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A U.S. company might have found a way to optimize wind energy harvests. Officials with Sky WindPower Corporation believe that by elevating their wind generators to high altitudes, they can harvest the energy of the much stronger high-altitude winds.

This story from CNN.com says the picture on the right is an artist’s rendering of what such a generator would look like:

And the madcap gadget that might just provide a solution? A helicopter that doubles as a wind turbine. Or, to give it its technical name, a FEG (Flying Electric Generator).

The brainchild of Australian engineering specialist Professor Bryan Roberts, the FEG is being developed by San Diego-based company SkyWindPower.

The guiding principle of the FEG is that wind speed and constancy are far greater at high altitude than they are on the ground, especially in the two major jet streams – the Sub-Tropical Jet and the Polar Front Jet – that exist in each hemisphere (at around 30 degrees and 60 degrees latitude respectively).

A turbine at great height, so the theory goes, can generate far more power than a similar turbine at or near ground level. It has been estimated that capturing just one percent of the available energy of these high altitude winds would meet the electricity needs of the entire planet.

Company officials believe the high-flying generators could produce 20 megawatts of electricity… compared to just five megawatts for the average for more land-based wind turbines now.

Oil-giant Texas and wind-energy giant Denmark are swapping information are their respective strong suits in energy.

This article in the Houston Chronicle says the Danes have become word leaders when it comes to wind energy generation, getting 25 percent of their electricity needs from the wind. Likewise, Texas has become a new leader in wind energy production, passing California as the top wind energy state, generating about one-fourth of the all U.S. wind power:

“In so many ways, we are modeling our wind energy industry on Denmark’s wind energy industry,” said Michelle Warren, the deputy commissioner overseeing renewable energy at the Texas General Land Office in Austin.

Like Denmark, Texas also offers government incentives such as direct grants for wind developers. “We do follow the policy incentives in Denmark, where there’s a belief that the government does have to offer incentives to the wind-energy industry,” Warren said.

It only seems fitting that Texas is now following Denmark’s wind energy lead, as Denmark has been known as “Little Texas” because it is Europe’s third largest oil producer, behind Norway and Britain.

The Danish Energy Authority predicts that Denmark will have ample oil and gas reserves for years to come and will tap into hundreds of oil engineers from Texas to keep up with that industry’s demands.