Submitted 3 weeks ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/world-largest-floating-wind-turbine
"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 "
Ha! Watch us burn some liquid dinosaurs!
- USA
Fossil fuels are from shit the dinos ate, like plants and other dumb crap. The belief that coal-rollers are cool enough to burn liquid dinosaurs is easily the single biggest lie of the oil industry.
Closely followed by -gestures wildly-
Lol, got your new advert campaign… Gasoline is vegan
Oil is solar power with extra steps.
Just cut out the middle man
I mean some small part of it is dino. But yeah by biomass it’s mostly plant.
Isnt all feces by definition dumb because of lack of advanced functioning brain?
The whole term fossil fuel is wrong.
And Africa, and South America, and the middle east, and Europe. Don’t pretend the rest of the world isn’t still burning fossil fuels it’s not just the US
USA is pretty much the biggest country actively fighting against better methods in favor of fossil fuels, so I’d say it’s an accurate statement
I cant wait for the conspiracy theories about this
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.
Meanwhile in the US, rich assholes are firmly convinced coal and oil are the future.
God I hate this place.
It’s late stage capitalism.
These fools are just hoarding what they have and trying to continue the « golden age ».
China will be the next superpower for sure
To be fair, coal and oil are narratives are being pushed by foreign actors too on the US. China knows exactly how to win a race, and step 1 is to tie your opponents shoe laces.
An untethered AWE cannot produce any power
Contentious. Thethering increases power production by restricting the “sail movement power”. The blimp part is highly/perfectly aerodynamic, and the betz limit means that a turbine does not fully “act like a parachute”. Ground vehicles that proved faster than wind speed directly upwind could use similar principle to turn a propulsion prop, that increases forward/apparent wind speed generating more power.
This relates to same incredulity for faster than wind upwind ground experiment, and needs experimental proof. But principles of sailing are indeed magical, and simply generating enough power to move forward is extremely useful, even if tacking were needed.
Also, it looks cool as fuck!
…produces H2?
electrolysis of water (partially from starting water reservoir, and partially from air humidity = dehumidifier step), can displace water weight with increased H2 pressure in airship. Can put an infinite amount of these over ocean with no land lease costs, but moving giant ships solves the issue of thethering them.
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 revenue 99.9 % to billionaires and/or war (pulled the stats out of my hass).
Switching to renewables makes a lot of sense from an economic and ecologic point of view but also geostrategically. Unfortunately, Western governments have pretty much lost the ability to act on those considerations. This is due to then being beholden to a few billionaires who would rather see civilisation as we know it end than accept a few percentage points revenue drop for a couple of quarters.
It’s because the regulatory bodies are captured by the interests of the fossil fuel companies
They aren’t limited by democracy.
This is a factual statement. Whether people like how it sounds or not.
It is true, though lacking fail safes of a real democracy is a dangerous game to play in the long term, even if technically positive in the moment. As most autocratic leaders seek to gain continuous and more power. Or their predecessor does.
This looks like a good way to bring power to a remote area, and China has lots of those.
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.
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?
The title itself already says it’s 1MW.
Sorry about that, I got all excited at just a tenth of what they are trying to achieve. Oops
Would it be possible to use heat to get it to float, instead of helium? Heat it up with electricity.
Sure, that would be possible. The generators themselves will produce a fair amount of heat. It’s also going to have a fair amount of passive lift, as it’s essentially a kite. So simply being able to maintain a rigid shape and airfoil will do a lot to produce the desired lift.
I have to wonder though, how much the power transmission lines weigh, that seems like a serious limiting factor on maximum attainable altitude.
The transmission line question is interesting though, there’s a complex optimization calculation there. Traditionally with wind, larger turbines are more efficient. As you increase the turbine blade size, the area that the blades cover (and thus power generation potential) increases more than the mass of the blades do. So the result is (generally speaking) a larger wind turbine is more efficient than a smaller one. But now factor in the transmission line… The larger the turbine the more power it generates AND the thicker (and heavier) the transmission line has to be for its entire length. To complicate things more, higher altitudes mean stronger and more reliable wind. So now how do you optimize for turbine size/cable gauge, and cable length/altitude?
It seems tricky, but like perhaps there’s just a right answer, an optimal size.
Can they preference the generation to favor voltage over current? Current is what tends to need really thick cables.
it is 1.2mw = 12x100kw
Did they actually generate power during the teat flight?
Using hot air instead of helium would not work. The density of hot air is much higher than helium, so you would need a significantly larger airship to lift the same mass of payload (the useful bits). That and keeping the air hot would require constant energy input reducing the efficiency of the system dramatically. I’m pretty sure that system would be literally impossible to construct.
Hydrogen is simply the right lifting gas. Helium not abundant enough for sustainable scale. AFAIK, this model did use H2. Previous protototypes used helium.
[face Palm].
JFC people, take a grade 10 physics class.
How about you take a ninth-grade speech class first?
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.
Maybe there’s energy intensive processes that they could do up there instead. Something like Haber Bosch. Then bring the products down.
Microwave death ray to beam it down could be fun.
Local residents metallic objects would shoot sparks every now and then.
Maybe over estimate temperature deratings and maybe add a new wind speed thermal pulling capacity. But more likely forgo European and NA electrical standards entirely and submit questionables value for CE approval.
They should do a Tesla and transmit electricity wirelessly
I wonder what happens to the world when we take this energy from the wind? Like what are the effects of harvesting wind power?
I’m no scientist but I think it would take an absurd and unrealistic amount of these to have any sort of noticeable effect on average wind speeds.
Enough wind redirection could affect weather patterns. But we won’t run out of wind, spoiler but wind power is just indirect solar power.
So be fair everything but nuclear is just indirect solar power (and if you count other stars besides just Sol, even fission kinda is)
Typically wind is dissipated by friction losses with the surface I think (bleeding off speed and energy by making waves, waving trees, and just rubbing against the ground) and wind is generated by heat from the sun (warm air expanding pushing against cold air, creating pressure differentials across thousands of miles).
Because wind is quick to regenerate and this does nothing to stop that the result is probably a pretty small drop in average wind speeds around the new mill and no greater ramifications than slightly less pollen travel in the spring.
The windmills will steal all the spinning from hurricanes, a bust to home owners insurance
This could be devastating to kite sales.
While it is rather complex and hard to predict, the most likely global outcomes are fewer extreme weather events and extremely mild cooling. The hairy ball theorem tells us there’s already somewhere on the globe with no wind, so it’s not that big of a deal to convert some wind into electricity. This particular approach couldn’t convert “all” wind into electricity.
sciencenewstoday.org/spinning-skies-how-earths-ro… – We won’t run out of wind until after we start slowing down the rotation of the earth, and we watch that pretty closely to know when to add leap seconds, and I imagine it’s an just absolutely huge store of energy in the form of angular momentum (et. al.).
In theory nothing. Wind is just the flow of air from high pressure to low, which itself is caused by heating from sunlight. If uncollected, the kinetic energy of the wind would eventually be lost as heat to friction between air molecules.
It will impact weather patterns and severity. I’ve certainly not done the work on how much, nor do I really have a grasp on the scales involved, so that’s mostly a meaningless statement, but I can say with confidence the impact will be real. Just like dams affecting rivers, icecap mass affecting heat reflection, and solar panels increasing local temperatures.
Given that one of the impacts of global climate change has been increased weather severity and chaos, I am not afraid of positing that reducing the severity and chaos of the jet streams could be a good thing.
Similarly, there are some interesting projects going on surrounding the use of aerogel and other materials that could help focus sunlight at the top of the oceans, where evaporation can actually occur, that are focused on creating clean drinking water—and while I think this is a good end unto itself, a nice side benefit would be less solar energy reaching the ocean and raising the body temperature.
For once, it’s cool to hear about proposed industrial projects and their side effects and they’re maybe positive, instead of “well that sounds like it’s going to leech heavy metals into the surrounding community”
Of course, aerogel is horrible to work with and clogs if it doesn’t break, and nobody else has solved the problem of scaling up and dealing with the steam getting in the way. On the lightweight flying jet stream turbine front, well, I’ve been following development for 8 years and nobody has even solved the ‘limited supply of helium leaking away into space’ problem for starters. And it’s hard making an efficient generator so lightweight that it can fly. So we don’t have to worry about them potentially improving global weather severity just yet. Or potentially devastating our remaining populations of migratory birds!
Things get more violent. Wind tries to find the path of least resistance, though as a fluid, so it’s taking all paths in proportion to how much resistance it has (just like electricity). If you increase the absolute resistance in one area, it reduces the relative resistance everywhere else, so you end up with increased airflow everywhere else and a reduction where you added resistance. Which means more wind outside of the turbine’s path (because it’s going to equalize that pressure differential one way or another). More flow through the same volume means higher speeds and forces (think like turning up the pressure on a tap).
But wind turbines don’t have a constant effect on wind resistance; it depends on how fast it’s spinning or how fast the wind is moving. When the wind slows, the resistance goes down, and when resistance goes down, wind speed increases. So you end up with an oscillating effect where the wind goes through cycles of strengthening, losing more energy to the turbines and weakening, which means the turbines take less energy, and the winds strengthen again. Though you’d need to be taking a significant amount of that energy to see an extreme effect like this.
Apparently taking more than 53.9% of the total wind energy in an area is enough to slow the wind to a stop (again, a violent, turbulent, oscillating stop, not a gentle end of wind).
I feel like this should be an xkcd explains (if it isn’t already one)
I feel like all the responses you’re getting are probably generally correct in the context of wind at/near ground level. But I feel like sticking a bunch of these in a JET STREAM is (maybe?) an entirely different matter. Or at least it could be, and I too am curious what the potential ramifications are.
Jet stream winds are not just wind like any other, are they? Various jet streams have serious impacts on weather. If they harnessed and substantively bled off the Pacific jet stream, are there potentially grave consequences on the already variable El Niño and La Niña oscillation? If it could cause serious shifts in the weather, that would affect the livability of areas, create more dangerous weather conditions, and impact farming way around the globe from their wind farm installation.
Maybe none of these are genuine scientific concerns, but frankly I don’t trust China to do the science for the rest of us. Pretending these are genuine concerns, say they screw something up - it probably doesn’t too seriously impact Chinese weather as they harness the jet stream winds right at the point where it leaves their airspace. But the ramifications for the rest of the world could then be dire, and I’m not sure that is remotely a concern for them. Could be an economic advantage even. Two birds, one stone.
It’s a novel approach, but the Chinese aren’t the only ones trying to harvest energy from high winds: skysails-power.com/how-power-kites-work/
Am I crazy or didn’t we see these in Big Hero 6?
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, 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.
When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold,
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.
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.
It looks like a boss bloon from BTD6 lol
With a traditional wind turbine, if the wind speeds get too high, the turbine locks the rotation and feather the blades. For the airship however, people will have to manually take it down and later erect it again. Hopefully they get to it in time, otherwise it’s going to violently take itself down and/or fly off. Either way, that is a bunch of extra cost incurred on a regular basis.
That looks like a giant…
Cities are going to start looking like San Fransokyo (Big Hero 6) soon. Seems like an excellent idea though. If it really gets pursued, I wonder how it will interact with air travel, since I would imagine you would need no fly zones around these, at least at a certain height.
Very cool, and definitely worth switching too where it makes sense.
But there is no mention of cost, so it probably won’t be cost competitive with regular wind for a while, which sucks.
But the silver lining is that this is among the first of this type of power generation, and it will only get better and more efficient as the tech is built upon.
I assume they have designed these in a way that doesn’t adversely impact migratory birds
Very interesting development. Especially that it can be deployed in disaster zones to provide energy - if there is a strong foundation to anchor it, probably.
Shira, get me my god damned tea!
Wow. I hope this tech works out practically.
I like how everyone conveniently leaves out the part that this is an emergency backup not actual full time scalable tool.
Is that thing going to be able to float itself and support the weight of the cables at the altitudes they talk about?
That is really cool!
500 to 1,000 meters AGL is going to be a problem for aircrafts. You need remote areas to have no interference bc these are big balloons.
y0kai@anarchist.nexus 3 weeks ago
I feel like this needs a second look.
reev@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
As a European… Are feet logarithmic? Wouldn’t even surprise me that much.
felbane@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Only when viewed from the north.
Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
The zero key got stuck.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 weeks ago
They used different people’s feet.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Chinese feet are smaller.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So those units didn’t scale right, clearly. But you also can’t possibly call those “high altitudes”. Small planes like cessnas fly at low altitudes, like 5000 ft, a 747 flys at a high altitude, 40,000 ft; 1600 ft is nothing, that’s lower than some buildings.
breadguy@kbin.earth 2 weeks ago
they're talking about the extra 0 on 10,000
y0kai@anarchist.nexus 2 weeks ago
Agreed. I had the same thought and then saw the numbers and was like wait, “which part of this is the fucked up part?”