Here’s something you don’t see every day from Boston-based Altaeros Energies:
That’s Altaeros’ floating wind turbine prototype, which it successfully tested in Maine earlier this week. It is what it looks like: a standard wind turbine, normally mounted on a big pole, instead secured inside a helium-filled balloon. Awesome.
Wind speeds are higher at higher altitudes, which makes the benefits of the floating turbine fairly obvious. Altaeros claims that the turbine, called the Skystream, can produce twice the energy of a traditional wind turbine.
Before heading up to Maine to test the prototype, Altaeros had been working out of Greentown Labs, Boston’s premier cleantech incubator, right here in the Innovation District.
