148
World’s first megawatt-level airborne 'windmill' feeds power to grid
(interestingengineering.com)
What movie is that again?
Big Hero 6
Literally the first thing that came to mind when I saw the article thumbnail
Super underrated flick!
Feels very much like the future is finally here. We're accelerating
I'm curious about helium leakage from the envelope and how that will be managed. I can understand why they chose helium to lift it, but it is notoriously hard to contain. If this scales up, they are going to need a constant source to replenish losses.
I think you could probably refill them by pumping new helium in but what I'm wondering is how you deal with the air pollution problem. No matter where you are in the world you're going to have some degree of corrosive and toxic materials in the air, but all across China there are smog clouds that already pose maintenance issues for tall buildings.
Fascinating, I would have assumed there this wasnt a big issue with air pollution and corrosion but that would just be my ignorance on the subject.
I do wonder how sustainable this would be from the helium perspective, it has a high potential for supply constraints and is largely dependant on gas/oil extraction currently. Hydrogen, doesnt have that limit but brings a whole lot of engineering and safety issues with it.
I wonder how it compares in size to a traditional windmill of similar power, and how densely they hope to pack them (units per acre). I bet you can barely notice it 2 km away even though it's almost 200 feet long
2km are 1.2miles
There is so many problems with that concept: What do you do when there is a strong storm? What happens if lightning strikes? How do you do maintenance and how pricey is that? How do you get the power down properly? You also have to keep a ton of space clear from buildings/people if that thing somehow starts flying away/down...
Normal wind turbines can likely do a better more efficient job - at a fraction of the cost of this public relations stunt.
I think this is a technology demonstrator. They're figuring out the answers to the exact questions you are asking. This was the first test of putting it up, getting the power down properly, and then bringing the system back down. Following one of the links inside that article shows that they've previously tested the mechanical design out in the desert to test deployment, station keeping, and retrieval under high winds. As for cost, I'm sure they did analysis and have some use cases where they can compete, though I doubt that it's in urban areas because it's gonna have to be pretty far from airports and houses in "drop in on" range
makes sense over deserts and large bodies of water, ideally they'd find ways to redirect lightning strikes, or be able to channel them and use hydrogen instead of helium - maybe individual H bags enclosed within a larger envelope of the lighter inert
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
148 points (100.0% liked)
Green Energy
4363 readers
92 users here now
Everything about energy production and storage.
Related communities:
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS