Airborne wind turbine

Challenges include safely suspending and maintaining turbines hundreds of meters off the ground in high winds and storms, transferring the harvested and/or generated power back to earth, and interference with aviation.

Also, bad weather such as lightning or thunderstorms, could temporarily suspend use of the machines, probably requiring them to be brought back down to the ground and covered.

Systems that rely on a winch can instead place the weight of the generator at ground level, and the tethers need not conduct electricity.

[18] A future 1,000-foot (300 m)-wide MARS system would use a horizontal rotor in a helium suspended apparatus which is tethered to a transformer on the ground.

Magenn claims that their technology provides high torque, low starting speeds, and superior overall efficiency thanks to its ability to deploy higher in comparison to non-aerial solutions.

[21][22] Another concept, released in 2023, proposed a helium-filled balloon with attached sails, which create pressure and drive the rotation of the system around its horizontal axis.