The Future of Renewable Energy...is Coming from Drones?

Windmills are a thing of the past! In the future, renewable energy could come from wind harvesting drones. These devices are portable, and would require a lot less material to make. And where do we find this wind? Why not use a Solar Wind Energy Tower and create it ourselves!

What renewable energy source do YOU think is the most promising? Let us know in the comments below!

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[TRANSCRIPT]:
The drones are coming! And they're making renewable energy?

You know, the trouble with wind power is that it needs to be windy. And if it's not you really only have two solutions - go out and find the wind, or create it. So, how does one create wind? Well that's why I've cooked up this huge vat of chili.

Just kidding.

Actually, there's a company called Solar Wind Energy Tower that has a solution. They propose building towers out in the desert that will suck up hot, dry air. Now that hot, dry air goes up the tower until it hits the top, where they add in water vapor, making that air heavy. And then the air rushes down at speeds upwards of fifty miles-per-hour, until it hits turbines which then will generate electricity.

The best place to harvest wind energy tends to be the coastline. And if you're like me, you like to get your shade from a nice beach umbrella, not a noisy 300-ft tall windmill. Luckily, Makani Power, an engineering firm run by a California wind surfer has come up with a pretty cool idea. They have a wind harvesting drone attached to a rope, which sounds pretty radical if you ask me.

The most effective part of a turbine blade is the tip. So the Makani Airborne Wind Turbine travels in a vertical circle in the same path as the tip of a conventional turbine blade. Wing mounted rotors catch the rushing wind, which is converted into electricity by small generators and sent back to the ground via the tether, which is a conductive cable.

So why is this any better than a traditional windmill? The same reason it's better to live in an RV than an Egyptian pyramid. It takes a lot less material to make, and it's portable.

Mental note. Really need to work on my analogies.

It's possible that these Makani turbines could be flown out over the ocean where winds are particularly strong. Now the electricity they generate could just be sent down to buoys floating in the ocean and collected later to be sent back to land.

Now of course this doesn't mean we should just abandon our traditional wind harvesting strategies, we just have to make them smarter. Which is what companies like GE are doing. You see, they're adding sensors to wind turbines to collect oodles of data, and turn it into dynamic action on the turbines themselves, so if the wind conditions change, the turbine can automatically adjust the tilt of the blades and maximize efficiency.

Clearly, none of these solutions are perfect, which is why we're going to have to continue to innovate in this space. After all, when it comes to renewable energy, the winds of change are always blowing.

[carlpage]

MakaniPower is great- should be less that $0.03/kwhr LCOE.   Google bought them.  But the illustration in this video is weird- seems wrong unless they have totally changed their physics.   Check google.com/makani for the right video.  Because it is the wing that collects the power and the 6 rotors that turn the energy in to electricity--- so you don't want to use a hex copter design!  There is no wing to pick up the wind's energy in that circle.    

Makani is twice as good as tradational wind turbines in 6 different ways. 

Note that Offshore is real opportunity for them.   Building towers in deep ocean is impossible at low cost.  Europes off shore wind is in shallow seas.  THe west coasts of most continents are deep though.  Makani's tether can be hooked to a buoy or barge and doesn't require a stable platform, so it is almost as cheap to deploy at sea as on shore.  On shore it is cheaper because it is so small and light that a road is not needed to its base.  

[tylershepard]

I think heat. Ever heard of a thermoelectric generator? Those things excite me. Put them in your home and you can generate energy from heat leaking through say, windows. Granted entropy is always increasing, so you can't ever be 100% efficient, but you can get close. TEG's are one way to do so.

[vincentrobinette]

What we really need, is efficient, cost effective grid scale electrical energy storage. That would provide a way to store energy when available from wind, or any other renewable source, and supply it when there's a demand. The question you mentioned at the end shouldn't be which one, but which combination. Using energy from multiple sources, which provide their energy at different times, reduces the amount of electrical energy storage necessary for the amount of generating capacity, and the customer base being served by it. an example would be the fact that photovoltaic panels do their best work during the day, and turbines tend to run in the mornings, and evenings. That more steady power means that the "battery" (or its equivalent) doesn't have to fill quite as long of a supply gap, therefore, doesn't need to be quite so big, (expensive). Without energy storage, wind turbines or solar can only be about 20% of generating capacity, without creating problems with grid stability.

[NKPyo]

Volcanic and solar are probably the best sources...

[GamerBoi]

i know you prob won't see this, so if anyone agrees, like this comment (not a like hore guys, i promise)
do a video over renewable resources, like the pros (easy to get, cheap, ect) and the cons (hard to get, expensive, dangerous to get, ect)

[superwookie]

Solar panels. They can be put in so many places. Put it on the back of your cell phone and flip it over to charge it...

[starlife]

Not real actually. The US doesn't yet have a single wind turbine at sea. Almost all of the worlds offshore wind power installations are in Europe. As those seen here in the video.

[BlackOperations]

I think nuclear energy is something we should reconsider. Solar and wind can only provide enough power for residential capacity at best. Nuclear energy could provide both residential and industrial capacity. The uranium inside a nuclear power plant can’t explode. Not one individual has died from radiation due to a modern nuclear power plant—not at Fukushima, not at Three Mile Island. The majority of
the people that died as a result of Chernobyl were involved in the
rescue following the accident, which was caused by a combination
of an unstable design and operator error. The energy in nuclear
material is a million times more concentrated than the energy in
materials used in other forms of energy production. That means it
has exciting economic potential, if it weren’t so controlled by
government. And it means that the waste it generates is small, and,
as France has shown, easy to deal with. Check out this website

www.industrialprogress.com 

[akil]

Solar is the winner with a touch of wind (which can be considered solar indirectly).

[solotronixTV]

All of the renewable's are necessary to create a balanced sustainable grid.

[hreaper]

Solar, nuclear and geothermal my guess.
Each of them have their own problems to overcome.

*Solar*
Needs to be more efficient and find out how to collect the sun's energy at night or cloudy days.

*Nuclear*
Waste management. Thorium?

*Geothermal*
Location. You need to find the suitable site to build the plant.

Also, better ways to store the energy. Even if you could maximize the efficiency of energy generation, it wouldn't mean much if you can't store it.

[obloquious]

Personally, I think some mix of solar, hydro and petrol is the way to go.  For the amount of energy produced by wind, the footprint is very large, and nuclear, after the rods are spent they require years to cool, at least for fission, I haven't heard much on fusion.

[jonathanmears]

I personally think nuclear energy is the way to go

[ianangel]

geothermal. all you need is water "abundant" and the earths heat "abundant"

[DocGadget]

Either fusion power or geothermal power because both seem to be more promising

[이형백]

The electricity that operates a small motor or lights up LED bulbs 40 at the same time is not ‘Free-Energy’, it’s purely ‘Vibrational Energy’ and very powerful.

진동발전, vibration generator
 
Perhaps it will be very useful to the renewable energy.

[obloquious]

I do think that the Solar Wind Energy Tower is a very interesting idea.  However in the video it was stated as using water vapor injected into the air, but it was also stated that it was in the desert.  Obviously under these circumstances placement would be crucial unless you wanted to be pumping water from however far away and up the tower.  It would need to be close to water in order for the energy required to bring the water to the top of the tower to not offset the limited amount of power that this may generate, though it's an interesting idea.  Another question is how much space would something like this take up?  It seems like it would have a large physical footprint.  As for the portable wind turbine...the energy required to get to somewhere windy could easily offset whatever small amount of power this may produce, how would this windmill even get airborne?  While I'm sure you could make the "mill" light enough to get airborne...what about the power cable/tether?  Just a few thoughts.

[Naiuhz]

Hydrogen fuel cells. I have heard that we have implemented them to buses but why not more? I read a bit of the wiki article on it and I think that there isn't enough research put into fuel cells to be more efficient and portable.
I think there are many possible applications fuel cells can be used for such as powering our everyday devices (computers and smartphones) to important objects (planes and building).

I'm just curious, how many of you guys heard about fuel cells and what they are?

[philipperacicot]

Hydroelectric :) I live in quebec (canada) and we have Alot oh hydroelectric ... we have a firm of engeneers who helped build the largest hydroelectric centre whith our knowedges :D

[ijmert]

Isn't the efficiency of that part of the windmill a direct consequence of the length of the blades, structure of the windmill and some kind of leverage principle? Seems to me like having the drone fly around in the same pattern doesnt make a whole lot of sense, could be totally wrong though.