572
'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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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.
it is 1.2mw = 12x100kw
Did they actually generate power during the test flight?
"demonstrated 1mw production" from other sources.
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.
Sure, that would be possible. The generators themselves will produce some 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 effective airfoil could do a lot to produce the desired lift. If it were redesigned with that in mind, shaped more like a glider/kite/parasail, something to maximize lift, it's possible that it could be done without a light gas, though it would also be more reliant on favorable winds.
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 problem 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.
The article says:
That suggests to me (admittedly a layman) that each blimp is more like 1.2MW?
Sorry about that, I got all excited at just a tenth of what they are trying to achieve. Oops
It's all good mate, we've all got over excited at times.
The title itself already says it's 1MW.
[face Palm].
JFC people, take a grade 10 physics class.
How about you take a ninth-grade speech class first?