AirborneWindEnergy: For More Power From On High (Luke1:3KJV)

This regen-braking skateboard charges itself by kite, if one is skilled.

Wow, that looks like fun!
Don’t feel bad about not making much power.
Wind energy is a field famous for shattering peoples’ dreams.
Improving on what has become the industry standard is just not an easy egg to crack. Let’s face it - the standard design has enjoyed 1000 years of refinement. But you never know what can happen, if you just keep trying!
:slight_smile:

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JAL’s circle has not yet tried “making much power”. We focus on basic enabling R&D at small scale and will try making a lot of power when ready. 2030 is still our critical path target to scale up.

AWE is no “shattered dream” to us, but truly a “dream coming true”.

Yeah, well, after 14 years of big talk, why is that exactly?
You’d have to be making some significant power now, to realistically meet that deadline.
Sounds like a future rock star explaining why he isn’t quite ready to pick up a guitar or step up to a microphone yet, but don’t worry, just wait for him to die of old age, and he’ll get right on it.
I remember reading about a guy who thought he was such a genius that he could easily beat the stock market. He started a trading fund, and convinced a lot of people to invest, and then started “getting ready to get ready”. Never made a trade. Just wasn’t ever quite ready. I don’t remember the rest of the story exactly but it was a cautionary tale of situations to avoid.
I think your problem is the “E” part of AWE. AW seems to be where you’re stuck. You know how to get something airborne in the wind. When I first encountered you guys in person at your first High Altitude Wind Power Conference, I quickly realized you guys liked to fly kites, and would never be able to generate significant power. It was that apparent to me - just like the sky is blue. It was like a teacher seeing a kid and shaking his head thinking “this poor kid is just never going to get it”. But yet you had organized the conference. SO that shows there is a huge difference between a fan-boy and a practitioner, and that wind energy R & D is a completely different skill set than organizing a conference, or hosting a website. Because what I thought has come true after this many years and you still show no hope of generating significant power - stuck at AW - with no E. No E wanted, actually. It is still just as obvious as it was then. That’s OK - nobody necessarily expects a conference or internet chat group organizer or a chat group host to also BE a leading practitioner of the SUBJECT of the conference or website. In fact that would be very unusual. Usually a practitioner would be too busy practicing the art itself, to have the time or inclination to host a conference or chat group. Why would they? If they knew what they were doing, they would want to develop their solution and talk about it later. They would not be super-inclined to try and sprinkle all their ideas out there to create a hundred more-capable competitors, right? It would only be someone who liked the idea of AWE, but couldn’t really think of any way to do it who would spend their time organizing either a conference or a chat group. So if I were you, and I’ve said this for years, I would stop pretending you have any wind energy solutions to offer, if you can’t show anything that generates significant wind power. What is the point of saying you will go from nothing to solving the puzzle in the next 8 years of you have basically nothing after 14 years so far? What, suddenly a few cloth triangles are going to change that? I mean, how many “this is it” ideas have we heard floated by now? So many promises. So few results… :slight_smile:

Answer: AWE is a “newborn baby”. Working at subscale is a far faster and cheaper strategy to test a lot of ideas. Premature scaling is a trap. Doug is welcome to share his scaled-up AWE if he has done the homework.

Goddard would never have succeeded if he had tried to build a moon rocket. He did brilliantly with what he had.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: AN INVITATION TO Open-AWE IP POOL

Hey Dave (for anybody who does not realize I’m replying to Dave Santos who is using John’s identity to post here) you continue to sound like the proverbial “broken record” with the “newborn baby” crap, as usual. How many years did we suffer you constantly trying to “debate” everyone over whether AWE “was” a “newborn baby”? Just a bunch of stupid-talk! I of course agree that scaling up too fast is a major mistake that so many or Professor Crackpot’s minions tend to make, like Makani, but for you it is just an excuse to do nothing, and excuses are your stock in trade.

If you wanna know the truth, I think it is YOU who are a “newborn baby” in that it seems that you have perpetually “just fallen off the turnip truck”. I remember about 6 years into the current hype-cycle and I was saying you and your goofy cohorts were
wind newbies", and rather than say “NO We’ve been doing wind energy for six years now!”, you instead agreed that you were still a newbie, and used it as one more of your excuses, almost blaming me for not teaching you about wind energy. Not that I haven’t tried, but you remain unreachable. Like I said, I had that feeling a teacher must get when faced with a kid who will just never “get it” when I first met you… Meanwhile, you had been talk-talk-talking about AWE for six (6) years, which is more than enough time to earn a PhD in wind energy, yet you still basically didn’t know your a** from a hole in the ground. I say the reason you have not made any power has nothing (zero) to do with “scaling”. It is because you don’t have any idea how to make AWE work. I think this is by now an established fact. I could tell you would never be able to do wind energy upon meeting you in person, and you have proven me correct, so for you to keep saying you “will” is meaningless to me. If you are, then you will, but you never do, so this is maybe the tenth time I’ve cited “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” as the story that best pertains to you. I’d LOVE to see you take that electric skateboard and make some airborne wind power pulling it up and down the sides of a pit. I’d recommend you use a sheet of plywood to get a flat surface. But it doesn’t matter. All you’d come up with are more excuses, with no way to measure power, because you have stated you think the entire wind industry is too dependent on power meters. Sure DAve, so is the electric company, and that is how they know how much your electric bill will be every month. Know what MY electric bill is every month? ZERO. Why? Because I don’t just TALK about wind energy, I practice it. This is my third Bergey turbine (because even Bergey is not perfect and they are the market leader in small wind) but I always have something running here. Right now we have the Bergey in the backyard and a partly airborne dual-rotor superturbine in the front yard that has been running continuously for about ten years now with no breakdowns and one set of new blades due to blade erosion - a common problem in real wind energy, that almost no AWE person is even aware of, let alone ever experienced. And why is that? Because you have to put some mileage on your machine before you will see blade erosion, and no AWE system has been run for long enough to wear out the leading edge of a blade. I’ll say probably no AWE system has been run long enough to even scratch the paint. So there you are again, with “Robert Goddard” - as though you compare to the father of rocketry! And “The Wright Brothers” as though your excuses could compare to their accomplishments. Dave, give it a rest. Your talk carries no authority here, and is perceived as meaningless comedy, and for me, a waste of time responding. Let us know when you have your Jalbert system up and running, as you said you would do, and show us the power it is making in real time on proper meters! This will never happen. How do I now you will never get your Jalbert system running? Because you promised us you would, and anything you say is opposite to reality, so that means you won’t. Sorry to say, but it is as simple as that. :slight_smile:

Hi Doug, your wishes below are granted:

All this is true, and we know that your turbines work well. But if, as you say, the “E” standing for energy is missing for the JAL devices, it is possible that the “A” for airborne is missing for yours…

This brings us back to the crucial point missed by all AWES: a wind turbine producing consistently and significantly in flight and at a decent altitude. And now everyone is stuck, and this for as many years.

Maybe to try to get this unstuck, we could go back to the initial post mentioning the energy potential of high altitude winds.

Perhaps instead of trying to implement an AWES crosswind that will actually be a turbine with a large radius of action but low efficiency and angle of elevation, the simplest would be a conventional wind turbine suspended under a large lifter kite or/and a balloon. @Kitewinder has done it and it doesn’t work too bad: it’s steady, it produces constantly, and it flies. All that’s left is to scale it up and automate it further.

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@dougselsam I will answer you in your own words:
"
Improving on what has become the industry standard is just not an easy egg to crack. Let’s face it - the standard design has enjoyed 1000 years of refinement. But you never know what can happen, if you just keep trying!
"
JAL’s 2030 target in alignment with the global agenda is only a few years ahead. Doing in two decades what has taken others over a thousand years won’t be a bad thing after all.

Pierre, you are singing my song. The Kitewinder system is superior to the other systems. The turbine is oriented to face the wind and so there are no cosine cubed losses and the device can operate at much higher altitudes with a relatively short tether (cable drive). We should be working on lifter kites which provide more lift at high kiteline angles as well as autonomous launch and land of the lifter kite which controls the whole system.

Hello Pierre: That is EXACTLY why I’ve been saying “idiots, idiots, idiots” for 14 years now: The absolute simplest and most obvious AWE approach has been ignored - nobody even bothers to try it. Everyone would rather over-think it. Silly.
And speaking of “silly” yes that video of the skateboard shifting back and forth for a brief moment does look silly. Typical of the circular firing squad. However, I think I should qualify my previous statements about this group to acknowledge that they (or at least Santos) DO know about kites, and if I wanted some kite information, I would consider Santos a good source.

DaveS’ response:
"
Pierre and Gordon are now where I was in 2006, when Dave Culp and Dean Jordan came to Austin and asked me to work in AWE. I knew MSE would be ~3 for a HAWT rotor and upper transmission, and that a Lifter could automate a demo without computer control. This was about 7yrs before Kiwee decided on the same archetype to chase an imaginary market for expensive kite novelties.

Gordon: “Pierre, you are singing my song. The Kitewinder system is superior to the other systems.”

Dave Culp and Peter Lynn taught me an SS kite is MSE ~1. Pierre and Gordon can now learn all this too.
"

DaveS to Doug:

"The KiteLab/kPower/JAL “Promise” is to “Test, Test, Test. and Test again”, as Fort Felker asserted. JAL is constantly testing, but New Forum censorship is blocking a huge amount of content. JohnO is already too unfairly burdened and attacked to fully offset the censorship damage to the public record. Testing the World’s First Advanced Kite Network AWES is going well.

Let New Forum censorship be lifted for readers to review the all the JAL progress; to judge by objective evidence." Censorship is Ignorance."

As we tried to tell you and Joe when your censorship, and lying about it, were your main actvities. You are NOT being censored now. You just sent me the above message using John’s account. Your message COULD have contained evidence of power production from you latest claimed future accomplishments, but as usual, all accomplishments are in the future and will always be. If, this time, you are not once again “crying wolf”, and you HAVE an energy breakthrough, the steps to verify it are obvious and I won;t go into them again. This is like talking to a pet rock. Hello - knock, knock - anybody home in there? You can stop now. I don’t think anybody is taking anything you say seriously at this point, More empty talk isn’t going to help. There is no point in discussing this nonsense further.

Well, then you are ignoring that a quite big lift force is required to maintain this high elevation angle. But tou really need to include the lifter in your system model. If you want a high elevation angle Kitewinder style, you have a huge blade (the lifter) producing no energy. If you want to have high elevation with yoyo, you get less power output for the same wing. I dont see a huge difference.

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So what do I win when 2030 rolls around, and you still can’t get out of your own way? Nothing. You’ll have some new excuse. Probably involving more lies. Discussions with you are pointless.

JAL: AWE discussion with you is never “pointless”, Doug!

You play the determined-critic of the AWE Kite Pros. You stand for the idea that power kite networks, SpiderMills, as being developed by a historical kite lineage, no matter how fantastic, cannot possibly power the World in crisis, that Kite Pros who think so are all “liars, idiots, professor-crackpots”, and so forth, and should we “just give up”. You insist, “All roads lead to the SuperTurbine”.

That’s high dramatic frisson. That’s the perfect set-up pitch for Kite Pros to present their views and demos. Folks become curious what all the fuss is about. A few fret that no good can come from “The Great AWE Debate”, but what do they know?

2030 really is not too soon nor too late for the Kite Pros to step up, after so many have crashed and burned with hundreds of millions in funds vanished. It may not be JAL in the 2030 winner’s circle, but we are in the AWE Race to best make Kite Energy, by whatever ideas prevail.
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We lament the “shattered dreams” of worthy wind developers who deserved batter, but let no one cry for the happy Kite-Pros, always eager to show anyone how to get wind-stoke, show how all kinds of kites work, show how together we continue to make them better.

Best of Luck to You Doug! If JAL Kite Pros gain AWE’s 2030 winner’s circle, you are welcome to stand with us. Tallak even promises to eat his hat, in the event, but we won’t hold him to it-
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Your endless bragging about your supposed future accomplishments never ceases. The details (whatever unworkable concept you are promoting) always change, but the theme remains the same.

999.9 out of 1000 people attempting it will not even cause a hairline crack in the egg, let alone serve omelettes…

Parafoils Rising

Dom Jalbert founded Jalbert Aerology Lab (JAL) in 1950s to develop tethered aviation. Within a few years Dom had invented the Parafoil Kite, beginning as single-line pilot-lifter kite with many applications. By the 1970s, the parafoil had become the standard “square” Parachute of skydiving that then evolved into advanced Paragliders and Power Kites.

Peter Payne conceived of crosswind AWE based on Parafoils in the mid-70s (USP 3987987). Today, JAL Kite Pros (with SkySails), are striving to make AWE a plant-scale AE reality by 2030. Dom Jalbert’s parafoil invention has only just begun to transform the world. JAL is proud to carry on the Revolution he started. Power Kite progress is rapid, relentless, and astounding.

A key source of AWE progress is the Kite Sport Explosion. The centerpiece of this is a new Formula Kite Racing Olympic Class based on advanced Parafoils and Hydrofoils. The 2024 Olympics are a major milestone for AWE. Behold how much grace and power from a couple of kilos of Parafoil wing-

2020 Formula Kite Mixed Relay European Championship - Documentary - YouTube