Doug,
Paul’s emails between us prove he can stand me just fine. Those long thoughtful emails, and his fine writings, serve to know he is a good guy.
I have driven many kinds of generators for over a decade, all small stuff. I’ll keep working small and being super excited. Ready to scale up as funding and team-work allows. Be patient for the results you demand.
I tend to share the sims which work.
The mangled ones upset me and I tweak till I know what should work.
Doug,
Where is a quote supporting Paul is the brute you suggest? Yes, he could identify flaws in the claims of naive or unscrupulous designers, but only as a gentleman, as far as I have ever seen. He did not stoop to ad hominem attacks, and could quote accurately, as a conscientious journalist.
Boooooring. Open a dedicated thread to discuss between you 2 guys. Doug, let it go. Dave can say what he wants, if you don’t want to buy his stuff that is fine. Say it once and move on.
Dave stop speaking about kpower has if it was a multinational company when obviously it is only you.
But you have been doing it for years and years Doug! Please use a private thread.
Paul’s Wind Power reportage was far more nuanced than wrongly purported without quotes. Paul reveled in the motley DIY ecosystem of back-yard wind inventors, and gave them due honor, even as industrial-scale Big-Wind matured as a distinct aerospace R&D community.
We all decry dubious ventures, but as a professional journalist, Paul never got overheated in his written critiques. Paul also knew that without third-party certification, one cannot properly condemn pioneering AWE research. We reasonably agreed that AWE must in due time (ie. 2030 timeframe) meet formal certification standards, but bashing the new-born baby is not how responsible energy journalism is done.
This is the open-minded Paul Gipe I know, not at all angry at wind turbines such as are long bitterly denounced by Doug, like the Honeywell design Paul refers to below. I can’t find any anger in Paul. From his website-
"July 12, 2019
Paul Gipe
Alan Grimsley, Director of Business Development of White Electrical is seeking to buy a Honeywell Windtronics 6500. Grimsley wants the device for experimentation."
Here is Gipe’s reasonable coverage of fringe wind designs-
Dave, your choice of SkySails looks to be a good AWE prognosis. As you know SkySails has two sectors: towing kite systems and energy generation.
http://www.skysails-power.com/technology.html mentions: “In good wind conditions and by means of a 400 m² fully automatic kite, it replaces up to 2 MW propulsion of the main engine.”. By using yoyo mode as SkySails intends and tests, the same kite would generate far less power, lower than 1 MW.
What about @Kitepower using a similar technology: yoyo mode, a soft wing, a single line, a pod aloft, and having a great team? I see this company as promising also.
Pierre,
Kitepower simply does not have the depth of industrial engineering or long operational experience at sea at larger scale. What do they offer that SkySails does not do better? Nothing I can think of.
Take Skysails’ kites, for example. They are far larger and more powerful parafoils, made by North Sails NZ. North is the top name in modern Sails. By contrast, Kitepower has down-selected to the LEI power-kite, then scaled it to marginal limits, far smaller, not truly utility-scalable, and it needs an air-pump system or fails.
We can go on at great length about unwise Kitepower engineering design, like how its operational planning, power electronics, mechanical reeling, and software all failed together in its Valkenburg crash.
We both know key people in both ventures. Its the now classic Cowboy vs Playboy AWE cultural divide. Disclaimer: kPower has an informal MOU with SkySails, as they expand into the US market, and if they ever need Open-AWE_IP-Cloud art. Kitepower will not even publicly disclose just how their tether dangerously draped across traffic lanes during the recent crash.
You have a close relationship to RolandS. Try and find out yourself the hidden company information, then perhaps reconsider how promising Kitepower seems.
Gipe on SkySails- " Makani will face stiff competition from…SkySails (http://www.skysails.info/)"
Skysails:
The ship towing section seems to have been been swallowed by Airseas
Only power gen remains at skysails group.
'How many co-workers can you claim ’
It is not a competition Dave but if you want to know we are 5 employee at kitewinder, not counting internship.
What about kpower? How many employee do you have?