A Higher-Altitude Wind Turbine

choi

Diane Cardwell, Going Higher for Power; Wind industry's new technologies are helping it compete on price.
www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/busin ... mpete-on-price.html

excerpt in the window of print: Using much taller turbines with longer blades to harvest more of the wind.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the report, which is about a startup, "borrowing from the technology of blimps," that designs and constructs a wind turbine that floats: "Known as the BAT--or Buoyant Airborne Turbine--the enormous, white helium--filled donut surrounding a rotor [with 'longer blades'] that will float about 1,000 feet in the air."  The "start-up called Altaeros Energies" was formed in 2010 by Ben Glass and Adam Rein, "as the two were completing graduate [likely master's] programs at MIT, Mr Glass in aeronautical and astronautical engineering and Mr Rein in business."
(b) If you do read it, a reminder:

A paragraph in the NYTimes report: "But the skyward expansion has already taken flight throughout the wind industry, transforming parts of the Midwest once shunned into wind powerhouse."

What it means is that many parts of Midwest in US do not have strong enough wind on the sea level, and does have what it takes at elevated level. The clause should have been written, to avoid confusion: "transforming into wind powerhouse parts of the Midwest once shunned."
(c) I indicate there is no need to read it, mainly because the design seems experimental to me, not commercial yet.
(d) Regarding the company’s name. Why “eros”?  It is in fact AltAeros, as displayed in some Web pages.

(e) Here is the website of the Cambridge, Mass-based Altaeros Energies, Inc.
(i) View the home page
www.altaerosenergies.com/
(ii) and click "Technology" in the top horizontal bar to reach the Web page titled "High Altitude Wind."

Separately, its patent application asserts the design of the donut automatically orients and re-orient itself through aerodynamics.