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Date
I thought I posted this earlier in the month. I guess I didn't. Must have been a "senior moment."
Google X is the research and development arm of Google. Google has a value of almost $400 billion. When you are Google, you have a serious critical mass of resources to be able to research and invest in new technologies. Google is one of those companies that we considered “at the top of their game” in our 2010 book (Green Project Management), because of their commitment to creating a sustainability friendly company, socially, economically, and environmentally.
My reading habits are rather eclectic, from the Wall Street Journal to various fly fishing magazines, to Real Simple, to Outside as examples. In the recent Outside Magazine, there is a story about a new project coming out of Google X. While it is an alternative energy project, it is different from previous projects. While it is a wind power project, it is unusual. Also, like some other revolutionary products (projects), Post-its® for example, this new project from Google X started out as something else.
According to the article by Megan Michelson, The Sky’s the Limit, about 10 years ago; kiteboard pioneer Don Montague “hatched a plan to become the fastest person to circumnavigate the globe.” He proposed using a 65’ catamaran with a parafoil cruising at 250 feet above the earth. He happened to preview the idea with Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders of Google and friends of his. He was showing them how much power was available at higher altitudes and explained that he could actually generate electricity. At that point, Sergey and Larry said “Don, don’t waste your time sailing around the world. Let’s save the world.”
Initially, Google invested about $15 million into the project, but last May the project was sold to Google X. Using the enormous resources of Google X, the project continues with aspirations of building a 600-kilowatt wind turbine capable of powering 300 homes, the equivalent of modern land-based wind turbines. One of the reasons that this type of wind generating technology could be so successful is that it streamlines the generating equipment. Rather than the large, cumbersome land-based turbines, the equipment required is much more elegant. The article has a quote from a professor at Delft University in the Netherlands, a university on the forefront of sustainability. Professor Roland Schmehl is quoted as saying “While classic turbines are facing physical and economic limits, airborne wind energy shows interesting potential.”
From Google’s website the challenge we are facing with wind generation is “Wind turbine architecture is at a plateau. Conventional wind power systems are reaching the limits of their technology. To generate more wind power, turbine structures have become taller and heavier. On average, onshore turbines require 100 tons of steel, fiberglass, concrete, and other materials to produce a single megawatt of capacity to power 500 U.S. homes. Large structures like this are expensive and complex to construct and therefore can only be installed economically where the winds routinely travel between 20-28 kilometers per hour. Less than 15% of all land around the world meets this criterion.”
The good news is that a company like Google and their R&D facility is attacking this project. Ideally, a significant amount of our energy needs could be generated using this new technology. According to Don Montague, “Is it a race? It doesn’t really matter who’s first. If anyone is in production in 5 years, we all win.”
Posted
by
Dave Shirley
on: August 25, 2014 03:57 PM |
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