High-Altitude Wind Power

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Doddler

200 kW per hour = 200 kWh?

[snoopy369]

Yet 600 of those 200kw/h producing devices produce .24% of the UK's energy use, which isn't so bad. (Actually, closer to 0.29%). Not nearly enough by itself, of course, and when compared to the US (about 8x the UK's power usage, uses about 3TW of power/year) even smaller...

... but a plant of 600 would produce 1 GW/year, which is similar to other large power plants. So it's not that bad at all...

[KrazyHorse]

You appear to have as astute a grasp of units as the authors of that article

[Solly]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Also, can you tell me what you mean by:

200kWh is around 0.0004% of UK's energy use

UK's energy use...per year? Day? Hour?

Hour. Of course 200kWh over 1 day is 48MWh.

[KrazyHorse]

200 kWh over 1 day is 48 MWh?

Colour me impressed with the British tertiary education system...

[Spiffor]

KH, you mean there's a diff between producing a kWh and producing a kilowatt per hour?

(I'm not talking about Doddler's inability to count)

[Solly]

Originally posted by Spiffor
KH, you mean there's a diff between producing a kWh and producing a kilowatt per hour?

(I'm not talking about Doddler's inability to count)

wtf?

[Dis]

haven't read the link, but it might be a while. we can't even get a space elevator going.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Doddler


wtf?

200k * 24 = 4800k = 4.8M...

[Dis]

Originally posted by Elok
I'd imagine that, as this plan involves clusters of tiny generators, you could just have the generator you want to work on lower itself down to earth individually so you can work on it. Stagger the maintenance schedule properly and you'd have a steady flow of power, barring a major catastrophe. 'Course, if it crashed it'd be dangerous, but that's why they're building it out in the desert for starters.

EDIT: "Tiny" is the wrong word, they're normal sized turbines with flying apparatus attached. Independent generators, I mean. They're talking about a network of 600, not a single giant generator. I honestly don't know where "tiny" came from.

you know, people actually live in the desert.

[KrazyHorse]

I've been messing with Doddler because it's fun, but here it is straight out:

kW is a measure of power

kWh is a measure of energy

kW per hour is nothing (at least, it's nothing germane to this discussion)

An electrical generation plant is rated in units of power (either peak or average). A 200 kW average plant will generate 200kWh of energy in an hour, or 4800 kWh = 4.8 MWh of energy in a day (again, on average)

Technically, energy is the integral of power over time (or, equivalently, power is the derivative of energy with respect to time)

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Spiffor
KH, you mean there's a diff between producing a kWh and producing a kilowatt per hour?

kWh = unit of energy
kW/h = meaningless

[ZEE]

Originally posted by LordShiva


kWh = unit of energy
kW/h = meaningless

=

sorry i always wanted to do that

[Solly]

I think the reason kH is sounding confusing is that power is generally dealt with half-hour by half-hour. There's a simple multiplication he's missing unfortunately.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Doddler
I think the reason kH is sounding confusing is that power is generally dealt with half-hour by half-hour. There's a simple multiplication he's missing unfortunately.

You're an idiot.