Technology

1,640 and 3,281 feet (500 and 10,000 meters)

I feel like this needs a second look.

Ha! Watch us burn some liquid dinosaurs!

- USA

I cant wait for the conspiracy theories about this

Finally the stupid floating jet engine looking turbines from Big Hero 6, except IRL they actually look good.

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Incredible progress on a concept that has been seeking investment for last 15 years. It doesn't just provide 1.2mw, it also operates at a higher capacity factor than capturing winds closer to ground. I'm sure it can scale even higher.

This is useful for clean energy shipping. Design supports an unthethered airship that produces H2 and transports it at the same time. I believe the design would support forward momentum directly upwind, but some tacking angle would be supported.

This is not just a breakthrough in wind energy generation, it is a breakthrough in airship capability.

Say what you will at least China seems produce some much needed tech in exchange for selling their people to capitalism, the latter which almost all countries do but in exchange for funnelling the 99.99 % of the revenue to billionaires and/or war (pulled the stats out of my hass).

This looks like a good way to bring power to a remote area, and China has lots of those.

Edit: I was trying to get more information from other articles and got the S1000 (100kW) mixed up with the S1500 (1000kW)

~~They're trying to get it to100kW. That's like a pretty big generator but not a huge one. So this isn't a replacement for wind farms just yet. The picture is from a year ago~~. No mention of costs.

Would it be possible to use heat to get it to float, instead of helium? Heat it up with electricity.

Am I crazy or didn’t we see these in Big Hero 6?

It's a novel approach, but the Chinese aren't the only ones trying to harvest energy from high winds: https://skysails-power.com/how-power-kites-work/

I'd be more interested about the cable that is going to bring all that power to the ground level. With traditional tech that would weigh a shit-ton. Light weight generator would be easy peasy compared to that.

Neat.

Any real reason you can't fill them with hydrogen? A fire can't start inside the bubble, because there's no oxygen. If a fire starts on the outer surface, then it doesn't really matter if it's hydrogen or not. It's also cheaper and slightly better at lifting. There is some more danger with handling it on the ground, but you should be able to mitigate that with safety procedures.

I wonder what happens to the world when we take this energy from the wind? Like what are the effects of harvesting wind power?

When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold,

Edit: I'm wrong, see edit below!

Huh? Kinetic energy increase is square, not cubic.

KE=1/2 m v^2

So every doubling of speed should increase the available kinetic energy by 4 times, not 8. 3 times the speed is 9 times the energy. Granted there are probably some efficiency gains in excess of this at the low end, ~~but as a rule that's just wrong.~~

Edit: Cool, I learned something new! I neglected to consider it in terms of power, just thought about kinetic energy.

So something like: KE = 1/2 m v^2

= 1/2 ( rho V) v^2

= 1/2 ( rho A d) (d/t)^2

= 1/2 rho A d^3 1/t^2

Where P = KE/t

Thus:

P = 1/2 rho A (d/t)^3

= 1/2 rho A v^3

Lots of other aspects I'm sure I have wrong, but I see how the cubic came to be.

This thread is telling me one thing and one thing only: I need to see Big Hero 6...

Saw this in Big Hero Six. It's a crazy concept. Hopefully it works.