AWE in China

Analysis Industry and Market Analysis
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In China, we focused on two methods from different companies, with prototypes. One for parachute trains in yo-yo mode and including a kite or aerostat lifter, the other for ducted wind turbines such as Altaeros.

These two methods seem to be opposite in the sense that one exploits the drag force of parachutes, while the other uses conventional wind turbines.

However, they have in common the ability to create AWES farm in bumper car mode where collisions between units are damageless.

And it should be noted that the crosswind kite is not represented at all, whether in fly-gen or yo-yo mode.

It would be interesting to know the motivations behind these choices, although we can get some ideas.

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Hello again Pierre: My screen says your message has two (2) views. Wow, this is a really widely disseminated conversation, right?

I’d say the motivation is the mere appearance of checking boxes toward eliminating fossil fuels in an area with a severe air pollution problem, along with the urge to repeat the failed experiments of others, but at a larger scale, thinking maybe a larger version would work better. Also, there is a lot of extra money floating around in some places. People like to have fun, and investors know nothing of the realities of wind energy, or blimps, so they can be convinced to supply funding for people to use in such projects regardless of the likelihood of a truly successful outcome. I think it’s the tunnel that throws peoples’ otherwise clear thinking off. That’s all it takes, one seemingly new feature, for investors to abandon math and common sense, and maybe they want to invest in something that looks fun too, as much as the people building them want to have fun. I think its more about having fun than anything else, really. :slight_smile:

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We have been through discussing the BAT a few times, I will just leave it at me not being a big believer in this concept. The Zhonglou is more promising due to its promise og high altitude operation.

I don’t see any of these as the most likely to succeed though.

I would rather say its quite sad that this might represent the state of Chinese AWE activity these days, also reflecting on low activity worldwide.

Facing climate change I believe humanity overall is making a poor choice in not putting more effort into wind energy and AWE as part of that.

Looks like nuclear power may become the new ÂŤcoalÂť but because that will take a long time to implement, we will have warming first

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Hi Tallak: As I often try to remind people, new ideas for generating wind energy are abundant, but they have to pencil out financially to be meaningful. One of my repeated sayings is “There are a million ways to make SOME amount of power from the wind, at SOME cost, but is your idea more economical?”

Heck, they could use a gold-plated blimp, but that would only make it worse. Most real wind people can compare the claimed power output with the claimed diameter (swept area), and see it is impossible. Considering the claimed low weight of the turbines adds another level of absurdity.

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Hi Doug:
Yes, reducing the mass of a wind turbine is an illusion, because somewhere the power depends on the force of the wind and the mass follows. And high altitude winds lead to the requirement of heavier wind turbines.

Solution, including for SAWES: more power = more helium or hydrogen, see page 13.

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Hi Pierre: Until one has experienced the repeated disappointment and frustration of burning out multiple generators in sustained high winds, it’s hard to understand that it is a MAJOR challenge in wind energy. That’s why I often say, overspeed protection is not the main thing, it’s the ONLY thing.

Now of course to be onboard with this proper thinking, you’d have to have run systems that actually make a lot of power for long periods of time in sustained high winds. Since most big-talker wind wannabes have never built or run powerful wind systems for extended periods of time, this critical information is lost on them - completely ignored. They will never burn out a generator, so it is nothing but empty talk that can be ignored, in their minds.

The main thing is you need a certain amount of copper to carry a certain amount of power. Whether you target high currents at low voltage, or high voltage at low current levels, the total amount of copper required is the same for the same amount of power. If your wire is too thin, it will get too hot in even one spot, which raises the resistance of the wires in that spot, causing a “runaway train” effect that spreads and burns out at least part of the stator, which must then be stripped of wire and rewound, or just thrown away.

You needn’t bother telling wind newbies about this because they don’t care since deep down, they don’t plan on making much power for extended periods anyway. Deep down, they realize they are wasting their time, maybe having a bit of fun.

You also need a certain amount of steel to guide the magnetic fields, a steel rotor to hold the magnets, steel shaft and bearings, and a strong housing, and hopefully the configuration allows plenty of surface area and airflow to remove heat buildup. One could add a cooling system but that has weight and is complicated, expensive, and one more thing to go wrong.

Anyway, certainly steps can be taken to make turbines lighter, to a point, if desired, but there are limits to how much weight one can remove without reducing the power capability or heat dissipation capacity, let alone strength and longevity. As usual, the conversation here must be on an elementary school level, since most participants don’t even know the most basic facts of wind energy. :slight_smile:

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Today’s latest news from MSN re the world’s largest ant farm - one of Pierre’s favorite configurations just got bigger!
China tests world’s largest power-generating kite to turn upper winds into electricity

One important principle in AWE is, if an idea isn’t working out, build a bigger one!

:slight_smile:

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See also the article and the video on

I would like to see this 5000 m² parachute next to someone so I could realize it. An helium-inflated balloon carries this parachute wich is not really a kite. The same could be done with parasails and without helium balloon, and perhaps with ballutes.

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Try to visualize a 80m diameter, 40m tall dome, that’s what a 5k sqm parachute would be.

If it isn’t a better material than sail fabric (also used in kites/paragliders), then it won’t exceed 3-4k hours of lifetime. Sail fabric is affected both by mechanical stress/flutter/fatigue and more so by UV

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That would be 5000 m² in projected area, and 7000 or 8000 m² in flat area. So the diameter is perhaps 60 m or 70 m to reach 5000 m² in flat area. That said I would like a visual evidence such as something that would allow for estimating the scale, like a person standing right next to the parachute.

That wouldn’t be so bad. I’m afraid that such large dimensions could lead to a certain fragility, especially during deployment and withdrawal phases.

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First of all, I agree that it would be more convincing to see a human or other visual basis for size comparison in a photo or video.

My typically skeptical analysis is that the same team that had been pursuing this parachute-reeling idea previously, had become aware of a source for a very large surplus parachute, and a balloon large enough to lift it. Just a guess there.

If you read carefully, they start out just saying they flew a very large kite. Then they add details about a winch, generator, or whatever, in text form rather than showing it, but my impression is, at that point they are projecting their future wish-list into a present “reality” by merely stating it as an already-established fact.

I think that if there actually were a power-producing ground station, where a winch and gear drive were spinning a generator, they would happily and proudly show it.

If they were measuring the power output as claimed, they would probably also feel compelled to show a video of the meter, and/or a scatter plot of the data.

As it is, we merely see still photos of a balloon lifting an open parachute, or sometimes a somewhat closed parachute, with text claiming a bunch of mysteriously-visually-absent electricity-generating components. I believe all the further details are one more example of the observation that “In AWE, all accomplishments are “in the future” (and always will be). Now of course that is an exaggeration - there have been a few brief moments of power generation in AWE, and those accomplishments did show data, if we are to believe it, or at least we do know some power has been generated.

But the typical “press-release-breakthrough” claims of a specific energy capture per year are obviously mere hopeful estimates at best, likely just fantasy numbers “pulled from the air”, as they wish the actual power was, but I don’t think any power was actually generated.

And speaking of power generated, let’s recall that if a parachute is moving downwind at half the windspeed, it is only exposed to 1/8th the available power, from what is an airborne version of a Savonius turbine, already the least efficient concept commonly pursued, and which is only pursued because of the fact that “any idiot can understand how it works”…

Let’s just keep in mind what we actually see, versus what appears in mere text as embellishments to the photos.

Was Altaeros ever really “powering a remote village grid in Alaska”, the 49th state? Not as far as anyone has shown, and not according to the locals in that remote village. Which brings up the question of why such claims are so often made about supposed systems in regions so remote that nobody can easily get there to verify anything?

Did Makani ever power eighty or a hundred homes in Hawaii, the 50th state, as promised in their list of “always in the future” “accomplishments”? Definitely not.

Was Skysails manufacturing and selling working AWE systems around the world? Seems like that was one more future-fantasy promoted as present fact.

So we DO have an established pattern of at least reality-bending exaggeration, if not outright deception, right? At this point, I think the pattern of deception is pretty-well established. As such wannabe innovators often say, “Fake it til you make it!”

The unsaid part is, if you don’t “make it” then all you did was “fake it” the whole time…

In this case, I would say, first “consider the source”. Beyond that, believe what you see, not what appears as mere text superimposed on photos a balloon lifting a parachute! :slight_smile:

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In this video (on the two links below for the same video, credit to METRO TV and YouTube), we can see that both balloon and kites are really large.

China Tests World’s Largest Power Generating Kite - YouTube


From Doug’s link I put again but without the support:

Excerpts:

The kite, measuring 5,000 square meters (53,800 square feet), is part of China’s first national R&D project focused on harnessing wind energy from high altitudes.

At the test site, a helium balloon lifted the massive kite to about 300 meters (984 feet) above ground. Once airborne, the kite unfolded and pulled traction cables connected to a ground-based generator, converting wind energy into electricity.

During the recent test, the team also evaluated smaller kites measuring 1,200 square meters (12,900 square feet) each. The tests successfully demonstrated deployment, retraction, and stable energy conversion.

The two Chinese projects appear to be real.

Perhaps they took a look at the Comparison of the traction force of a static parachute kite and a crosswind kite, both with the same projected surface. :wink:

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Here is an indication on the text of the video above:

Developed by China Energy Engineering Corporation Limited, the 5,000-square-meter kite completed a full in-air deployment and retraction test on Wednesday in Alxa Left Banner, Inner Mongolia.

The website below includes some analysis concerning the choice of the parachute-based project.

中国能源建设股份有限公司英文站 Top News Parachute-based Airborne Wind Energy Technology of CEEC Debuts at International Airborne Wind Energy Conference

An excerpt:

During the conference, Zhang Li, vice president of CEEC China Power Engineering Consulting Group Co., Ltd. shared CEEC’s progress in this field, highlighting the key features and advantages of the parachute-based airborne wind energy technology.

According to him, the company’s approach offers three critical advantages compared to other airborne wind power technologies.

First, the high-altitude wind resource is extremely abundant, with reserves far exceeding global electricity consumption by over a hundredfold.

Second, due to the stability and intensity of high-altitude winds, airborne wind can provide significantly more full-load hours for power generation.

Third, the parachute-based airborne wind energy technology adapts exceptionally well to low wind speeds, enabling effective generation even in weak wind conditions.

The last point is interesting.

For what I saw, it looks like parachutes would be more efficient at low airflow speed, and when they are small.

Some measurements of the tension force of a parasail were performed.

But another reason for this good adaptation to “low wind speeds”, and perhaps the real reason, could be the behavior of the parachute itself (or rather a parasail in my opinion), capable of flying easily and generating significant energy even in light winds, while numerous units could fill the sky without major collision risks in bumper car mode, increasing energy production significantly.

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If one could imagine the most rudimentary AWE idea possible, that even a kid could think up, and I can say as a kid I did think of it, way back over 50 years ago, this is it. One interesting angle is that nobody has given parachute power a decent try in all these years, as a start.

The one thing that remains constant in the AWE segment of wannabe wind energy, it’s that we only hear of apparatus being “tested”, never in regular operation producing power on a daily basis for any purpose.

People keep getting excited about supposed “numbers” from “testing”, but never seem to notice the entrenched “Boy Who Cried Wolf” pattern of, no matter how good the story sounds, it never seeems to find the logical next step of being good enough for anyone to actually use.

How many times do you need to hear the same old story giving all the reasons for “future” success (always in the future) that never materializes, before developing just a teeny bit of skepticism when you hear the next version of the same old story? :O…..

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On the video I put again where there are some data at 0:43, screenshot below:

Capture d'Êcran 2025-11-18 161520 power 5000 m² parachute
Capture d'écran 2025-11-18 161520 power 5000 m² parachute1287×717 33.2 KB

I do not see the wind speed, but I can see that the power oscillates between about 260 kW and 316 kW, while the traction force oscillates between 50 kN and just under 75 kN. To reach 300 kW with 75 kN of traction force, the reel-out speed should be 4 m/s. If the idealized reel-out speed is achieved, wind speed should be 12 m/s. If that is the case, the drag coefficient Cd of the parachute should be quite low, below 0.5, although other loss factors must also be taken into account, and we do not have the wind speed which may be other than 12 m/s.

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Thanks Pierre:

I’m having trouble seeing the numbers very well, but as with kite-reeling, it sounds impressive initially, so, as with kite-reeling, I guess we’ll see if it leads anywhere. Looks pretty labor-intensive so far… :slight_smile:

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Hi Doug, in the screenshot above, I see: “P = 306547.7 W”. And the red curve appears to be the traction force versus time curve.

I think among AWES using reel/out/in yo-yo mode, parachutes and parasails are more advantageous compared to crosswind kites.

That said the effectiveness of the yo-yo mode and other AWES modes remains to be proven, as you know.

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Hi Pierre:

Yes I was able to read that number, but overall, the presentation of data seems lacking in completeness. And is the power actually generated, or is it calculated from a deprony brake or otherwise extrapolated as some have advocated in the last as equivalent to electrical generation? I will say these are the highest numbers we’ve seen for any experimental AWE system, but then again, if enough money is spent for a large enough parachute, there is no limit to the magnitude of instantaneous force x speed numbers that could be produced, or at least presented.

They are calling the parachute a kite, so if one agrees with that definition, this is kite-reeling. As with previous kite-reeling attempts, the usefulness, or not, of such a system would come down to the cost and longevity of the equipment, the number of people required to run it every day, challenges in launching, landing, and ground handling, the overall stability and flightworthiness, and how long it might perform, before self-destructing or becoming damaged. Those costs must at some point compare favorably with a standard turbine capable of producing similar output. :slight_smile:

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The elevation angle appears to be between 30.4 degrees (where the power is maximum, i.e., 316 kW) and 39.4 degrees (where the power is minimum, i.e., 262 kW). Power variations are therefore small, unlike those shown in Figure 15 which fluctuate between 150 kW and 400 kW during the power phase, with an average of 92 kW over the entire cycle.

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Well, that’s where we have to remember that the typical wholesale rate for wind energy is 3.5 cents/kWh, or $35/MegaWatt-hour. So this balloon could produce maybe $3.50 per hour?

I used to think about this when GE came out with their 1.5 MW turbine, now considered “small”. An hour of average output, maybe 500 kW, would be worth less than $20. You could not afford to even have a single employee per turbine on site and make enough money to pay them. A windfarm has to have many turbines for every onsite operator to break even, let alone pay for all the equipment and maintenance. So when we see all those personnel in clean-room jumpsuits rolling or unrolling the parachute cloth, if you needed them to run the device, the numbers would not be good for a sustainable business. This is the frustrating thing about wind energy devices that are “really cool”, :amazing”, “groundbreaking”, or even, dare I say, “game-changing”! No matter how super-cool and fun they might be, they have to turn a profit. Those dang bean-counters ruin everyone’s fun! :slight_smile: