First wind farm powered by giant kites to be built in UK
London: Scientists are building the world’s first wind farm powered by giant kites in Britain that could generate enough electricity to run 5,500 homes. As many as twenty kites flying higher than Britain’s tallest building will work in pairs to generate electricity.
They will fly in loops at more than 160 kilometres per hour.
Their movement will pull on a tether wrapped around a rotating drum on the ground linked to a generator.
The kites take turns to fly out and back, ensuring that the power supply is constant. Scotland-based company Kite Power Systems (KPS) has successfully tested a 40 kilowatt version.
The company plans to build ten 500kW systems about 600 metres apart at a site by the year 2020.
“The kite farm would preferably be in Scotland and would generate enough power for 5,500 homes,” said David Ainsworth, KPS’s business development director. The kites are much cheaper than wind turbines as they use a lot less steel and are easier to transport and maintain, Ainsworth told ‘The Times’.
The visual impact would also be less intrusive because there would be no towers and the kites would fly above 300 metres, twice the height of the blades of a typical onshore wind turbine, he added. (PTI)
Wild boar charges Austrian kids
Vienna: A wild boar charged at children at a playground in Vienna, then hid in shrubbery next to an apartment house before being shot by police. Police spokesman Patrick Maierhofer says the children ran away and nobody was hurt, in the latest of occasional attacks involving wild pigs that live in close proximity with humans in the leafy outskirts of the Austrian capital.
Maierhofer was cited by state broadcaster ORF Monday as saying that police decided to kill the animal on Saturday after municipal veterinary authorities told them they had no sedation substances available. (AP)
Shark leaps into boat and lands on Australian fisherman
Canberra: A 73-year-old Australian fisherman said today that he caught a far bigger fish than he hoped for when a 2.7-meter great white shark leapt into his boat, knocking him off his feet.
Terry Selwood was left with a badly bruised and bleeding right arm where the airborne shark struck him with a pectoral fin as it landed on him on the deck of the 4.5-meter power boat Saturday off Evans Head, 725 kilometers north of Sydney.
Selwood sprung up on the gunnel at the bow of the boat to avoid the thrashing shark and steadied himself by clinging to the tubular metal frame of the sun shelter, known as a bimini. “I didn’t give it a chance to look me in the eyes. I wanted to get up and get on top of the gunnel because it was thrashing around madly,” Selwood told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“Flash Gordon wouldn’t have caught me,” he said, referring to the athletic science fiction comic book hero of the 1930s. Selwood used a hand-held radio to call the Evans Head coast guard and stayed on the gunnel until a rescue boat arrived.
Coast guard skipper Bill Bates said he misread the danger when Selwood reported his predicament. “He said, ‘I’m injured, I’ve broken my arm, I’ve got lacerations and there’s a shark in my boat,'” Bates said. “Often a fisherman will bring a small shark on board maybe 2 or 3 feet (up to 1 meter) and they’re still ferocious. That’s what I was expecting, but I was totally wrong,” he added. The coast guard crew rescued Selwood, but left the shark alone.
The shark was estimated to weigh 200 kilograms. “The shark was thrashing inside the boat, taking up the entire deck area there was no way you’d put a foot in there,” Bates said.
The coast guard took Selwood to paramedics at Evans Head, where his badly swollen arm was cleared of any fracture. The coast guard later towed Selwood’s boat with the shark into Evans Head just before nightfall.
“We think it was already dead at that stage, but no one was game to put their finger in to find out,” Bates said. Why the shark flung itself over the motor and into the anchored boat is a mystery. (AP)