{"id":36526,"date":"2014-05-08T14:00:17","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T19:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=36526"},"modified":"2014-05-07T16:13:46","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T21:13:46","slug":"its-a-bird-its-a-plane-no-its-an-airborne-wind-turbine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/05\/08\/its-a-bird-its-a-plane-no-its-an-airborne-wind-turbine\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s a Bird! It&#8217;s a Plane! No, It&#8217;s an Airborne Wind Turbine!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kldA4nWANA8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Imagine a blimp, like the one you might have looked up at in awe when you were a kid. Now, imagine that blimp cut into a cylindrical shape, with a wind turbine in the middle.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s called the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.altaerosenergies.com\/bat.html\">Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT)<\/a>, and it&#8217;s\u00a0what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.altaerosenergies.com\/index.html\">Altaeros Energies<\/a> imagines will be the future of wind energy. By wrapping a helium-filled shell around a conventional three-blade turbine and letting the device into the air with strong tethers, the company says in a press video that the turbine can reach altitudes up to two thousand feet above the ground.<\/p>\n<p>CEO Ben Glass\u00a0says in the video this means the turbine can capture winds that \u201care on average five to eight times as powerful as what you get near the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to producing higher yields of energy, these turbines have environmental advantages over conventional land turbines. Altaeros&#8217; turbine is mobile, limiting its footprint on the landscape. Also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/12\/17\/science\/earth\/a-struggle-to-balance-wind-energy-with-wildlife.html\">unlike land turbines<\/a>, the airborne turbine&#8217;s design limits its threat to birds.<\/p>\n<p>Altaeros is a startup formed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010, and they&#8217;re working with the Alaska Energy Authority to launch the turbine in Alaska<a href=\"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2014\/03\/21\/startup-altaeros-to-launch-worlds-highest-wind-project-in-alaska\/\"> for 18 months, at a cost of 1.3 million<\/a> dollars. Altaeros <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Airborne_wind_turbine\">isn\u2019t the only company<\/a> looking to develop and introduce <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/makani\/\">a version<\/a> of an airborne wind turbine,\u00a0but they will be first, with the world\u2019s first commercial airborne wind turbine.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In a state that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.awea.org\/Resources\/state.aspx?ItemNumber=5183\">leads the nation in wind energy production<\/a>, innovative technology such as airborne turbines is starting to get the attention of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.depts.ttu.edu\/nwi\/\">Texas Tech University\u2019s Wind Energy Institute<\/a>. The college plans to keep up with such technology by <a href=\"http:\/\/today.ttu.edu\/2014\/05\/dnv-gltexas-tech-collaboration-to-further-wind-energy-education\/\">vamping up their education and certification program<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.depts.ttu.edu\/nwi\/about\/Personnel\/staff\/andy-swift.php\">Andy Swift<\/a>, Associate Director of the National Wind Institute at Texas Tech University, says companies such as Altaeros have a long way to go before they can commercially expand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know where it\u2019s going to go,\u201d Swift says. \u201cBut this is how things begin. You start small, and maybe something big will come of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If the airborne turbine does expand on a commercial scale, the startup plans to bring affordable wind energy to the \u201cfurthest points on Earth,\u201d powering remote communities, off-grid industries and disaster areas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine a blimp, like the one you might have looked up at in awe when you were a kid. Now, imagine that blimp cut into a cylindrical shape, with a wind turbine in the middle. It\u2019s called the Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT), and it&#8217;s\u00a0what Altaeros Energies imagines will be the future of wind energy. By [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[235,24],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36526"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36564,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36526\/revisions\/36564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}