Doug, This is a Barnard topic, so be sure to note he understands AWE to be aviation, and you overlook that dimension in seeing AWE as about turbines on poles.
Its true that I depend on testing at small scale in order to test more broadly than anyone else. Part of the fun is not obsessing over a power meter, but feeling the power, which is the opposite practice of what you recommend, with just your one idea fixe, the ST. I am promising that vast kite networks can power the world, but you’ll have to wait patiently to see if that’s true. How much power can you calculate here, by lifting several tons of sand in a few seconds? No power meter needed for videogrammetry-