This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Posting them around rich people's private airfields would improve their footprint even further.
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
Maybe it means the kinetic energy of the wind, which I believe scales against its velocity-squared?
I'm thinking it's about consistency. 10kts 10% of the time vs average 150kts 100% of the time (the math is a little off but we're in hypothetical estimates already)
they gonna use magsafe connectors for wireless transmission, duh.
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.
is it 131ft long? 🤔
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.
If you’re adding two strand #2 AWG wire it’s about a half pound per foot so another 2500lbs which means the floating windmill has to support 7200 lbs in addition to the weight of itself.
From the article the turbine unit weighs 2204lbs so that's ~9400 lbs total. Omni calculator says you need 348,436 standard 11" party balloons or 3,979,252 litres of helium to get off the ground and 423,779 party balloons to reach 1.5km altitude.
It can’t weigh 2,204lbs if it floats it should weigh approximately -7,200lbs if it’s going to carry the cable and rope.
I'm assuming that's the weight of the turbine without helium in the balloon.
So it would be even lighter if you filled it with hydrogen?
Could you not add wings for additional lift?
at least 2 breeding heifers
African or European heifers?
How many big macs are thos?
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.
Still better than coal
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.
Through a HV cable run to the ground, along with the cable to anchor it.
I read an article about it a while ago, and that said it'd be tethered to the ground, and power would be transfered through the tether.
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
We're surrounded by live wire all the time. They're insulated, it's fine.
Oh. That makes it better.
Cool. How do they perform maintenance?
If it's tethered, the tether can winch it down to ladder truck range.
That or helicopter.
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.
Unfortunately, I could not find a link to the manual.
