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'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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With a traditional wind turbine, if the wind speeds get too high, the turbine locks the rotation and feathers 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.
Strikes me as an impractical solution.
A wind turbine automatically feathers. Why can't the airship automatically raise and lower itself?
With modern forecasting, getting it's height right shouldn't be too hard?
It doesn't just need to be lowered, that would leave it exposed still. It needs to deflated/reinflated every storm, while also having someone strap the carefully folded deflated bits down, or put itself into a very expensive massive hangar every storm. Are these possible, yes, but again, it needs to be economical, not just possible.
Weather has always been a severe issue with airships. It's the main reason you don't see them filling the sky.
Does the article actually list the target altitude for this version?
I think I was imagining something much higher. You're probably right.
Article says wind speeds are môre steady up there, wouldn't that mean whatever you put up there is build to withstand those winds?