290
Floating turbine towers above — the S1500 hovers to harvest wind at 131 feet
(www.ecoticias.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
290 points (96.2% liked)
Technology
82250 readers
3984 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Does it have batteries on board? How does it connect the power to the grid? O_o
I read an article about it a while ago, and that said it'd be tethered to the ground, and power would be transfered through the tether.
The voltage being sent down would have to be really high to avoid loss going through such a long and probably thin cable. Like the difference in voltage loss going through a 100' romex cable of 10-gauge wire with 12v DC vs 120v AC - you just can't do it with 12v DC because the loss is far too high, but it's no problem with 120v AC.
Magnify those losses times 500 for your 5000' cable... maybe you need a 5000v line... then you have a dangerous high-voltage line flying around in the air. High-voltage transmission lines can arc to ground if they find a path, even though they're insulated wires.
But I guess those guys probably know about that stuff too.
Depending on how the turbine is set up, it could generate AC power instead of DC. I believe they even have several options on how to do this.
If only there was a giant cable it was tethered to that could also carry electricity.
USB-C
It's obviously attached with wires. It can't just float around and generate energy.
You say obviously but I don't see how tethering a loose object with 5000ft of live wire is "obviously" safe
We're surrounded by live wire all the time. They're insulated, it's fine.
Oh. That makes it better.
Our houses has loads of live wires, we know how to do it safely nowadays.
Your home also has Walls surrounding the wires.
Through a HV cable run to the ground, along with the cable to anchor it.