Hi Doug: everything you say about this device is true, and I noticed that it was a kind of VAWT with peripheral power take-off, so a sort of rim-driven VAWT.
My previous comment (“there is no home”) was a bit ironic.
Wouldn’t you agree to waste time on something that could work, if it exists?
Hello Pierre:
I agree with your description, above.
Sorry, but I don’t quite understand the meaning of the next two sentences about “no home” being “ironic”, nor about agreeing to waste time. Maybe you could clarify? 
Hi Doug:
Sentence 1. It’s a joke. I reverse the effectiveness of the proof of non-functioning between “prototype” and “home”. I suggest that the prototype does not work not because it is not functional, but because there is no home in the photo as far as we see. The lack of home is of course a false reason.
Sentence 2. There is no need to dwell too much on this device. We can waste our time on more plausible projects, even if the chances of success remain slim compared to the iconic three-bladed wind turbine
I think there might be some version that could work, maybe something somewhat similar, I mean, you never know, but it doesn’t seem to me that this group is hitting the mark. I saw 12 towers and 18 blades long enough to be rotors. So let’s take an average of 15 turbines with 8-foot diameter rotors, using the same materials. That should be able to produce over 10 kW. Not sure if theirs is better than that. Not from what the video shows. Why not just say they will make smaller wind turbines with guy wires as opposed to the giant turbines on freestanding tubular towers, that are breaking down? It’s always the same with these guys: showing why the big turbines are “bad”, implying that saying their solution would be built at a smaller scale is the answer, without answering why not just use smaller turbines, or why theirs can’t be built at a larger scale. Reminds me of Dabiri. These people are all the same!
I was thinking it could make more sense also to let the blades roll from inside to the outside in a long installation like this to allow for a camber on the wings. More like micro tether AWE on a long track. I guess then the step to putting the track on ground would be small as well. Then we are looking at some other concepts we have seen before 
I think comparing to Darreius is a little off though, because the whole point seems to be having the loop enlonged in one direction, presumably perpendicular to prevailing winds
No, it’s exactly a stretched out Darrieus, as I said. And it’s also a ground-constrained version of my original AWE invention recorded in 1978, a series of airfoils attached at intervals along a continuous loop, later called “laddermill”.
Se also @Massimo 's comment:
le pale che airloom espone devono correre a circa 80m/s per essere efficaci, come il tip delle pale delle turbine eoliche.
Non mi è chiaro perchè ci si entusiasma solo di contraffattori e concetti triti e ritriti e raramente viene riconosciuta la vera innovazione
Translation:
the blades that airloom exhibits must run at around 80m/s to be effective, like the tip of a wind turbine blade.
It is not clear to me why we only get excited about counterfeits and trite concepts and seldom recognise true innovation
This argument can be compared to that of @dougselsam :
That says it all.
Utility-Scale Wind Power at Extremely Low Cost - Video Portal - Naval Postgraduate School
It loaded fine for me and it was okay enough to watch. Some questionable statements and timelines, and some new perspectives.
I’m still not following why using small generators is bad.
That is a pretty basic observation. Do they say what speed they are targeting?
I watched the video.
They are either onto something exceptional or they have no clue what they are talking about. As a data point related to that add that they didnt hire their senior engineering staff yet and are producing a 1 MW unit in 2024. Soo… this is pretty exciting stuff I guess… makes us at Kitemill look bad for spending 15 years to still be working on a 20 kW unit. Anyways. I still think Kitemill is slightly ahead in terms of undistorted reality and being closer to a profitable business. I’ll be getting ready to eat my hat on this one I guess
Yes, that is a questionable timeline. And it is natural for a company that has had more people working for it for longer is further along. They are trying to do something simpler though than making a single complex kite and ground station and controlling it perfectly so that it never crashes. Instead they can add seemingly unlimited blades that don’t seem to be able to crash, so much of the bottleneck for testing seems to be removed, and scaling up should be simpler once the basic design is validated.
I guess no comment on the viability of the business. It seems to have benefits and drawbacks like all things do. I don’t have enough information and I’m not a potential investor so what do I care, for now.
To me it doesnt seem simpler than single kite AWE plus a winch. There’s a lot of mechanical and electrical design that needs to be done, then testing. One year for testing even the 1MW alone is not nearly enough, to my judgement. Then they will need to iterate…
A prototype is on the video at -11:05. The maximal measured rail speed was 10 m/s, as shown also on the power curves at -10:53, the targeted rail speed being 40 m/s. At 10 m/s, the Cp (power coefficient) is very low, while being high (comparable to that of a conventional wind turbine) at 40 m/s.
Alongside this, at -11:50: "How can it be so low cost"? Five factors are presented: a factor is the high rpm generators: 5000 rpm instead of 12 rpm.
Some AWES using a modified Airloom device as a basis? Two propositions are evoked below.
I thought along these lines as well. But does it really make sense to move a complex machinery around, if it works well at a permanent position?
I think this concerns the 2nd proposal with the telescopic poles.
The 1st proposal is nothing more than a carousel with a transmission cable on generators on the ground.
I was thinking more along the lines putting a Daisy/Pyramid on a carousel. The only benefit I see immediately is that now the carousel may work better. Though also you could conclude that the carousel itself does not add much
Mike Barnard recently wrote about Airloom device on
AirLoom makes the same mistakes that are repeated over and over and over in wind generation. In fact, they make the same mistakes in virtually exactly the same way as a failed wind generation innovator from the early 1980s, Transpower. […]
What is it that AirLoom and Transpower are doing? Well, instead of putting the wind generator up where the air is stronger, they are keeping it closer to the ground because that’s cheaper. Except that the wind is stronger and less turbulent further from the ground, and energy in the wind is a function of the cube of the wind velocity. Small increases in wind velocity increase energy return tremendously, and AirLoom says, “The heck with that!”
This is similar also to John Dabiri’s schools of counter-rotating vertical axis wind turbine fish which I first assessed over a decade ago now, including a lengthy back and forth with the MacArthur Genius Grant winner. It doesn’t matter how cheap and simple a wind generator is, unless it’s in stronger winds, it’s just not going to make much electricity. At least Dabiri found and attempted to exploit a new effect, but AirLoom has nothing going for it. […]
AirLoom’s blades forego every single one of those advantages. The blades in the front of the device are close to the ground, so there’s more turbulence. They are behind the track and posts, so there’s more turbulence. They can’t pivot into the wind because the posts are fixed to the ground, so only a fraction of the blades in any device are well aligned to the wind. The blades on the downwind side of the loop are flying through dirty air from the blades in the front of the loop. And the friction from the cable running on the inside of the track will suck a bunch of the energy that remains. […]
The prior art Mike Barnard mentioned is on
His arguments match those of our expert @dougselsam concerning the evaluation of “innovations” in wind energy.
Latest Article on Air-Head-Loom, “promising” 1 cent/kWh electricity.
Love the idea, but it has inherent flaws, and the people doing it don’t seem to have what it takes to make anything work well either, from what we’ve seen so far. BTW, this is a horizontal version of laddermill, which was also a potentially good idea, but also had nobody capable of building even a science-fair scale version. All so very sad. Endless big talkers without even the most basic fabrication skills. Well these guys now have enough millions to buy an extremely large wind turbine or two, so let’s see if they can put even a symbolic prototype into regular power-producing operation! If they are like AWE, the answer will be “no”.
‘Wings’ on poles: Bill Gates-backed wind power tech promises 75% cheaper energy (msn.com)
Hi Doug,
An extract of Mike Barnard’s article on AirLoom:
Finally, wind turbine blades always operate in clean air ahead of the mast. They are getting the smoothest possible wind at the highest possible velocities, which is why they having been getting taller, not shorter, for decades. The blades are always strongly aligned to the direction the wind is coming from because the nacelle yaws into the wind.
AirLoom’s blades forego every single one of those advantages. The blades in the front of the device are close to the ground, so there’s more turbulence. They are behind the track and posts, so there’s more turbulence. They can’t pivot into the wind because the posts are fixed to the ground, so only a fraction of the blades in any device are well aligned to the wind. The blades on the downwind side of the loop are flying through dirty air from the blades in the front of the loop. And the friction from the cable running on the inside of the track will suck a bunch of the energy that remains.
AirLoom is such a terrible idea that no one should have reported on it except in dismay that such a bad idea even made it into a tiny prototype. But Gates put $4 million into it, so all of a sudden it’s a press darling.
I was unsurprised to find that the ‘inventor’ of this device had two things in common with failed wind energy innovators I’ve looked at in the past. The first was that he has no background in energy, electricity generation or wind energy, and has no STEM background. He’s an MBA who worked in finance.
One of my business model red flags questions is: Do the principals in the firm have any related qualifications? in this case, zero, nada, zip, bupkiss. Apparently Gates and co think that’s unnecessary.
And the principal is also a kite surfer, a sport I’ve enjoyed which is the source of countless failed wind generation technologies. I like kite surfers on the water and love playing with parafoils, including paragliding the southern cliffs of Bali a few times, but there’s something about a lot of kite surfers that make them think that recreation turns into generation without passing the slightest of sanity checks or knowing anything about electrical generation or the grid.
I guess you know what he’s referring to about “kite surfer” as a source of “countless failed wind generation technologies”.
The facts have not proven him wrong so far.
But research into new technologies to exploit new resources (here high altitude wind energy) advances without worrying about the state of art, and sometimes succeeds.
An example that could contradict his incremental logic (particularly about AWE): an airplane is not an improved train. And if AWES succeed, they probably would not be improved HAWTs.
Yes, if anyone should know what Barnard is referring to, especially the bit about kite-surfers, it should be those of us interested in AWE. And to this day, AWE seems strangely detached from anyone with proven acumen in wind energy. I remember in the early days, trying to even convince any AWE wannabes that what they were talking about fell under the umbrella of “wind energy”. That was scary for them, because it made them realize who and what they were up against, that actual standards existed, and that at some point, they would be expected to actually produce cheap, reliable power, rather than existing as a mostly-talk, carnival sideshow for their own entertainment. I do seem to remember learning that certain schemes from the 1800’s for air travel involved train tracks in the sky.
