Barnard's predictions

Analysis Industry and Market Analysis
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kPower has long calculated reasonable numbers, videogrammetrically, from kite jumping videos, and since figured out how to tap power kites various original ways, in addition to previous methods nicely laid out by Payne USP3987987.

There is also Culp et al’s old kite feat of erecting a multi-ton concrete obelisk in a science documentary, which would yield respectable power numbers. Skip the belated “square-one” sand bucket recommendation, which does not even consider lifted distance or time. Doug is now claiming secret power kite rigging ideas (“some good ways”). Barnard essentially predicts no great ideas can solve AWE, mysterious or not.

The Power Kite is AWE being fulfilled in our time; no prediction otherwise was correct.

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You are all talk…

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What then your, “I could tell you good ways”, you oddly claim above? “All talk”, as Barnard would fairly predict?

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Not “still”, but after examination of different methods comprising torsion transfer.

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We must always start from kite pull, just as Pocock, as a small child, tied toy kite to stone and as it was drawn along, how he “wondered”. Torsion never has been the kite’s best promise.

Lets reasonably predict Doug is not optimistically holding secret “good ways” to solve AWE, ways somehow better than USP3987987 fig.5.

Pocock and Payne are exemplary AWE prophets. Etzler made the key literary prediction; kites can power civilization.

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Pierre I’m not sure why you single out “torsion” when so many other ways have been explored.
My point is, noticing that a kite can lift or pull was a starting point leading to the exploration by many of AWE.
Step 1: Many years ago, people had long noticed kites can pull, and so…;
Step 2: people asked “How can this pull or lift be channeled into useful work?”
Add as many further steps as you need after that to get a working AWE system.
Add as many still further steps as you need to refine such an AWE system to be reliable and economical.
Note that nothing guarantees kites, per se, will even be a part of any resulting reliable, economical AWE system, should it ever be realized.

Meanwhile you have people trying to pretend that a watered-down observation that “kites can sort of pull” but

  1. only briefly and
  2. only when the weight is temporarily distributed across the fabric, and
  3. only if the kite can dump the weight in real time as it lifts off so it is never lifting the entire weight at one time and
  4. only if measuring the actual weight lifted is prohibited, and
  5. only if there is no requirement to lift whatever weight IS there to any particular height or location and:
  6. only if there is no requirement to release the weight in any particular place, and
  7. only if there is no energy capture enabled from said weight as it peels off the fabric…
    So because none of the perhaps thousands of steps have been taken from noticing “a kite can pull”, and even the suggestion of ways to measure such pull is resisted, I would say such an observaation of shedding snd from tarp on the beach take one far less than 1% of the way to developing any AWE system. I’m sure someone witnessed sand rolling off a kite launched from beach long before now, probably over a hundred years ago, and I would surmise it is common at kite festivals which are often held at beach locations.
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Santos wants to squirm his way out of this one, as usual. His typical tactics include:

  1. name-dropping and hero-worship of those who have made mundane observations, with obvious inferences, in the past
  2. mischaracterizing the statements of “Doug” and
  3. pretending that “blaming” or “overcoming” “Doug” is the challenge rather than developing an actual, working, reliable, economical (or even halfway promising) AWE system and;
  4. subsituting “slogansm” for logical reasoning and any attempt at engineering even a slightly-promising AWE configuration.
    What I said was I could show you ways to get power from such an arch kite.
    I did not say such ways would eclipse existing wind energy systems, only that I can think of them, and they would produce some power and/or achieve physical tasks. I did not say they would “solve AWE”. One more example of Santos mischaracterizing my statements: he implies if anyone could find a way to extract power from an arch kite they have then “solved AWE”. That is just one example of how the current thinking is often a million miles from even understanding what is needed, let alone “solving AWE” which pretty much means rendering today’s wind energy technology obsolete by coming in at below 4 cents/kWh or even heading down to 3 or 2 cents per kWh.
    Let’s just take 3 cents/kWh. How close to achieving 3 cents per kWh is shedding some sand upon liftoff of a kite?
    No amount of additional B.S. is going to help, so save your breath.
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YOU need to go. Santos “needs to go”
Endless B.S is not doing anything to solve AWE and in my experience, is hurtful to clear thinking in wind energy.

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Not just me, we all “need to go” upward by our growing technical kite knowledge, toward the “tremendous energy” Dr. Moore reminds Barnard of.

There has been fantastic accelerating AWE progress, with no sign of slowing, even just since Barnard posed his pessimistic thoughts. Lets especially celebrate the global evolution of the TRL9 COTS power kite in all its diversity.

Yes, power kite canopies are all arches in principle, even when bridles converge below. Without the tensile catenary arch principle, one is stuck with rigid cantilever wing mass that hardly scales.

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Doug, official circles consider flygen and yoyo: almost all companies use them. For what I know three companies use torsion: Selsam, Windswept and Interesting, and someAWE. And also the only one marketed AWES is none of them.

I experimented flygen (FlygenKite), studied torsion (rotating reel) and experimented it a little, and pull (lever arm), not still yoyo.

Torsion devices work well, a little like current wind turbines, but if their basis is on the ground (as it is usually) they cannot fly as high as yoyo or flygen devices, unless they have rigid parts enough to assure the transfer, which limits scaling, or gigantic ground and flying rotors like rotating reel.

Finally nothing is safe in all this. My opinion is that the maximization of space will be the key unless Kitewinder imposes individual systems.

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You don’t have a limit to quote for altitude on torque transfer @PierreB
Also, torque transfer systems do not need rigid flown mass. They can definitely benefit from some. But they don’t need it. Even a simple spin bol kite can demonstrate that.

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When we hold a spin bol kite, we don’t rotate with it (if there is no swivel the kite will stop rotate). We undergo its pulling force.

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Hey, absolutely, spin bol kites are pants at wind power and torque energy transfer, they’re not powerful and they compress, but there is a wee bit of energy transfer going on there.
Purpose designed Kite Turbine rotors by comparison, can use multiple, fast, light, powerful, wide spaced wings on multiple levels. As long as the force from the multiple levels compliments net inflation down the stack then large torque energy transfer is also possible. This stacked ring arrangement can easily be taller than a 1:10 (1 ground ring diameter : 10 ground ring diameters top ring altitude) The ideal ratio depending on many configuration and local parameters.

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1:10 or more: that sounds plausible. After there are some practical issues such as the coherence of the whole with different winds and the resulted transferred torque, launching and landing, the rigid parts (excepted the rotors) as it scales… Then comparing pros and cons with other methods comprising yoyo and flygen, static, rotary, and crosswind devices, for an unity, for several unities…

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M. Barnard’s comment (see also responses):

You do realize that they were put out of their misery almost two years ago?

RIP Google Makani: Perhaps The Entire Airborne Wind Energy Space Will Finally Disappear - CleanTechnica

And for good reasons, which I discussed with the guy who ran Makani for years recently.

Airborne Wind Energy: It's All Platypuses Instead Of Cheetahs - CleanTechnica

Let sleeping stupid tech stay asleep. Promoting dead nonsense just opens the door to throwing more money at bad ideas.

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As the years roll on, such statements become increasingly suspect. Seems to me most of this supposed “progress” is an illusion. You’d have to be a “true believer” to keep repeating such dubious assessments, especially in light of the fact that in case after case, real success consistently fails to materialize, and in fact, quite the opposite, where the “leaders” consistently evaporate and disappear. For companies that don’t disappear outright, the notion of changing horses midstream to “providing wireless” seems to also lead nowhere. By the way I have a wifi provider wanting to use my tower to provide wifi to nearby desert sites. Imagine that - a tower. Ya know, like radio stations use? Meanwhile, these “true believers” imagined their new task was to “debate” observers presenting a few simple facts, like Mike Barnard. As though if they could pretend to “win” a debate with Mike Barnard, that would magically result in an economically-viable airborne wind energy system, whereas in reality, these “true believers” offer no actual solutions, just cheerleading the highly-funded losers, and denigrating honest, well-meaning commentators who dare to inject any reality into the discussion…

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Paul Gipe’s recent article about AWES: http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=64&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=6187&cHash=b0e239803ae5a3876ec8b2d1b3e97113.

His analysis agrees with that of Mike Barnard, which he quotes:

December 7, 2021
Paul Gipe

Airborne Wind Energy Systems (Kites)

With the exception of FloDesign/Ogin, shrouded turbines have fallen out of favor with inventors as well as the media. The buzz in 2013 was all about kites or as their promoters prefer to call them Airborne Wind Energy Systems (AWES). Likewise, seed capital for new wind energy inventions has shifted from DOE to Silicon Valley with Google’s investment in Makani’s flying wind turbine.

Note: The following is adapted from Chapter 7, Novel Wind Systems in Wind Energy for the Rest of Us by Paul Gipe.

Kite proponents in North America and Europe exhibit a cult-like fervor, claiming kites are the wave of the future because kites will be more productive and less costly than the wind turbines we have now. Google’s investment has only stoked their certainty. Google couldn’t be wrong, could it? In this, kites–as a new technology—are no different than DAWTs or VAWTs or any other wind invention that wins high-profile backing. VAWTs have celebrity endorsers. DAWTs have DOE. Kites have Google.

Most wind engineers don’t give kites a second thought. The typical reaction is, “You must be kidding?” As with DAWTs, kites and other flying wind energy systems are not found in any engineering textbooks on wind energy. However, kites and kite promoters have won media attention and with that political attention—and money–soon follows. For this reason, some analysts have felt it necessary to give kites more than a cursory glance.

No one has done more to analyze the realistic prospect of using kites to generate electricity than wind energy analyst Mike Barnard. His interest in kites and other wind turbine inventions is that of an advocate. He wants wind energy deployed. Anything that stands in the way of expanding the use of wind energy today is ripe for his critical analysis. His approach is cool and level-headed. He’s not one to fall for hype.

Barnard segregates kites into several categories based on their wings, where they generate electricity, how they fly, and at what altitude they fly.

  • Soft wing, hard wing, lighter-than-air
  • Generation on the ground or in the air
  • Single tethers or multiple tethers
  • Crosswind flying or static flying
  • High-altitude flying or low

When we think of kites, we naturally think of soft wings. EnerKite is just one of many examples of soft wing kites that use a fabric parasail. Google’s Makani, on the other hand, uses a tethered fixed-wing plane that flies to its position. Magenn and its successors propose helium filled blimps that carry the generator to altitude. Makani and Magenn were designed to generate electricity on board and transmit the electricity to the ground via a tethered power cable. EnerKite and the others like it spool and unspool a reel attached to a generator on the ground. Makani flies across the wind as do most soft wing kites, the Magenn blimp rests at its operating position. Some propose flying their kites at altitudes common to commercial aircraft, others at heights not much different to commercial wind turbines today.

No kite company has built anything more than a prototype. EnerKite, for example, has produced a proof-of-concept 30 kW model that may be suited for niche applications in remote locations, such as for military use. Makani, for all its flash, has only developed a prototype. While some have made sophisticated measurements under trial conditions, none of the kite companies have published performance results measured under standardized conditions so that their results can be compared to conventional wind turbines. Until kite proponents prove their claims, they remain just that–claims.

Kites, like other novel wind turbines, have several technical limitations to overcome before they are anything more than a novelty. One of the most obvious problem is the tether whipping around the sky. Flying a kite at anything much more than the height of a conventional wind turbine requires an aircraft flight exclusion zone. This alone is enough to ground most kite concepts.

If the kites can’t be flown high enough, because of potential conflicts with aircraft, to take advantage of increased wind speeds at height, then they don’t offer any yield advantage over conventional turbines.

For brief use at remote sites, manual operation of the kite may be sufficient. But for anything approaching commercial use, the kite must be automatically flown into the air, automatically flown once the kite becomes airborne, and automatically retrieved when necessary. Automatic flight hasn’t been demonstrated on anything more than a prototype scale.

Barnard sums up his take on kites after an exhaustive analysis.

“The potential energy available in the wind flowing high above our heads is alluring, and harvesting it with tethered flying wings has great appeal, but as soon as you start engineering an airborne solution to harvest that energy, the compromises strip away the potential bit-by-bit until it just isn’t viable in any incarnation so far attempted. And it’s clear that many of the current organizations in the field were started at best with optimistic assessments regarding safety and aviation authority approvals.”

By early 2014, the longest that a tethered kite has stayed airborne is two weeks. For comparison, conventional wind turbines at good sites operate more than 6,000 hours per year or 35 weeks. While they may not be in continuous operation during that time, conventional wind turbines are ready and available to generate electricity 98% of the full 8,760 hours in a year. That’s a lot more than two weeks.

It will take years of steady development if kites are ever to compete with conventional wind turbines. They are a long way from that today.

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OK first of all, a disclaimer: Paul is a friend of mine, and has flown one of my turbines for a year and said it was the most powerful turbine he had ever tested.
But I would say it is not Mike Barnard, but me who “has done more to analyze the realistic prospect of using kites to generate electricity”, starting with the fact that I’ve maintained that AWE need not necessarily involve “kites” per se.
This article from Paul’s 2016 book, was apparently written circa 2014, which is now eight (8) years ago. He is still talking about “Magenn” for instance. Magenn is a good example of how ignorant and uninformed so many people, including both inventors and investors, are capable of being. I was a lone voice in immediately flagging Magenn as a complete joke from the moment I first saw it, realizing we were looking at the most watered-down version ever created of the least-powerful type of turbine commonly recognized (Savonius), made even less powerful, and infinitely more expensive, by the helium blimp/balloon that formed the main body of the apparatus. Everything in this article is far outdated, yet, with the lack of progress AWE has shown, still mostly accurate.
Paul is skeptical, but notice he never declares AWE impossible or even unlikely, just gives the facts as known in 2014. One must forgive Paul’s skeptical tone when you realize AWE is, for him, just the latest ignorant newbie wannabe wind energy breakthrough. The fact that AWE can work at all adds a hopeful note to AWE enthusiasts, but as I’ve pointed out several times, there are unlimited ways to make some power from the wind, at some cost. The real question, as with any energy “breakthrough” is whether it forms a realistic, competitive, reliable, economical energy solution. Either the numbers pencil out, or they don’t.
Really, my first purpose for even participating in AWE chat groups and events was to show a working example of AWE, which was my Popular Science Invention of the Year “Sky Serpent”, but I found myself immediately in the company of some of the most insistent know-nothing idiot/dreamers I had ever encountered. Suddenly I went from being in the company of people who knew exactly what they were doing, to people who not only had NO idea what they were doing, but no idea of what was even possible, probable, or realistic in wind energy. And so it continues to this day. About the “best” the AWE “community” can do remains to waste millions of dollars going nowhere fast, and to censor, to the best of their ability, any factual analysis of the silly attempts at AWE, which I have stated amount to “the bloopers”, reminiscent of the “bloopers” we often see in videos showing early attempts at powered flight, accompanied by the sound of a squeeze-bulb bicycle horn. It seems now that even the most simple, straightforward, and “certain-to succeed” versions of AWE, basically a fallback position from the previous stated success-ahead-of-the-fact of superseding the dreaded wind turbines, or “windtowers” as one of the previous censorship-happy AWE chat “moderators” called them, just a larger version of a kitesurfing sail pulling a ship or boat, has not caught on or seen in common use.
My assessment has always been, and remains, AWE is quite possible, but it does not appear any current version is making the grade. To date, we’ve seen over a billion dollars of sexy attempts, which typically go from sweeping pronouncements of future success, to outright bankruptcy, never missing a beat in the “certainty” of their “success” - all in the future of course.
In fact, it brings to mind a new quote, which we can all try to disprove:

“AWE is the future of wind energy, and always will be”.

There, how’s that for a slogan? :slight_smile:

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He still harps on about his doomy predictions…

Martin has been one of them in the past, and I’ve dealt with numerous aerospace engineers who wasted a lot of time in airborne wind energy, and many of them pivoted to the electric vertical take-off and landing space, both of which I’ve written about extensively.

from

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Yes Hydrogen is about the least efficient method of energy storage ever conceived.
Reminds me of people who want to have daylight savings time become permanent - instead of just keeping us on standard time and everyone decide when they want their schools and businesses to open. People have been dumbed down to only be able to think of one bumper-sticker slogan at a time, rather than being able to think around even the first corner, let alone through a complete maze.
As far as Barnard goes, it is telling that AWE people ever wanted to waste any time arguing with him in the first place. Either you have something or you don’t. Either show the world what you’ve got, or move on. What would a debate prove, if nobody could ever develop a compelling system? Developing the system IS the debate. I remember Santos wanting to schedule a “debate” with Barnard. I warned Barnard that he was not interested in a fair debate with anyone, and mostly interested in name-calling and emotional positioning. That was over a decade ago. The silly thing is, to prove Barnard wrong all anyone has to do is develop a system that proves him wrong. So simple. I mean, AWE WAS supposed to be simple, right? Less material? The Jet Stream? All the “really smart” people developing it? (How could a million flies be wrong?) Anyway, one of the early “big names” in AWE was Joby. Now, Joby is “developing” a “flying taxi service”. You can buy stock in the company. Ticker symbol JOBY. Go ahead. Valuation in the $ billions. I think it’s already down to about five bucks, half its original “value”. You can make a lot of money on the swings of small company stocks like this.