The S1500 floating turbine’s operating altitude is 4,921 feet above ground level, where wind speed moves about three times faster than at the surface. The advantage of this altitude (also referred to as vertical slice) can result in a power output up to 27 times higher than a conventional ground-based wind turbine of similar capacity.
The capacity to generate one megawatt of electrical power (MW) with the S1500 system is comparable in size to what small wind power turbines normally generate (a conventional 328-foot-tall wind turbine), while the footprint of the S1500 system is significantly smaller. This amazing power density shows the efficiency benefits of being able to access high altitude wind power resources by new and innovative airborne platforms.
How come the 131 foot altitude in the headline is never mentioned in the article? These turbine operates at 4,921 feet, a number that makes a lot more sense when you convert it to metric, 1.5 km. The article is littered with these odd imperial measurements that should have just been left as nice round metric numbers, or least re-rounded after conversion. 130 feet would have read better, but the original number was 40 m.
Probably because the article was AI generated, if I had to guess.
is it 131ft long? 🤔
It’s not that hard to comprehend both measurement systems. Both are valid and it’s up to the author to choose how they want to express their figures. You can send them a complaint if you want, but complaining about their measurements here isn’t going to change anything.
- Operational altitude: 4,921 feet
So precise - Weight: Under 2,204 pounds
Um… so 2,203 pounds?
Altitude: 1500 meters
Weight: Under 1000kg
Makes so much more sense that it was originally in metric but looks weird translated to imperial.
They should’ve went with football fields instead, and weight in washing machines
Or when you need really impressive numbers for weight: oak leaves.
Maple leaves in Canada. Ha ha just kidding because they use metric like the rest of the civilised world.
It’s because the precision is overstated in the conversion to imperial. If they’re going to convert units they could at least give the correct significant digits. It should have read (if one insists on not just leaving it in metric):
- Operational altitude: nearly 1 mile (1.5km)
- Weight: Under 1 ton (imperial or metric. Take your pick, it hardly matter.)
- Operational altitude: 4,921 feet
This is an extremely promising innovation, and company plans on bigger designs already. But the total cost has to include an automated roof opening shelter for storms, that can open and close in medium winds before the high winds come. This makes the ground footprint higher than traditional turbines, even if agriculture can be done when there is no storm and roof is open. Perhaps 4 thethering strong cables could permit it to survive a cat 1 hurricane when hugging ground without a roof, but it is more weight to lift normally.
I’d love to see the weight of a five thousand foot cable.
2"Ø UHMWPE rope has a breaking strength of ~375000lbs weighs 94lbs per 100’ so about 4700lbs for 5000’
That said I have know idea if 2"Ø is the correct diameter rope to anchor one of these balloons.
edit: I was originally planning on adding in the weight of a high voltage transmission cable, but I’m on my phone and feeling lazy, maybe some one else will feel more inspired than I.
at least 2 breeding heifers
African or European heifers?
I don’t know ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
How many big macs are thos?
Posting them around rich people’s private airfields would improve their footprint even further.
These are a massive liability every storm. You have to winch them down and get them into a blisteringly massive hangar that can hold them. Then get them set back up after. Every. Single. Storm.
Furthermore, you don’t save on land use, as you need the massive, expensive hangar for each right at their base.
Ground-based wind-turbines just feather their blades and lock their gearbox. Very simple.
These are a massive liability every storm. You have to winch them down and get them into a blisteringly massive hangar that can hold them. Then get them set back up after. Every. Single. Storm.
- That’s solar
- Not every storm has hail, but every storm has high winds
- The potential risk here is an untethered 1 ton floating turbine crashing down somewhere
It’d be interesting to see the cost efficiency of that versus traditional wind turbines over the expected lifespan of both.
Yes it’s odd to see an article about electricity generation technology that doesn’t even have a speculative ‘levelised cost of energy’ as they call it. That is lifecycle expected average $/MWh.
I guess its a very early prototype. and maybe China doesn’t care to much about LCOE.
The wind at 32,000 ft is 200 times stronger than the wind at the surface?
Ummm… 10 knots * 200 = 2000 knots. I don’t think so lol.
A lot of strange numbers in this article that bring its accuracy into question.
No mention of the weight of a 1 and 1/2 km wire that is also suitable to anchor this thing in place. Or are they going to float batteries and bring them down to discharge?
I can’t be arsed to dig up the equation, but it may mean that the wind has 200 times more usable energy, which I think is a cube function of its speed. Wouldn’t be 2000 knots in that case
Ummm… 10 knots * 200 = 2000 knots. I don’t think so lol.
First of all, kinetic energy scales with the square of an objects velocity.
Second, since we’re talking about a continuous stream of fluid instead of a single object, increasing the air speed not only increases the enegy per unit mass of air, but also the number of units of air per second that pass through the turbine. Which means that the amount of energy extracted scales by the cube of the wind speed.
https://kpenergy.in/blog/calculating-power-output-of-wind-turbines
So, more like going from 10 knots to 60.
Didn’t think about the possibility of a kinetic energy unit, thanks for the insight
they gonna use magsafe connectors for wireless transmission, duh.
You’re starting to sound like a chatbot now, MagSafe connectors aren’t wireless. That’s the point!
(I know you’re probably not a chatbot)
what’s the magnet phone charger with no metal contacts called then?
that’s what i meant…
em dash em dash
Qi? Maybe Apple reused the term for the phone charger too, but it was originally for the MacBook pros, then later MacBook airs, and the whole line, besides an annoying usb c only model or two.
That’s annoying as hell if they did that.
I am guessing that the 131 feet come from the size of the turbine (60m x 40m x 40m)… The article is extremely poorly written
Lot’s of birds will be shredded
Have data to prove that? Because existing wind turbines hardly kill any birds. That’s oil lobby shit leaking through.
You know, I was skeptical that birds even got up that high.
Turns out this thing is actually far too low.
Incidentally, also why the other wind turbine bird death stories are largely horseshit.
Those studies gave a wide range for the number of birds that die in wind turbine collisions each year: from 140,000 up to 679,000. The numbers are likely to be higher today, because many more wind farms have been built in the past decade.
Those numbers are not insignificant, but they represent a tiny fraction of the birds killed annually in other ways, like flying into buildings or caught by prowling house cats, which past studies have estimated kill up to 988 million and 4 billion birds each year, respectively. Other studies have shown that many more birds—between 12 and 64 million each year—are killed in the U.S. by power lines, which connect wind and other types of energy facilities to people who use the electricity.
doesn’t this use elevations compared to sea level? while the elevation of this turbine is compared to local ground level
Does it have batteries on board? How does it connect the power to the grid? O_o
If only there was a giant cable it was tethered to that could also carry electricity.
USB-C
It’s obviously attached with wires. It can’t just float around and generate energy.
You say obviously but I don’t see how tethering a loose object with 5000ft of live wire is “obviously” safe
Cool. How do they perform maintenance?
If it’s tethered, the tether can winch it down to ladder truck range.
That or helicopter.
I bet if these get used that soon after there will be new extreme maintenance videos that make those cell towers look like nothing. Probably some guy hanging from a powered cable climbing device, showing the things on the ground getting smaller and smaller, occasionally taking a puff from an asthma inhaler because they were told an oxygen tank would cause weight issues (it’s actually about financial issues), until enough people die that they realize it’s cheaper to pay for oxygen than training new workers.
That’d be my guess as well. How big must that winch be to wind in 4000 feet, though?
Helicopter would be far too dangerous, I reckon.
