10th International Airborne Wind Energy Conference (AWEC 2024) in Madrid

David Lecoque Alliance for rural electrification
Small systems could make a huge difference

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And then we went for a walk and learned that the Spanish invented the mic :microphone: drop
Hundreds of years ago


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We cheered , viewing live from
#AWEC24 when the German Parliament voted positively for the German Renewable Energy Act (EEG) in support of
“Flugwindenergie”
Airborne Wind Energy

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Then the mother of AWEC Christina Archer schooled me by answering a question about vertical airflow potential in Hadley cell convergence zones , saying 1x1x1 still=1

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Some Posters





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More impressions


Arriving at the Puerta de Toledo Campus of UC3M where the team has set up the new ground station of CT Ingenieros and UC3M and a 40m2 kite of Kitepower.


Gonzalo Sánchez-Arriaga of UC3M kicking off the conference.


Jochem Weber of NREL delivering his keynote “Generations in the Progress of Wind Energy: Foreshadowing a Pathway for Airborne Technology” on behalf of his colleague Paul Veers.


Sarah Barber of Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences delivering her keynote “A Grand Vision of Wind Energy Digitalisation”.


The perspective of the session chair…


Nicole Allgaier of Enerkite speaking during the OEM panel discussion on “Soft-wing and hybrid systems”, chaired by Kristian Petrick, of Airborne Wind Europe (left).


Paul Thedens of industry leader Skysails Power presenting about “Towards an Optimal Ram-Air Kite Design for AWE: Recent Advances in the Coupled Aero-Structural Model”. If you want to know more, dive into Paul’s PhD dissertation (disclaimer: Paul did his PhD with me).


And another perspective of the session chair.


The conference cover slide.

And my personal “fun facts” about the conference:

  • It was the 10th anniversary edition of the conference, spanning 15 exiting years of technology R&D
  • We had the honor to have Cristina Archer as a key note speaker who kicked off, together with other pioneers, the AWEC series 2009 in Chico, California
  • It was the 5th conference that I personally (co-)organized
  • We had attendees from 23 countries, which was more than ever
  • The Book of Abstracts has now reached 200 pages, covering the current state of R&D, also visually
  • We included a photographic essay and abstract about climate change by US-based photographer Ian van Coller
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Thanks everyone for a great conference and being great people in general. The AWEC truly is an inspirational boost

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If you haven’t done so already, fetch the PDF of the book of abstracts from here.

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I’m happy that you liked it, @tallakt, and it’s great that you started this microblog!

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A few more
Edward Fagan on differences in Certification of composites structures between wind turbines and aero structures + implications on cost
The DNV standard was recommended as easier to implement






Then by far the most dreadful presentation of the whole conference.
Dreadful only because I had to try follow the amazing Filippo Trevisi
Otherwise :exploding_head: Brilliant if you’re into optimal Airborne Wind Energy






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Then Per Lindholdt spoke about AWES application of hydraulic motor power systems and where their use could help.




Some poster pitches


Mohamed Elhesasy of United Arab Emirates University


Kirsten Coutinho of TU Delft


Iván Castro Fenandez of UC3M, winner “Best Poster Award”, now with Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA).


Xiaoyu Li of China Power Engineering Consulting Group Co (CPECC) , winner “3rd Best Poster Award”.

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Some slides from the AWES Status and Outlook session
From Enerkite and Kitemill













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Are videos of the talks going to be posted?

We have complete video coverage of the auditorium: these are the plenary activities (green) and first column (blue) in the program. Unfortunately, we do not have any coverage of the two other parallel tracks (purple and yellow columns).

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Thanks for publishing Roland

Brilliant to have some great progress to share

again
It seems crazy wasteful that we don’t publish coverage of the whole conference.

This situation devalues the attendance
Nobody can be in the 3 rooms at once.
So all these great people we meet _ we can only hope to at best see ~half of their work presented.

We can’t now easily share their progress and optimism to inspire investment in further R&D

As a sponsor. Next time I’d insist that the default is - your presentation is going to be recorded and published… Sign here to opt out

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Hi @Rodread,

I very much agree that it is wasteful not to video-record the entire event. There is probably nobody who feels more pain from this than I do. The practical problem is that this often depends on the local situation. In some cases, the conference rooms are equipped with the required instrumentation, but in others, they are not. We can not do this on our own, and the local helpers we enlist do not have the necessary skills and experience. I tried and had two sets of equipment on me, but there was simply no capacity left to set this up (in rooms quite far apart) next to the additional tasks of operating a conference room.

This leaves only the option to hire dedicated video recording teams. However, these come at a cost that must be covered by either sponsoring or increasing the registration fee. Nevertheless, I agree that this must be solved.

I propose to address this in several partially redundant ways:

  1. When selecting the next conference host, we add a criterion for the availability of video-recording equipment and operators.

  2. As a sponsor of the event, you can indeed tie conditions on your sponsoring and, in this way, make sure that complete video coverage is taken into account.

I will make sure that these points are on the agenda of the next planning meeting!

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Several interviews recorded during the AWEC 2024.

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