OMG - Why not have a PhD program to try and figure out why humans are so stupid they cannot get any AWE system, of any size; in regular operation, no matter HOW many tens of PhD’s, hundreds of “engineers”. and thousands of students, interns, and “employees” (including “human resources” departments) have been thrown at it, not to mention how many billions of dollars have been wasted for not a single home powered by AWE after 15 years of intense effort?
Were they stupider when they thought they could do it in the first place, or are they just stupid now that they can’t, in fact, do anything, once given serious backing and encouragement? And finally, when we realize that this is an unusual amount of effort going into something that is just not being achieved, could there be some sort of “derangement syndrome” at play?
The main problem I’ve always seen with wannabe AWE has been, from the very beginning, nobody involved in wannabe AWE efforts had any real interest in, or understanding of, wind energy in the first place.
So of course they all make not only the very predictable beginner mistakes, having to go through the entire 3000-year learning curve for an unnecessary repeat performance, but many, if not most, never even get THAT far, still calling a double-lift machine as a “drag” machine, while calling what is essentially a drag machine as a “lift” machine. Then wanting to spend time arguining about it in the internet, while jabbering on about hydrogen as energy storage, 3-D printing as the savior of humanity, etc.
It’s all been quite a comedy to watch. maybe they should get with the drama department and use it as a basis for a new type of comedy.
Yes,same here, Battlebot.
God forbid we would just have ample spinning reserves as God originally intended. Now it’s a million “all-ya-gotta-do is” complicated band-aid quick-fix details, rather than just one simple system that works well.
Today we were out having breakfast, then went over to get a photo of our local 3-km-high mountains while they still have snow:
when I remarked to my girlfriend at maybe four (4) Tesla cars with drivers, sitting there charging for God knows how long, with most chargers empty, but it was a beautiful, sunny day, and these people were spending THEIR day “saving the planet” probably ending up an hour or more behind their friends who drive regular gas cars out to Las Vegas to blow their retirement funds on gambling.
Could you imagine, driving in to a gas station to fill up, and the hose was so tiny it would take an hour or more to drip enough fuel into your tank to get on with your journey? And that the tiny hose was so valuable half of them would be stolen? Could you imagine the amount of prime retail real estate that many slow-motion “gas pumps” would require?
Sounds about right. The great thing about a kite energy system on Mars, with far less than 1% of the air density of Earth, subfreezing temps, and dust storms, is it can comfortably and perpetually remain in the preferred-by-AWE “all-talk” format, with nobody ever suggesting that a tenth-grader have to demonstrate a working system, because, well, that would be too hard - especially for just a kid, right? Oh, and a girl. So people can go on taking it seriously because disproving it would be too difficult. I mean, come on - Mars? That;s Elon Musk territory, and he’s suddenly considered insane, well, um, this week anyway. Next week he’ll be OK again… But it does fit right into all the other AWE promises, always set in the future, usually to be supposedly deployed in remote locations where nobody can easily check to see if it is actually even running at all, let alone for how long, or what the output might be. In fact the stated source of this info that Pierre mentioned, has repeatedly expressed his belief that the wind energy industry is overly-reliant on meansured output (power meters), if that gives you any indication of the mindset, or lack thereof, in that case.
Ah yes, back to “Low Level Jets” = a major perrenial talking point for the AWE wind-wannabes. I was recently thinking of how to answer Rod’s query of how and why I have steadily used the terms “stupid”, “idiot” etc. in reference to most AWE efforts. It made me realize, it could literally fill a book. I could come up with a whole book on just how stupid the first High Altitude Wind Energy Conference in Chico/Oroville, California of 2010 actually was. Only thing is. nobody in this audience would understand any of it - that would take people with knowledge and experience in wind energy, aviation, etc.
Besides all the complete drooling fools, masquerading as geniuses, while clearly barely capable of even just dressing themselves, let alone behaving in a civilized manner, in attendance, we also had a very pleasant lady whose role turned out to be the only halfway sane person to ground things and steer away from outright mayhem.
That nice lady was Cristina Archer, whose stated role was to confirm that the wind is indeed higher at higher heights. Now I’ve attended quite a few wind energy conferences and meeting over the years, but that was the first time I remember seeing a meteorologist in attendance, as the wind itself is already a known and well-documented resource.
The real reason for Cristina was not so much that the wind itself was in doubt, but that the people in attendance and their whacky ideas had no credibility. The presence f Cristina served a need for some sort - any sort - of “credentials”, to rationalize the presence of all the actual nutcases in attendance, with their typical 100% lack of any sort of wind energy device whatsoever, even in theory, let alone a working example.
So basically, Cristina was s stage-prop, being used for her academic position and whatever scant credibility it might lend to the rest of the crowd. In the end, she also served as possibly the only sane mind in attendance, reminding me of a “Den Mother” in Cub Scouts - someone’s mom, serving to basically make sure the unruly kids behaved.
It reminded me of “WindTree”, a scam from a few years before, that had involved selling “territories” for a “new rooftop turbine” that was actually nothing but photos of standard rotating rooftop ventilators. “WindTree” ended in legal prosecutions for the promoters. I do remember their promotional material though. It discussed ONE THING: The wind RESOURCE. They would go on and on about HOW MUCH ENERGY was COMTAINED in the wind, and how many more times than all the energy used by mankind it added up to, while glossing over the simple fact that they had no technology to harness it.
No, there was never ANY discussion of any stated output numbers, ONLY the power in the wind itself. How did that serve the scam? Because it was a diversionary maneuver - they discussed facts, but avoided the simple fact of how their supposed turbines would never work. Simple-minded investors would just take the idea that there was a new great turbine, combined with the incredible numerical total of energy in the wind, assuming the promoters knew what they were doing, and throw money at them to buy “territories” - before it was too late and they missed out!!!
Now the idea that a learned person in wind energy could question any of this is unfathomable for a group of half-insane perpetual wind-newbies who are convinced they are “geniuses”, though without any actual rationale. Telling them that keeping the discussion on the wind resource itself, rather than how to harness it, is mistargeted, is lost on such perpetual newbies. And I say “perpetual” because 15 years later, none of the original people have learned anything or progressed in any way toward wind energy success.
OK so “everyone knows” the wind generally gets stronger as AGL elevation increases, with possible deviations. Sure, it’s possible to give such deviations a name, and to discuss the characteristics of such deviations. In other words, air at a lower elevation CAN go faster than wind at a higher elevation sometimes. That should also be obvious to anyone with a reasonable mind. But it does not affect whether any person has a valid way to provide reliable and substantial electricity from that wind in an economic way.
Nope, what it is, is a diversion, the way a sleight-of-hand performance “magician” directs the audience’s attention away from what’s really happening, to convey an illusion, or trick, to fool the audience. In this same way, supposed “AWE” people can have a “conference” where they spend a lot of effort dissecting the minutiae of the definitions of words like “low-level jets” to avoid discussing their lack of any way to economically and reliably harness those same winds - or any other winds!
The name “Low-Level-Jets” serves the purpose of an impressive-sounding diversion from the simple reality that the wind itself is all they have to discuss, because as far as a new way to do wind energy, they have NOTHING. So the “jets” go viral, and Cristina is still publishing papers - only these days to acknowledge that REAL windfarm turbulence might slightly affect highly-localized weather forecasts.
The original focus of that first conference “HIGH ALTITUDE” wind energy, slowly evaporated, as the “geniuses” slowly, over a few years, began to do some of the elementary math regarding weight, sag, cost, breakage, hazards, etc. of a simple tether (kite-string) if extended several miles to the stratosphere. Oh well, there will always be dummies in this world, right?
Hi Guys: I just looked up “failing EVTOL companies” on Google. Here is what its A.I. found (below) I think thr funniest one was “Kittyhawk” with one called “Heaviside” That’s how stupid these people are - naming their junk after its main problem - being on the heavy side. I predicted their failure, based on that stupid name, on this forum, years ago.
I saw an interview with a world’s leading tech investor, Cathy Wood, not that anyone here would know who she is, but her firm is invested in Archer, and she did not even know what the abbreviation “EVTOL” stood for. Well, she’s only a girl, right?
Even Airbus has given up on EVTOLs. That says a lot. Anyway, Google returned a huge list of articles indicating how the idea is now being abandoned:
Several electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) companies have struggled financially and faced insolvency or ceased operations in recent years. Notably, Lilium and Volocopter, both based in Germany, have experienced significant financial challenges and have either filed for insolvency or have been on the brink of insolvency. Other companies like Kitty Hawk, Aerion, and Airbus have also faced setbacks, with some shutting down operations or abandoning eVTOL programs.
Here’s a more detailed look:
Lilium:
Lilium, which had raised over US$1 billion, filed for insolvency in October 2024 and again in February 2025 after failing to secure a loan guarantee from the German government. Despite securing orders and having a partially completed prototype, the company struggled to secure additional funding and ultimately ceased operations.
Volocopter:
Volocopter also faced financial difficulties and applied for insolvency proceedings in 2024, struggling to secure additional funding. They have also faced difficulties in securing government funding, with their attempts to secure a loan guarantee from the German government also failing.
Kitty Hawk:
Kitty Hawk, backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, ceased operations in September 2022, failing to achieve commercial viability with its Heaviside eVTOL.
Aerion:
The supersonic business jet pioneer Aerion shut down in 2024 after failing to attract enough funding.
Airbus:
Airbus, a major manufacturer with eVTOL initiatives, abandoned its CityAirbus program and is no longer actively involved in the eVTOL space.
These failures highlight the challenges faced by eVTOL companies, including securing funding, navigating regulatory hurdles, and dealing with shifting investor sentiment. The financial struggles of these companies suggest that the eVTOL market may not be as promising as initially projected.
OK Doug
The problem with your first link
“Failing EVTOL Companies”
Was that a Google AI generated response gave you what you wanted. good. If that’s what you really wanted.
But consider , What happens to that same search term if you switch just the word failing into the word successful?
Oh Sh£%
You get a similar set of companies which now seem very successful.
(At least at raising funds)
I truly don’t understand why you persist in calling everyone stupid Doug.
Surely slating everyone on the forum with sloganeering is below you.
We shared many documents on this forum and previous ones about EVTOL specifics and requirements. Commercially viable EVTOL is a F$£%^*g hard challenge, we all know that.
Waay harder than the Clean Technica doc starts hinting at.
We’d all benefit by keeping the chat in the technical domain thanks
Rod: Everything you say is emotion-based. Everything I’ve been saying from day one on these supposed “AWE” forums has been fact-based.
Unlike ANYONE else purporting to be involved in wind energy from the airborne angle, I happen to be an expert n the field of wind energy. As I’ve stated many, many times, people actually IN wind energy, who know how to build and operate real wind turbines that can actually reliably power anything at all, have always faced extreme opposition from the endless chain of wannabe wind energy crackpots who purport to know more than all that has been learned over thousands of years to get wind energy where it is today.
I started right out telling the wannabe AWE “community” EXACTLY what the real deal is. I did not hold anything back. I told the simple truth. Deal with it.
In the field of wind energy, you people are considered extreme idiots, making all the same typical, misguided, arrogant, deranged, delusion-of-grandeur completely wrong statements that we’re used to hearing from the crackpot crowd who is unable or unwilling to learn anything about real wind energy, who has never designed, built, run, installed, maintained, repaired, rebuilt, reinstalled, or enjoyed the highly-positive results of electricty provided by, a real, working, wind energy system.
The similarity to EVTOLs is the promoters of both AWE and EVTOLs have zero expertise in either the field of wind energy OR aircraft design, as true experts in both fields agree. And BOTH groups are driven by the Global Warming derangement syndrome, that starts out calling the gas used in greenhouses to encourge plant growth, which NASA has cnfirmed has added 20% more green to the Earth, is somehow" anti-green". It is scientifically backwards - 100% wrong.
:
The similarity of AWE to EVTOL efforts starts with Joby.
Joby started out as a typical wannabe wind energy crackpot - one of the most visible at the time, but was smart enough to REALIZE how dumb they actually were being, so they switched to a similarly ill-advised global-warming derangement-based effort to make really heavy, unsafe aircraft with a limited use case, often calling them “flying taxis”, whereas the whole concept of flying cars had already been beaten to death for a century, with the result that no car would make a good airplane, and no airplane would make a good car.
I we want to look at your case, specifically, as just one of a hundred examples of AWE failures, a few years ago, you announced an upcoming 10-kW product you would soon develop, and I think the projected date is now at least a couple of years ago. This in resonse to the encouragement of “articles” announcing “your” wonderful wind energy “breakthrough”.
As someone who has studied, designed, manufactured, and shipped wind energy systems around the world, what do you think I KNEW when I read about your promised upcoming 10-kW AWE system?
Well, pretty simple: Like all wannabe AWE people, ROD has no idea what he is talking about, no idea what it takes to actually develop a reliable wind energy system, and he will absolutely NOT have a 10-kW system available for purchase in the short timeline he mentioned, if ever.
So there are the simple facts of wind energy, and the BIG-TALKER crackpots who tend to have delusions of grandeur based 0n a few favorable articles, whose true “accomplishments” in wind energy typically remain always in a future-tense, and never actually happen.
When I stated 17+ years ago that the whole lot of AWE people were “idiots, idiots, idiots” I was giving the ACTUAL answer, easy to see for “real wind people”. The fact that it was not something any AWE wannabes wanted to hear is irrelevant.
What I repeated publicly, to perhaps the most extreme of the idiots, whose name will go unmentioned, yet whom you started out in abject hero-worship of, “OVERSPEEED PROTECTION IS NOT THE MAIN THING, IT’S THE ONLY THING.”
As part of your misguided hero-worship, you began naively denigrating patents along with that idiot, following his example. You know what I KNEW? I knew YOU would end up, in fact, filing patents yourself, when you realized that was how things are done, rather than listening to that EXTREME idiot.
Today, Elom Musk has let the world know that patents are not all they’re cracked up to be - saying anyone can now use anything patented by Tesla. They are as much of a pain-in-the-ass as they are a benefit.
Of course I also knew the well-known fact of patents, that 99% make no money, and that just having patents doesn’t really get you anywhere but paying maintenance fees, while never moving forward with the invention. Been there, done that. So welcome to the patent-holder’s club! I’ll bet you’re already getting tired of paying the maintenance fees, right?
Today we have just ONE even marginally promising wind energy effort, out of HUNDREDS of AWE efforts who had all promised quick and amazing results:
Kite-X. And why is Kite-X even marginally successful? because
a) They gave up on AWE, instead using a simple and cheap tower;
b) Their design STARTED with addressing overspeed protection, just as I have been advising the whole time.
Even so, with a lot to admire about the Kite-X turbine, their “real” larger turbine remains an “in-the-future” accomplishment, and the target market is really not windfarm class wind resources which tend to quickly destroy all but the very best and strongest turbines, but instead occasional “camping” and cottages, where nobody expects to really have a truly reliable set-it-and-forget-it turbine, but will instead settle for a “hobby” level, ongoing maintenance project, where they have to keep buying spare parts as the frail components quickly wear out.
Anyway, the reasons I keep bringing up the endless erroneous press-releases for “game-changing” energy “innovations”, is so people like you can see how silly it would be to get a swelled head over some idiot :journalist: writing a global-warming-derangement-based article about your impending success in wind energy.
The reason I told everyone that the Magenn project, the MIT flying donut project, and all the rest, were going nowhere, was to tell the simple truth that ANYONE in wind energy could clearly see.
How can you sit there and say that the many, many highly-funded teams of supposedly “really-smart” people, wasting BILLIONS of dollars, could ALL promise to power hundreds or thousands of homes, or even in the case of our favorite extreme idiot whose name will remain unmentioned, to power the entire world with TeraWatts from tarps, are not in fact IDIOTS???
Out of EVERYTHING they have promised, WHAT has turned out to be true? NOTHING. And REAL WIND PEOPLE KNEW IT ALL ALONG.
It’s not MY FAULT that my admonishments went unheeded or uncomprehended - I told the truth, and the results are now in - there has NEVER BEEN a successful AWE product yet, as far as a reliable, electricity-generating system in regular operation anywhere in the world, What is it about that that you don’t understand?
As far as EVTOLs, after 17 years of hype, with the most visible project actually by a former AWE promiser (you can’t make this stuff up!) where is one in regular operation? For any use-case, anywhere in the world? OMG are you kidding? Not on any ranch, in any country - nowhere - nothing! A single tourist ride in China that hasn’t had a chance to kill everyone on board yet?
If you want to go on believing your own press-releases and public misstatements, have fun with that. Meanwhile, the world occasionally needs facts to work with, and luckily, there are a few of us willing to provide the facts. Go on ignoring them if you wish.
Hi Doug,
You are stating truths about AWE. However, neither you nor I are experts in EVTOL. Let’s allow the experts in commercial aviation to speak on this matter.
For AWE, the first problem is to start producing wind energy. When an AWES fails due to overspeed, it means that progress has been made. However, it may be that AWE does not meet this preliminary requirement.
That was ̶w̶a̶r̶m̶ ̶, p̶r̶o̶d̶u̶c̶t̶i̶v̶e̶ a̶n̶d̶ ̶e̶n̶c̶o̶u̶r̶a̶g̶i̶n̶g̶ Doug
No, not according to sentiment analysis I ran on it, it wasn’t
That was unnecessary personal attack.
Not the - keep it technical and competent - result my message called for.
You’re being a £$%"& and making this forum unpleasant, unproductive, irrelevant and a waste of time.
Just checking
Are you able to read, keep in mind and critically assess your own writing?
That rant was so self conflicting and illogical… So many questions
What are you hoping to achieve? Are you trying to contribute anything ?
As for me
Am I really doing this for the selfies, thumbs on posts and money?
Your “Real Wind” credentials - oh aye - here we go again.
The “Real Wind” folks in offices, on farm sites, at conferences and trade shows, behind the gov innovation budgets, in the universities and workshops whom I’ve had a cuppa with and shown my work to, are like - Hey wow, that’s fu-kin cool.
Sure I’m idealistic, optimistic and naive - I agree You have to be to try something so new and audacious - I’m not here to BS investors, this is hard to do, nor am I here to just exit a company - I’m doing this (And other things) because I believe the data from millions of scientists which says we should be trying to clean up energy systems. This is far from hero worship. You self proclaim to be an Expert, wow Doug, just wow
I agree media and big company investors all want you to say their thing - sing their song their way. Very hard to work with.
And my projects in AWES
No in the timescales I’d have hoped for and certainly in part due to my lack of knowledge, expertise and understanding my project has not reached 10kW yet (A goal set by an energy company sponsor - I wanted to go to 3 first to learn and scale more organically)
Is that failing? No. We planned, tested and shared new data so GTF
Is a reliable 10kW Kite Turbine impossible because of what my small effort has shown? no
Is it worth still trying ? yes
Would a technology which made EVTOL, fast, efficient, affordable, reliable, safe be worth it? Yes. Is it possible ooooh very hard to say yes yet. But we have identified a lot of flaws with known approaches and methods.
Can that be compared to AWES - Yeah kinda - but it is different
Weirdly - overspeed has not killed any of my prototypes yet, serious lack of control at high speeds yes, parts thrown at high speed yes, overspeed , as in centripetal disassembly ? no I don’t think so.
Not bothered to reply to the rest of your grim chat Doug
How about , maybe , Just leave the forum if you hate AWES and see no useful future for it.
Also If you would like to make your rage more effective you’re going to need to put more effort in than trolling out your tired tropes. And try to use logic.
Oh and finishing with a weak smiling emoji to make it seem nice
Hi Rod: Back to your obedient replication of the pariah, labeling any factual input as “troll” huh? As in any patent holder is “a patent troll”, right? And any patent is “a blocking patent” (rather than an “enabling” patent, as the law requires…) Hard to forget your dubious entry into wannabe wind energy - before you started filing (BLOCKING?) patents yourself…
Meanwhile, who told you that a thousand renderings will “perform” as intended, versus all real machines, that will not act like the renderings? Who flew in the face of your mentor, telling you to try solid blades versus “rag-and-string”, whereby you finally made some brief power before it all flew apart? Maybe you would have been better off with rag and string. Sorry for steering you in the wrong direction there.
It was ten (10) years ago that I declared “kite-reeling” (*the million flies") as dead - said “tme’s up - you have nothing” to the kite-reeling "community. Yet you guys still go on hoping it will eventually prevail.
Anyway, I’ve given up on being “nice” to a group of fewer than ten remaining big-talkers with nothing to show for all their big talk over the last 17 years pf global-warming-derangement-syndrome-based wannabe wind energy, who have collectively never been even peripherally involved in a single real working wind energy system of any kind, especially when over half of this tiny group of nothingburgers “volunteers” to squelch any factual input (become “moderators”).
LIKE A BUNCH OF 8-YEAR-OLDS RAISING THEIR HANDS AND VOLUNTEERING TO “TELL ON” the OTHER KIDS IN AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASS. And that “teacher” refuses to even identify herself! How pathetic can you get? Wait, you come in like an obedient puppy-dog to the biggest pariah of logical discussion of wind energy in history, volunteer to censor any factual input from anyone else, and then want to fixate on a smily face I place at the ends of my posts?
I find joy in creating working wind energy devices. I make sure I DO have a 10 kW turbine always running here - with a spare on the ground just in case. This message is powered by wind energy. Just because nobody else here is involved in wind energy is not my problem. I smile because of my zeroed-out electric bill.
You want to nitpick me about reporting the failing EVTOL space? Which is a digital twin of the failed AWE space? To lecture me on comparing the 17-year failed global-warming-derangement-syndrome-based EVTOL-space with the twin 17-year failed global-warming-derangement-syndrome-based AWE space? They are almost identical.
You say EVTOL technology is “hard”? Yes, because it doesn’t pass the most basic test of meeting first principles - like AWE has no real wind people involved, the EVTOL space is run by people from outside of aviation or automotive fields. The first question would be, why not simply electrify a quiet helicopter? Hmmm…
Here’s yet another article from CleanTechnica about Aptera and the other failed 17-year global-warming-derangement-syndrome-based 3-wheeled solar powered EV’s that I’ve been warning about for years:
Nice article Doug,
Sharing that was productive. Thanks
But really…
Baiting me into an argument with libelous outrage - We can be more grown up than that
Hi Pierre: Unfortunately, I don’t have a house in Antarctica - yet. Maybe instead of settling Mars, Elon should take a baby step and populate Antarctica. Warmer, with actual breathable air! Shorter flight, less danger. Elon could fly everyone there in a rocket, as a test run for Mars!
Perhaps you should start a “press-release breakthrough” company to implement high-altitude parasail electrical generation way, way down there. All you’d need then is some customers! Well, then again you could just target “disaster relief”, but the main “disaster” might be the return on investor capital when it turns out that there is no working system and no customers anyway, but at least it would fit the pattern of supposed deployment in a location too far from civilization for anyone to know it isn’t working, - why change the pattern now? if something works, don’t fix it! L)
yES pIERRE, i MUST SAY, THIS TRI-TETHER skygen SYSTEM - woops, capslok - weighs a half-ton as a start, to handle the immense forces and overheating potential of a real, working, reliable generator and rotor, but some genius figured out that with three (3) stationary tethers, a very long compression member could be inserted to relieve any hypothetical lifter kite of of the burden of elevating the half-ton turbine, and performing launches and landings every time the wind starts or stops. Instead, it is launched once every 20 years, using a crane. Amazing what that single long compression member accomplishes, without using ANY “A.I.”, 3-D Printing, etc. The bonus result is the turbine is in an aerial position and height at all times, and can then pivot toward wherever the wind comes from and start operating immediately. If the wind dies, the half-ton turbine assembly remains launched. The tethers keep it from flying away and then crashing to the ground. So I guess the AWE concept was in place long ago, adding two extra tethers and a central vertical compression member, and dispensing with the useless kite. Like Elon says, the best component is one that is eliminated - or something like that…
OK, let’s remember, in spite of any supposed “A.I.”, who is saying this, and as the saying goes: “consider the source”.
If we go back a few years, this same source of “information” was telling the world he would soon be collaborating with “The Moab Monkeys”, who would soon be climbing around on his wind-supported kite-and-tether structures. This is the same source who promised results from his old set of already-made cloth triangles sewn together, but not quite finished, by “Jalbert”/ Perhaps a decade or more ago, this same source described his envisioned future of wind energy: A giant array of kites flying above New York City, with technicians climbing around up there on ropes keeping it all running properly, and people flying these kites manually, full-time, for no pay, but instead “for the honor”.
No consideration was given to how it might all launch or land safely over skyscrapers a quarter-mile tall in one of the most densely-populated areas imaginable. No details were given about how and why people would be climbing around a thousand feet in the air on ropes or “tethers”. I’d have to say, to me anyway, it seemed that such talk was nothing less than a fantasy ego-trip spilling over into complete insanity, since nothing about it added up to anything that could actually happen, no, not at all
Meanwhile, here we are, 17 years into supposed “advanced” (there’s that word again) thinking about the possibilities for AWE again, going back to the first original, basic questions of 17 years ago regarding even the most basic principles of a design, let alone any of the ridiculous “details” offered in the past. This whole discussion has, in my opinion, fallen apart, and it seems that it is an admission of nothing whatsoever accomplished in these last 17 years, especially by this same old tired source of ongoing nonsense, who still seems to be incapable of generating even any paltry amount of electricity from anything, ever.
It all goes back to the level of untargeted confusion at the first “High Altitude Wind Power” meeting, where idle and uninformed discussions of basic properties of kites, and maybe whether they should be interconnected in any way, was as far as anyone could think.
(Note: The very name of what was under consideration had to be changed, when it was later decided to rename HAWP to AWE, since harnessing the jet stream seemed increasingly unrealistic as details were considered.)
If any of you are content to sit here listening to this ongoing, outdated nonsense from the same old proven source of obviously unworkable ideas, broken promises of future action, and zero results, I feel sorry for the time you waste on such idle nothingness, and can only repeat the well-worn mantra “Consider the Source”.
Ok, wait a second. - “Can be built quickly”? if we go back a few messages, they were supposed to have built a 1-MegaWatt system by 2024. Instead, it seems like they’re still “getting ready to get ready” to build anything that can run for more than a minute or two before breaking. Are we up to 9 years of big talk and empty promises now?
Also funny is how the article starts out showing a regular windfarm with standard turbines…
The other funny thing is Bill Gates has moved on and is no longer focusing on Energy Venture Breakthroughs, but like all the rest of the “A.I.” contingent, has moved on to nuclear power plants. Cuz everything that has mattered to “policy-makers” for the last 50 years is suddenly no longer valid, cuz, well, A.I. is all that matters now. Well you know, that and 3D printing…
One more funny aspect: Just the name “Energy Venture Breakthroughs” seems self-congratulatory ahead of the fact: this looks more like one more wannabe-wind-energy blooper than any kind of breakthrough. I’d say the main breakthrough might be the blades breaking through the housing when they hit the curved section at 180 mph, as though they could ever really get it to run at full speed…
This is a very valid theme you have been mentioning for quite some time now, making more efficient use of available space, to pack more energy-harvesting into a given area of wind, But we don’t see a single reliable system running at all, so there is really nothing to multiply. Thus, this line of discussion is really just another way of saying AWE is still at square-one: Still trying to figure out the most rudimentary aspects of what a reasonable basic approach might be. In other words, nowhere. Over a decade ago, we were often subjected to the excuse of “it’s a newborn baby!”. Back then, it looked like successful AWE was right around the corner, with Makani, Altaeros, etc, making their empty promises. Well, I’d say it’s still at the point of not even being a fertilized egg, with all that has been done leading nowhere useful, so far, The point you illustrate so well, is another way of saying nobody in the field has much of any idea how they would successfully do AWE, so it remains a distant dream, rather than a blossoming field of economical energy production.
If we go back a few years in online wannabe AWE discussions, one of the loudest and most insistent voices often claimed that power-kites, “rag-and-string”, and single-skin parasails were the future of wind energy. This same annoying voice predictably predicted that the Betz limit would not apply to his ideas, all the typical nonsense wind energy people have been subjected to forever by unqualified critics with no working knowledge of wind energy. Well, here it is again, an article about people who know nothing about wind energy, and don’t want to learn, denying basic facts and trying to substitute their own ignorance for knowledge. Apparently they say sails rather than blades would be more effective. You may note, this sort of critic is typically incapable of producing any power whatsoever, despite their claims of superior knowledge. Oh well, some things never change!
