After AWEC 2019

Lounge
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I do not agree that this forum is a soap box for each user. Though (quite naturally for this crowd) many users have clear preferences in AWE rig design, there has been nice discussions about many such concepts, ideas shared, shared input on ideas and much more.

The proof in the pudding for me will always be produced power. But it has been shown that getting there is a bit hard. So probable steps on the way should be appreciated. Even a skateboard with practically no engineering performed.

Relate this to landing on the moon, and it would make sense to talk everyone down who did not yet put their feet on the moons surface…

1 Like
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Making power is not that hard if you know what you’re doing. When someone has claimed to be “the top AWE researcher” for over a decade, while failing to generate any significant amount of electrical power the whole time, and they then cite some new claim of riding an electric skateboard while being pulled by a kite as ammunition in their ongoing insult-fest, I think it is absurd to take it seriously.

For one thing, as anyone who has read my posts should know, there are millions of ways to make some power from the wind. That was never the question. The question is whether any given “solution” is economical - whether it is an improvement over the state-of-the-art. If your electricity costs too much, it isn’t a “solution” at all, and isn’t going to work out.

For another thing, this supposed skateboard-charging debacle was not run by us previously, only is now briefly-mentioned as part of Santos trying in vain to insult me.

If this supposed skateboard ride is to be believed or considered significant, it would have to provide some details, such as the wind conditions, type of kite, how far it was ridden, how much charging took place, power numbers, etc, etc., etc., not to mention a plan for how it could lead to any real energy solution

Now if you were familiar with Santos’ previous “work”, you would realize the following:

  1. If he has a video, it will be shaky, grainy, and probably less than 5 seconds duration;
  2. It will not show any amps, volts, nor power on any instrument;
  3. Yet it will provide cannon-fodder for Santos ongoing insult-fest for perhaps a decade of empty bragging;
  4. It shows nothing new, nothing that is not completely predictable, nothing useful, nothing impressive, just like his recent “victorious” claims of getting a self-winding watch to operate using a kite. It’s just one more empty talking point for Santos. Was there ever any doubt that a self-charging skateboard could be momentarily pulled by kite? That a self-winding watch could be shaken? The question would be: “great, so now what?”
  5. Santos will have no numbers for power or output, other than his guesses, which he will present as unarguable facts, if he presents them at all. Santos is in favor of his power estimates, and has weighed in against actually measuring power. Why might that be?
    If anyone is impressed by this weak bragging as part of Santos ongoing insult-fest, I feel sorry for you and would suggest the same likelihood for your success as for Minesto.
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Doug, Thank you for “great” and “now what?” in response to the Seiko-KiteLab and FiiK-NPW-kPower demos. Making AWE look easy is harder than it looks (but not too hard). No one had ever before shown that fickle kites could produce precise steady electrical output, nor that a kite EV could be conjured together in couple of hours. The enabling bits are COTS TRL9 components. If you want numbers, help yourself to the third-party technical specs.

Now what? The hard industrial work of scaling up to utility-scale from the ~easy proof-of-concept work.