Network wind turbines can provide power the entire planet
The experts concluded that the global network of wind turbines in a position to meet many times and today, and future needs of mankind in electricity.
Thus, with appropriate facilities in the U.S. can produce it in volume, 16 times the current needs of the country, writes the German economic newspaper Handelsblatt (translation published by RBC daily). Well, theoretically most powerful potential of wind energy available to Russia.
Thus, the global network of wind power plants can make our planet to forget about the lack of electricity. Corresponding calculations published in the journal PNAS specialized group of scientists led by Michael Makelroem from Harvard University in Cambridge (USA). The study indicated that the network capacity of 2.5 MW wind turbines, even when the average workload of 20%, can develop, for example, in the United States the amount of electricity that will be 16 times the current query superpower.
For their calculations, scientists, dividing the globe into segments of approximately 3300 sq. km with an air bag thickness of 100 m each, created a model of the global wind system. Thus they have excluded all areas in the vicinity of densely populated areas, and covered mostly by forests or snow. In the coastal regions were included in the model area to a distance of 50 nautical miles, but only in cases where the depth does not exceed 200 m.
Model calculations using modern meteorological data showed that the potential of wind energy far exceeds the world level of electricity demand. So, theoretically windmills can produce per year to 1.3 million terawatt-hours (TW h) of electricity. For comparison: according to the International Energy Agency, global electricity consumption in 2006 was 15 666 TW h, which represents merely 1.2% of the estimated capacity.
U.S. study shows that the highest wind potential has Russia (140 thousand TW h). Well figure for Germany, for example, is equal to 4100 TW h
In its report, the authors draw attention to the fact that their theoretical calculations show that the needs of humanity in electricity can be met even at the expense of only one type of renewable energy. The problem of the creation of parks modeled windmills scientists see in them a considerable distance from densely populated areas, which implies high demands on the future energy network.
In addition, against the establishment of offshore wind turbines there are objections and ecological, and aesthetic plan. However, as they say American scientists, summing up his research, although its implementation in full and is a utopia, but the importance of wind as an energy source, it shows the full.