all those persons who would cry about aesthetics & climate change due to wind mill installation on the hills. |
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I have been thinking of an airbrush fantasy artwork of Kadabatopolis. Marvelous windmills are bolted to the ruins of an ancient, prehuman city, half buried by ice and snow. A fallen statue of the Toad god lies in the foreground, eerily lit by the arcs off the Jacobs ladder on a hill in the center. Stars and the Aurora fill the sky. |
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[mrohdie] i don't know anything about hydrogen storage. but i can imagine there would be good amount of heat rejection from hydrogen production system. well ! it would be interesting to know how fast (months/years) it would melt the ice to increase the sea water level enough to drown some(?) of the land. |
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Just make a big wind funnel to funnel the wind to somewhere it can be made into useful lelectricity, like australia or chile. Or run the cables down the seabed like in jaws. |
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I can't see transmitting the power through a cable far enough for it do any good. I think it would be more reasonable to do as some have suggested and electrolyze water into hydrogen, then ship the hydrogen in pressurized tankers. This precedent for doing this with natural gas. I think weather conditions would only permit you to make shipments about half the year, however. The rest of the time you would have to store the hydrogen on site. |
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I think we could power the world several times over before we extracted enough energy to impact global climatic conditions, so I don't see that as a barrier. I think the biggest problem is that there is too much energy. The katabatic is well beyond the operating range of commercial wind turbines. I think in order to operate effectively you would need "super" turbines that would probably be prohibitively expensive. |
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People, people. Effect (n), affect (v). Effect (vt) means to cause something to come into being. Although it's amusing to consider how many turbines it would take to effect a weather pattern, effecting an orbit for the moon is a little pointless, as <Holy Grail> "We already got one" <HG>. |
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Or has there been a moratorium declared on pedantry while I was away? It certainly appears to be the case. |
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Could the wind power be converted into water temp/pressure that could be "piped" to where it is useful avoiding harmful effects even in the event of failure. Pipes might "sink" into surface ice or water and avoid being an environmental problem. |
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PS Penguins dont fly and I presume you would have them higher than hopping height :-) |
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Pretty sure water pressure would not work over 1,000s km. I am not sure I would even try pumping hydrogen that far. |
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I think if you just trim the wings and bring them close together you could use existing Generators quite easily. The mods to create the SuperTurbines would be easy. The shipping of hydrogen by boat would be completely unnecessary thanks my POCS's Patented Unmanned Hydrogen Zeppelins!! Sure a couple may blow off course and set fire to parts of South America & California but hey why let a few devastating forest fires get in the way of progress. |
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[Egbert] Good pedanting that man! I'm privately convinced that it's anxiety over getting that wrong that has led people to start using "impact" as a sort of horrible catch-all word covering both affect(verb) and effect(noun) (but not effect(verb).) |
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//PS Penguins dont fly // |
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//Pretty sure water pressure would not work over 1,000s km.//
Perhaps you could pump it up a few metres and let it fall the 1000kms by gravity |
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//PS Penguins dont fly // |
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<You learn something every day, even if it's off-topic> Last weekend I took the kids to the zoo and learnt that there's a species of penguin lives in Africa. I thought it was a joke until I read the blurb. |
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I think you could use all that electrical power to de-ice the blades :) |
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You could but then the electrons might get thrown off by centrifical force too |
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Penguin colonies are to be found in quite a few places, other than the Antarctic continent. |
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Back to the topic at hand... Long distance transmission is certainly possible, particularly with very cold temperatures for much of the length of the transmission. (i.e. underwater temperatures in the Southern Ocean are pretty grim); Teflon coating on the blades will solve most of the icing problems. |
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Yes, how about /superconducting/ power transmission? The only electric "loss" is what you need to run refrigerators to keep it cold. |
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Also, we all know about space-based microwave power. Why not put a reflector satellite in space that will reflect a beam of microwave energy from the katadiabetic wind power plant's turbines to where the power is needed? |
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Speaking of energy intensive technologies for when you don't want to transmit power a long way, Alaska has a huge surplus of natural gas. Someone decided to generate electricity with it, using that electricity to pump radio waves into the atmosphere -- to try to control the weather or turn parts of the atmosphere into a giant lens. |
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Joe, have you got a link to that? |
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Argh Joe, me thinks you have been playing sim city too long. |
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Leads me to think your ass may be smarter than its owner. Who said anything about superconductors? The loss rate decreases as the temperature of the transmission medium decreases. |
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Tricky task. Steel gets quite brittle (undergoes a ductile transformation) at low temps. Not all that low either. -20F for common alloys.
Maintenance would be hell as well. I once took the wing nut off the air cleaner cover on a Chevy V8 at 20 below. Got a blister on my thumb (frostbite). I dont think it took me more than 15 seconds to take the nut off either. |
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<twists knobs, scratches head, enters wayback machine> |
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One thing about the poles is that the first layer of atmosphere is only 5 miles high where it is 10 miles high elsewhere. I am not sure how much of an impossibility it would be to build a tower that high but that might make it a more likely spot for a laser push station It would have fairly constant access to the things it would have access to. You might as well give it a real south pole.
I really like the high energy physics experimentation Idea though I would put them in the antarctic. Supercunductors would be a lot easier to cool there. It would easily be an international affair so land claim issues would be put off for a while. Supped up Super Conducting Super Collider |
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