Post #651408

2024-12-09 08:30 UTC

Y&#39;know that #solarpunk trope of floating wind turbines in the sky, tethered to the ground, and feeding power down to denizens below? This is in China, serving 50KW at 500m, which is power for between 40 to 140 households. The figure changes depending on which country you use. USA is around ~1KW per house, and in Europe it&#39;s closer to 300-400W on average). I wonder what the economics are like for these. I you have seen numbers, do plz share. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202410/12/WS6709ce66a310f1265a1c7306.html

Replies (4)

@abovearth@hostux.social 2024-12-09 08:48

@mrchrisadams@mastodon.social Tangentially related to this topic. I heard years ago of an idea of having a horizontal wind turbine, so oriented like a helicopter, up in the air. It had to somehow self balance by adjusting the blade angle. And stay up in the air. It seemed like something that is either really hard to do, or impossible to me. I never heard about it since. #windturbine #helicopter

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@voltar13@social.hackerspace.pl 2024-12-09 09:51

@mrchrisadams@mastodon.social Pretty interesting. I think that these might be great for an ad-hoc power, however it will be interesting to see how the durability and fixability compares to the regular wind turbines for regular long-term use.

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@photom@mastodon.social 2024-12-09 09:56

@mrchrisadams@mastodon.social 50 KW of power? For comparison, an electrical kettle uses 1 KW of power. If 50 people simultaneously decide to have a tea, they'll have a blackout. Unless they completely spam the sky with those balloons. But a typical city has hundreds of thousands of kettles.

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@DrorBedrack@mastodon.social 2024-12-09 11:05

@mrchrisadams@mastodon.social it produces 50 kw. I pay localy 0.15$ for kwh. So this machine would make 7.5$ an hour. 180$ a day 65700$ a year I'm not sure it pays for the maintanance. But cool concept.

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