The higher the tower, the more places you can put it I think, but also the more expensive the tower is going to be.
Let’s try to explore that. I’d probably first try to find existing regulation.
In most populated areas of the U.S., any structure above 35 feet tall often requires some sort of permit, according to development codes.
The same codes require a fall-zone with a radius at least equal to the tower height - maybe a little more, anyway, they want to make sure if a tower falls, it remains within your property borders, doesn’t hit your house, etc. For those reasons and others, you need a big, open space.
Right, it’s fun to imagine tall towers in the middle of cities, but maybe that’s for a bit later.
I think in this topic I’d like to explore two things, what variables are important for the site, things like the various relevant regulations, state of the infrastructure, accessibility, distance to technical support, and so on.
And what are some things an AWES or electricity company can vary to make more sites available to it, like tower height and tether length perhaps.
I’ll do this from the perspective of an electricity company wanting to site their new wind turbines that have an LCOE an order of magnitude lower than the competition and can be placed even where winds are not optimal for conventional wind, somewhere in the UK, Germany, Canada, and the US.
One option is to deploy somewhere that has few or no regulations, then, assuming you have anything worth further pursuit, work on fitting it into regulated areas, getting the regulations changed to suit your approach, etc. Around here, people can go out into remote areas to test whatever they want to play with, and nobody knows or cares what you were doing. People fly airplanes without even a pilots license. With hundreds of miles of open space, who cares? What I’ve seen over so many years is the citing of regulations as an excuse to sit and do nothing, or spend inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to deal with regulations, ahead of any real need to overcome such regulations. This is similar to EVTOL vehicles: The companies involved have an endless, plausible “reason” why they never have anything in regular operation, but personally anyway, I’m not buying it. The endless talk of “getting 4 people to the airport” is not going to cut it. The business plan to first deploy such new and unproven aircraft “in urban environments” seems reckless and unwise, but DOES make a great excuse to keep raising money from investors while never having anything flying on a regular basis.