Saul Griffith on kites as the future of renewable energy

http://www.ted.com In this brief talk, Saul Griffith unveils the invention his new company Makani Power has been working on: giant kite turbines that create surprising amounts of clean, renewable energy.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

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[mummyfunk]

kites rule

[sceptic33]

dude, it's WIND POWER... the wind lifts the kite up, the winch brings it down. it doesn't need much energy to bring it down if u change the angle of the kite to reduce the lift generated by the WIND..

[RicDoFOGO]

This is great!! If they manage to integrate this kind of wind energy with the kite sails maybe boats wouldn't have to use fossil fuels at all!

[3877michael]

@dawoderpfeffer More like the first oil wells. 1910-20? Till now. We will use more oil than has ever been pumped in 20 years. They recover oil from sand and shale. They pump hot water into old wells and so on. 7% yr X 10 years = 100% increase in consumption at present rates. In volume of oil, this is all the oil ever pumped out of the ground X 2. Say from day1 till 2011 we used 10B. barrels of oil. By 2021 it will be 21b barrels. By 2031 it will be 43B barrels. Oil price will reflect this.

[dawoderpfeffer]

@cyq88 What if it rains? Nothing really. Do you expect planes to fall off the sky when it rains?

[dawoderpfeffer]

@3877michael when have you sensed that the first car was made?

How is oil now recoverable?

[cyq88]

so what if it rain?

[ienviro]

@Antithropocentric I hear you,

Yet birds are used to avoiding one another and other birds all the time, so just color the cord bright orange and attach little cardboard birdies(images of Hawks) to strings ....I agree not applicable in all regions of the world....yet I can see this hugely practicle in the Hamiliya regions Norther Pakistan-India-Bhutan-Nepal and much they have the high and continious wind and seems much cheaper and ecoFriendly methods than Solar Paneling :) :)

[Antithropocentric]

Why do these gung-ho wind engineers only talk about the upsides of their physically intrusive devices? They come off like androids who want to Star Trek the entire planet and eliminate the remaining vestiges of natural scenery.

Wind power is anything but "clean" if one considers natural, unfettered, bird-safe environments to be worth saving from blight and noise. This kite concept seems to grab even more airspace than 400-foot tower mills. I can already see birds getting snagged on the lines.