China Floating Turbine Passes Testing & Completes A Grid-Connected Flight - CleanTechnica

China’s S2000 Stratosphere Airborne Wind Energy System (SAWES), developed by Beijing Lanyi Yunchuan Energy Technology Co., recently achieved a significant milestone by completing a grid-connected test flight in Yibin, Sichuan Province. This megawatt-class airborne wind platform lifts multiple turbine-generator units to about 2,000 meters altitude, where winds are stronger and more consistent than those accessible to traditional turbines. During the January 2026 test, the system generated approximately 385 kilowatt-hours of electricity and successfully synchronized and fed this power into the local grid, demonstrating functional power conditioning, frequency matching, and voltage control necessary for integrating airborne wind energy into terrestrial infrastructure. The S2000 differs from kite-based airborne systems by using static buoyancy from its aerostat envelope to maintain altitude, which simplifies control but presents challenges such as helium retention, envelope durability, and tether material resilience under high-altitude stresses. While the system has a nominal design capacity of up to 3