EB Insights Google Kicks up Wind Storm

Google is kicking up quite a wind storm. It is doing it along with some co-investors that would eventually ante up a total of $5 billion to build a 350 mile under-water transmission off the Atlantic coastline to harness the wind there.

Boosting the country's off-shore wind potential is the central issue here. To that end, this project, which would take place over at least 10 years, would have the potential of delivering 6,000 megawatts of wind energy to residents along the East coast while possibly displacing some of the region's fossil-fuel usage. That would increase the venture's attraction despite being more expensive than on-land generation.

"This new American super grid off the Mid-Atlantic coast will unlock an important untapped resource, creating the foundation for a new industry and jobs for thousands of American workers," says Bob Mitchell, chief executive of Trans-Elect that proposed the idea and which has recruited Google, Good Energies and Japanese trading firm Marubeni as investors. Construction could begin in 2013 and be completed by 2021.

One has to also ask why an internet search engine company would be interested in building a complex under-water transmission system. For starters, this is not Google's first foray into the energy sphere or even the wind power component of it. It's already invested nearly $39 million in two wind farms that will generate 170 megawatts of electricity in North Dakota that are owned by NextEra Energy.

Google is a ravenous consumer of electricity and it must find a way to become more efficient and cleaner. By placing its bets on green energy, it is attempting to understand how it works and to help create economies of scale so that it can be cost-effectively generated. It operates hundreds of thousands of servers that use tons of electricity, which are often derived from coal. As the global leader in internet technologies, the web-based giant says that it can do better.

Solar Wind Power: Generating Power In The Future

As the world discovers new ways to meet its growing energy needs, energy generated from Sun, which is better known as solar power and energy generated from wind called the wind power are being considered as a means of generating power. Though these two sources of energy have attracted the scientists for a very long time, they are not able to decide, which of the two a better source to generate power is. Now scientists are looking at a third option as well. Scientists at Washington State University have now combined solar power and wind power to produce enormous energy called the solar wind power, which will satisfy all energy requirements of human kind.

Advantages of Solar wind power.

* The scientists say that whereas the entire energy generated from solar wind will not be able to reach the planet for consumption as a lot of energy generated by the satellite has to be pumped back to copper wire to create the electron-harvesting magnetic field, yet the amount that reaches earth is more than sufficient to fulfill the needs of entire human, irrespective of the environment condition.
* Moreover, the team of scientists at Washington State University hopes that it can generate 1 billion billion gigawatts of power by using a massive 8,400-kilometer-wide solar sail to harvest the power in solar wind.
* According to the team at Washington State University, a1000 homes can be lit by generating enough power for them with the help of 300 meters (984 feet) of copper wire, which is attached to a two-meter-wide (6.6-foot-wide) receiver and a 10-meter (32.8-foot) sail.
* One billion billion gigawatts of power could also be generated by a satellite having 1,000-meter (3,280-foot) cable with a sail 8,400 kilometers (5,220 miles) across, which are placed at roughly the same orbit.
* The scientists feel that if some of the practical issued are solved, Solar wind power will generate the amount of power that no one including the scientists working to find new means of generating power ever expected.

How does the Solar wind power technology work?
The satellite launched to tap solar wind power, instead of working like a wind mill, where a blade attached to the turbine is physically rotated to generate electricity, would use charged copper wire for capturing electrons zooming away from the sun at several hundred kilometers per second.

Disadvantages of Solar wind power
But despite the fact that Solar wind power will solve almost all the problems that we were to face in future due to power generating resources getting exhausted, it has some disadvantages as well. These may include:

* Brooks Harrop, the co-author of the journal paper says that while scientists are keen to tap solar wind to generate power, they also need to keep provisions for engineering difficulties and these engineering difficulties will have to be solved before satellites to tap solar wind power are deployed.
* The distance between the satellite and earth will be so huge that as the laser beam travels millions of miles, it makes even the tightest laser beam spread out and lose most of the energy. To solve this problem, a more focused laser is needed.
* But even if these laser beams reach our satellites, it is very doubtful that our satellites in their present form will be able to tap them. As Greg Howes, a scientist at the University of Iowa puts it, “The energy is there but to tap that energy from solar wind, we require big satellites. There may be practical constraints in this.”