It's the wee hours of the morning, and I'm too tired to avail the effort right now to do the research... but I think it was Popular Science in one of their magazines around 1980 ran an article detailing how scientist toyed with the idea of having a sort of netting hung between poles. water was pumped on it.. and as the droplets dripped on it, the water droplets picked up static from being blown by the breeze, and this static charged water droplets was then used to produce electricty. So in short... others have at least considered this. Probably wouldn't work in subzero temps... haha

Some where laying around here, I also have a book, where the author shows how to build static electricity motors up to 1/4 hp in size that runs directly off of atmospheric static. His motors do not contain windings, but contains plates that repell each other by their electrostatic charges. He just used a long wire strung out like an antenna. Just naturally charged atmospheric air can produce quite abit of power..... It doesn't require much of a wind.... just a good breeze. There's what's known as ion storms which usually just proceeding rains, the air can be increadably charged when this happens. This is more noticiable in dryer climates then in high humidity climates. But often I have seen observed this effect in high humidity as well.

The problem with transfering static electricity down long transmission lines, is that it's just as eaisly lost and re-assorbed right back into the atmosphere !

As far as winding wind generators for higher voltages, just by reducing the diamenter of your wire in the windings, you can eaisly wire wind generators to produce up into the thousands of volts. Usually even if you wind them to produce even 200 to 400 volts allows for increadably long transmission lines. If you go to too high of a voltage, then your wire will become expensive because it would require extra high dilect insulated wire such as sparkplug wire.

With voltages in the 400 volt range which most lower cost wire can handle still will allow you to run reasonable power upto a mile or so with very low losses.

I myself find atmospheric static fun to consider.... because even distant lightning will produce huge surge voltages in a large longwire antenna, due to what's known as "electromagnetic induction" which is magnetic fields that the lightning creates. Then of course heavy ionic winds can cause your wire antenna to produce increadable arcs. There is potential power there. If you had two hill tops or high towers, and would string about an 1/8 mile of wire between them (you'd have to use steel such as gavanized electric fence wire) for it to be strong enough. Make sure it was broad sided as much as possible to your prevailing winds, and extablish a really good ground rod system. And don't hang around it during lightning storms !

Just my two 2 1/2 cents worth of thought at 4:00am   : )