Culture
This Floating Wind Turbine Looks Like a Stubby Shark
Its inventors say it can reach more powerful winds than boring, land-based turbines.
It's cute, like a stubby albino shark. It's floatable, rising to an altitude of 2,000 feet. And to believe the inventors of the "Buoyant Airborne Turbine," or BAT, it's also the future of wind energy for rural residents and disaster-management personnel.
The BAT is Altaeros Energies' attempt to improve the traditional wind turbine. The thinking is that the strongest winds roar high off the ground, so why not build a machine that can access them? Altaeros, a company founded inside MIT and still based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believes the best way to do this is not by making turbines taller—something the wind-energy industry is striving to do—but by sending an inflatable turbine up to harvest the all-powerful gusts.