Next up in Solar Energy: High Flying Balloons

Remember when you were a kid and you were on your way home from a friend’s birthday party with that floating balloon around your wrist? Your mom tied it there so it wouldn’t float away. Yet you couldn’t help yourself, you untied the balloon and let it “slip” up, up and away and you watched as it went into the sky, up and above the clouds.

Now imagine that same balloon floating up above the clouds, but the string is still tied to the ground. Oh, and it produces solar energy.

That’s exactly what researchers at NextPV–a multinational lab jointly operated by France’s CNRS and the University of Tokyo–are brainstorming: solar panels attached to high-altitude balloons. When the group met to discuss financing and development of the project last November, they gave the balloon project the go-ahead and are now working on a prototype.

Supposedly, clouds can disrupt solar energy production with panels on the ground, even when the weather calls for only partly cloudy skies, so the researchers developed the idea to float balloons 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in the sky—where you won’t find any clouds at all.

The balloons are docked to the ground with very long cables, and some energy scientists are convinced that these floating panels will be much more effective than their ground counterparts.

Financing this type of energy project is half the battle. Solar power is already below $1 per watt, and is expected to go down even more. Energy company SunEdison believes costs could drop to 40 cents per watt by the end of this year.

The second, perhaps tougher, battle is the practicality of the project. Imagine that on your next flight, the pilot is weaving and bobbing through these giant balloons. That’s a scary scene. What happens if you’re relaxing on a Saturday afternoon, reading “The Hunger Games,” and a giant balloon comes through your roof? Not good. The researchers will also have to deal with how to keep the balloons afloat at 20 kilometers in the sky, where air pressure is much higher.

Between financing the project and determining whether it’s even feasible to create, the researchers have their hands full. As NextPV moves forward with this project, we’ll wait and see if they’re able to sidestep the obstacles they will surely face.

One thing is for sure: financing and producing that little hydrogen balloon that was tied to your wrist many years ago was a much simpler task. 

Danny Coleman is a renewable energy writer for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. Information provided by Elements Capital Group. Follow on Twitter.