Among novel technologies for producing electricity from renewable sources, wind energy converter has been achieved a great success under the name of airborne wind energy system (AWESs).
That’s because as we go higher, ground friction diminishes, giving way to increasingly stronger winds; at extreme elevations, ranging between 20,000 and 50,000 feet depending on location, enter what’s called the jet stream, a swirling mass of air with winds upward of 100 miles per hour. As wind speeds double, the potential supply of energy grows eight-fold, so these air currents along the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere can be thought of as a kind of vast treasure trove of renewable power. Several prototypes have been developed all over the world for the experiment.
MIT
In the last decades, there has been a fast growth and spread of the renewable energy plant.Among them, wind generators are the most popular renewable energy harvesters with their 539 GW of cumulative installed power at the end of 2017.AWind capacity, i.e. total installed power, is keeping a positive trend with an increment of 52.6 GW at the end of 2017.
But Turbine blades strike and kill flying animals each year & many people who live near wind farms complain about the whooshing noise made by the rapidly whirling blades.Scientists would like to take the earthbound wind turbines and fly them far above the ground. They could be held in place by kites or helium-filled blimps and connected to the ground by long tethers. High above — and possibly out of the flight paths of some birds and bats — they would be largely out of sight and too high for their noise to bother anyone.
nationalgeographic
Airborne wind turbines might have other advantages, too. They could be made using lighter, less expensive materials than ground-based turbines.Finally, the entire power system would need to be designed so that computers could automatically adjust the altitude at which the turbines fly to catch the strongest winds & need to come back to Earth during bad weather or for maintenance.r.Google is developing machines which will be tethered 300 meters in the air.This could be a solution to the energy problem.