China tests world's first megawatt-class flying wind turbine
https://www.livescience.com/technology/engineering/china-tests-worlds-first-megawatt-class-flying-wind-turbine-it-generated-enough-energy-to-power-a-house-for-2-weeks
301 points · 39 comments · view on lemmy.world
39 Comments
NinePeedles@sh.itjust.works · 107 pts · 163d
While in the US our brilliant leader is trying to reopen old coal mines.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 163d
That being said, there are American companies that have been working on flying wind turbines for quite a while.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 162d
We have working models. The difference is the Chinese can say “make it happen”, and they do it. In the US they say, “Gimme lots of investment capital and how can I profit massively off of this?” so it goes nowhere quick.
Maybe we should call them “AI power dirigibles” and people will put some money into it.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 162d
Ugh. Well, Makani was the company I was thinking of. They started in 2006, Google bought them in 2013 and shut it down in 2020. Fucking Google...
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip · 4 pts · 162d
ZepplAIns
oyzmo@piefed.social · 46 pts · 163d
Helium is a non-renewable substance which there is a global shortage of. I wonder how much it takes to lift that thing 😅
Blade9732@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 163d
Wouldn't hydrogen be better for lifting something like a wind turbine.
oyzmo@piefed.social · 34 pts · 163d
Yes, but I think hydrogen likes to go bang 🧨💥
bus_factor@lemmy.world · 32 pts · 163d
No worries, that only happens if there's a spark, like for instance some static electricity. Shouldn't be a problem here, surely this thing won't generate any of that.
kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 162d
Wouldn't this still need to be tethered to the ground? Would that likely have grounding cables?
bus_factor@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 162d
That helps against sparks jumping between the balloon and the ground, but things could still get zappy between the individual components of the balloon.
paraphrand@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 163d
porcoesphino@mander.xyz · 13 pts · 163d
"Skytanic" was a great episode of Archer. For anyone that hasn't seen it, the running gag is that Archer thinks the non-flammable helium is going to explode the blimp they're on leading to things like this slap
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net · 5 pts · 163d
"What part of this you're not getting?"
porcoesphino@mander.xyz · 7 pts · 163d
"All of it, obviously!"
ClownStatue@piefed.social · 2 pts · 162d
"M" as in "Mancy!"
GreenShimada@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 163d
Not necessarily. It's not about the boom factor alone - hydrogen is a small atom, and so under pressure, most commonly used materials are permeable to it. It leaks through every material. It really takes something as solid as steel pipes for hydrogen atoms to not work their way through and escape. So while hydrogen would be cheaper to produce at scale, it's also constantly leaking out of any container.
For wind turbines, static electricity and storms would be huge risks as well, so the application of a floating wind turbine would not be ideal.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 163d
Even with steel pipes you get problems with hydrogen embrittlement because hydrogen diffuses into the steel and can cause it to crack.
wewbull@feddit.uk · 6 pts · 163d
Helium does a pretty good job of that too.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 162d
If you're producing electricity in it, you can always bring some water up and use some of that electricity to extract hydrogen from the water to make up for any leaks.
It really depends how bad the leaking is since that dictates how much weight of water is needed to be brought up and electricity must be used for hydrolysis.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 163d
Yeah, that's what the folks who designed the Hindenburg thought as well.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 162d
For an autonomous platform with some sort of safety mechanisms for jettisoning the air bag if a catastrophic failure occurs, hydrogen does in fact sound like a way better and less scarce lifting gas.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 162d
Wasn't the way the Hindenburg burned due to both the Hidrogen AND the alumium oxide paint covering it?
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 162d
Nah, it's perfect!
BussyCat@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 163d
Helium may not be renewable but we can manufacture it from things like boron
trolololol@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 163d
I need someone to explain the joke. Waiting 100,000 years for radioactive decay seems to be a bit boring as a punch line.
sneezycat@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 162d
It'll be really funny in 100 000 years.
BussyCat@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 162d
It’s not a joke if you hit boron with a neutron it releases the energy in the form of an alpha particle which is just a helium atom.
So take some boron-10 put it in a neutron flux and you get helium. This is being done in nearly every nuclear power plant in the world every second
yakko@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 163d
I did not know that
recked_wralph@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 162d
Not once we get fusion reactors up and running, then we’ll be drowning in that sweet sweet helium-4
jaennaet@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 162d
ileftredditforthis@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 163d
People in the UK, mainly the coffin dodgers mind, bitch about how ugly wind turbines are they’d loose their shit about these. They seem to prefer the beautiful and discreet electricity pilots it seems.
ClockworkOtter@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 163d
Oh no, they don't like pylons either. They just want coal plants in poor people's gardens and subterranean power cabling.
kokesh@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 163d
tRump will shit himself (again) when he sees this!
mx_smith@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 162d
We need to make one that looks like this
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 162d
Fly one over the White House, and another over Maralago.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 162d
We need better propulsion methods than Helium...
...but we don't exactly have other lighter than air alternatives.
fluxx@mander.xyz · 11 pts · 162d
Well, there's hydrogen, but that has its own downsides. Like it's a bit explody, for example.
girsaysdoom@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 162d
Not to mention that the flames while combusing are invisible by sight. It's also really difficult to keep contained and if it leaks it has ~11x the impact of CO2 per this article.
I used to like the idea of hydrogen as an energy medium but all of its attributes combined just make it really infeasible to use except for immediate applications.
TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id · 4 pts · 162d
What about a really big kite?