this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds (interestingengineering.com)
submitted 2 months ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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"High-altitude winds between 1,640 and 3,281 feet (500 and 10,000 meters) above the ground are stronger and steadier than surface winds. These winds are abundant, widely available, and carbon-free.

"The physics of wind power makes this resource extremely valuable. “When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold, triple the speed, and you have 27 times the energy,” explained Gong Zeqi "

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[–] AceBonobo@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (13 children)

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.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The article says:

The S1500 features a main airfoil and an annular wing that together form a giant duct. Inside this duct are 12 turbine-generator sets, each rated at 100 kW.

That suggests to me (admittedly a layman) that each blimp is more like 1.2MW?

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

The title itself already says it's 1MW.

[–] AceBonobo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sorry about that, I got all excited at just a tenth of what they are trying to achieve. Oops

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

It's all good mate, we've all got over excited at times.

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