The Energy Tube

The idea of an "energy tube" is uniquely Bill Gray. It originally goes back to the 1970's where he and Professor Corrin of CSU came up with the idea of a floating energy tube, 5 km high and 1 km above the surface floating in the sky and teathered to the ocean floor of the tropics around 4 degrees latitude where strong cyclones are infrequent. The tube would have an open flange on top to catch rain and be slanted in the vertical. oN the inner walls one would buiold power plants to capture hydroelectric power generated by precipitation from a perpetual cumulus cloud whose lw level roots would be dynamically and thermodynamically trapped within the tube. His calculations were that one energy tube would generate 10% of the US power consumption, if there was a way to efficiently transmit the power back to the CONUS. I helped him my running a numerical simulation of it, which to some extent proved his concept. At this talk, I will present his original idea and how it evolved over the last 40 years.