‘It’s not science fiction’: The moonshot effort to supersize solar and wind

Soaring demand for electricity is leading some companies to not only think out of the box for a solution, but out of this world, too.

Researchers are looking to supersize the production of wind and solar power. Several startups and small companies have an eye on revolutionizing the sector, such as building the largest aircraft in the world to transport much larger wind turbines and constructing a solar array in space to beam electricity down to Earth.

The ideas seem like moonshots, but there’s a possibility of them both taking off off within the next five years.

Jumbo jet

One of the challenges for developers of wind farms is the logistics of moving the lengthy turbine blades to rural areas by truck or rail. For Colorado-based Radia, the solution is to develop a specialty jumbo aircraft with the ability to carry a single turbine blade that could be about 50 per cent longer than those currently used at wind farms.

For the last eight years, Radia has worked to design and develop the WindRunner aircraft, which would be about 40 per cent longer than a Boeing 747 jet, said founder Mark Lundstrom.

“In the aircraft, there’s no new technology. We’ve designed the aircraft around the things that are already flying,” he said, in an interview with CBC News in Houston during the CERAWeek energy conference last week.

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Radia is developing its massive WindRunner aircraft to transport large wind turbine blades

Besides the size of the aircraft, the planes also need the ability to land on gravel runways constructed in rural locations where the wind farms will be built.

Typically, turbine blades installed on land are about 70 metres in length, however those deployed offshore measure over 100 metres long. Radia’s aircraft would be able to transport the longer blades to new wind farms developed on land.

“With the bigger turbines, they operate at a much lower wind speed. And so that enables you to double or triple the acreage in the world where wind is economically viable,” said Lundstrom. 

“You’re going to double the capacity of that turbine, you’re going to reduce the cost of the electrons by about a third and you’re also going to increase the utilization of the turbine by about 20 per cent.”

Radia is considered a unicorn startup as it’s valued at more than $1 billion US, according to PitchBook. Employees and advisers include executives at Boeing, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and renewable energy companies. 

Radia has announced several partnerships with various aerospace companies to develop different aspects of the aircraft such as the fuselage and wing. Lundstrom hopes to begin the manufacturing phase later this year and said Radia has begun accepting orders for delivery of cargo.

North American electricity consumption is soaring, in part due to population growth, the electrification of industry and the rise of data centres.