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'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds
(interestingengineering.com)
Am I crazy or didn’t we see these in Big Hero 6?
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.
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Finally the stupid floating jet engine looking turbines from Big Hero 6, except IRL they actually look good.
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-
The whole term fossil fuel is wrong.
Lol, got your new advert campaign... Gasoline is vegan
That might actually stop the conservatives from using it.
Want to eat it?
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Oil is solar power with extra steps.
Just cut out the 300 year old middle man
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Is that thing going to be able to float itself and support the weight of the cables at the altitudes they talk about?
Tether to the ground limits X-axis. Buoyancy limits Y-axis. Draw a circle around the sine of ground-to-windmill hypotenuse and you immediately know the max constraints of where the windmill will be
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I cant wait for the conspiracy theories about this
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.
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That is really cool!
Wow. I hope this tech works out practically.
I assume they have designed these in a way that doesn't adversely impact migratory birds
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This is totally breaking loose and heading toward the nearest city in the final act.
When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold,
Edit: I'm wrong, see edit below!
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.~~
Edit: Cool, I learned something new! I neglected to consider it in terms of power, just thought about kinetic energy.
So something like: KE = 1/2 m v^2
= 1/2 ( rho V) v^2
= 1/2 ( rho A d) (d/t)^2
= 1/2 rho A d^3 1/t^2
Where P = KE/t
Thus:
P = 1/2 rho A (d/t)^3
= 1/2 rho A v^3
Lots of other aspects I'm sure I have wrong, but I see how the cubic came to be.
I'm out of practice with my physics so apologies if this is a n00b question, but:
I'm unclear what (rho V) is and how you converted to that from mass (m). Further unclear what (rho A d) refers to.
Can you explain / link to an explainer on this?
Rho is density
Its cubic actually
https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/wind-power-impacts-of-larger-turbines/
I don't understand the physics, but every model of power output from wind turbines uses V^3 for the formula
That's a good link.
During the stampede scene in the Lion King, imagine the wildebeests were stampeding twice as fast. Then Simba's dad Mufasa would not only have quadruple the amount of energy imparted by each wildebeest, but also be trampled by twice as many wildebeests per second, so the rate of energy imparted on Mufasa per second would be 4 x 2 = 8 times greater when velocity doubles.
Education via childhood trauma
thx for the link! just spent the last hr reading about windmills. and although I live in a country full of them I've often wondered, but never really paused to ponder about the intricacies that go into windmill design. fascinating stuff!
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Thanks for the correction! I got way ahead of myself.
Increasing the speed increases both the kinetic energy of the wind hitting the turbines and the amount of wind that hits the turbines each second.
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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?
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Article says wind speeds are môre steady up there, wouldn't that mean whatever you put up there is build to withstand those winds?