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61

The length of time between posts on this topic reminds me of a slogan the two guys from the previous AWE forum were quite enthusiastically promoting, not so long ago: “RAD”

The acronym “RAD” was said to stand for “Rapid Airborne Wind Energy Development”. I observed the acronym should be “RAWED”, but “RAD” made them feel Iike hipsters… or something. You know, like “Dude! That is SO RAD!!! (?)
See, no action was expected, it’s all about emotion and posturing, with nothing to show, ever.

RAD seemed to be endlessly repeated for a fashion, but seems forgotten lately, in lieu of “Advanced kite networks”

The mystery then becomes, after several years have passed, what has “developed” in a “rapid” fashion, and where can we see an “advanced” “kite network” generating power today? I was at one point asked thru John O. if I would be willing to fund them, as though their lack of follow-thru was my fault…

As I recall, the stated method of power extraction from an “advanced” kite “network” was for the “network” to assume a dome shape over an open pit, abandoned mine, or crater, and pull electric trains up the sloped sides of the pit. The mythical electric trains would then generate electricity when allowed to coast back down to the bottom of the pit. No more details were ever provided, such as HOW the “advanced kite network” dome would physically pull a train below it sideways up the side of the crater, HOW the electricity would go from the train to the grid, or even WHY the trains were to be included, since a cable over a drum would eliminate the train as unnecessary at all, assuming the kite dome could pull sideways while still remainning in position over the dome.. But this is where the dream-state of “AWE” lives - say anything, whether it makes any sense whatsoever, or leads anywhere at all, but never go back and examine the progress resulting from whatever anyone said 5 years ago…. :slight_smile:

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Yes and speaking of sanity checks, the human intelligence here on this forum was using Ampyx as an example, for skeptics, of the burgeoning success of AWE - Meanwhile, I guess they went bankrupt. (?) Maybe the weak link here is the humans! :slight_smile:

63

One of Dave Santos’ favorite memes… Thanks for that, Dave. :slight_smile:

64

HI PIERRE:

WOOPS - CAPSLOK… We made sails for our sleds as kids and rode the wind across our icy, flooded-then-frozen local playground, in the 1960’s. So easy a kid could do it. I’m thinking you got this from U-no-hu’s spam messages, as I’ve come to recognize the arctic sled theme as his fallback position for wind energy, after never having offered any actual workable ideas, let alone generating any power, let alone producing the TeraWatts he has often bragged about.

This is an example of the deceptive practice of redefining words, from the old forum: “moving the goalpost”. They start out denigrating wind turbines as “windtowers”, claiming that their “advanced” kites will soon make the wind turbines obsolete by producing TeraWatts of electricity. When that degenerates to shaking a self-winding watch, they retreat to pulling sleds, providing shade, etc., as their “new definition” of airborne wind energy, allowing them to claim victory despite their abject failure to ever generate a single Watt of electricity from the wind, by any means. And no, dumping sand from a tarp at the beach doesn’t count either… There is a spectrum here, and it’s easy to recognize where this one comes from. The next typical step would be to claim the sled could have a geared drive to power a generator to produce hydrogen onboard, to be collected and sold worldwide as “the answer” to the global warming derangement syndrome. All the typical nonsense we’ve become accustomed to…

:slight_smile:

65

Hi Doug,

No, this is on Windsled website. But this information, which focuses on kite traction, falsely supports his statements. Traction is not producing electricity, as you know. And furthermore (from the website):

Unsuccessful attempts have been made using bigger kites, testing kites as big as 250 sq/m but have proven too difficult to handle and not practical.

So, this kite would not scale well beyond 250 sq/m;

For the extreme traction needed to pull the sled, it is important that the kites are very slow.

As a result, a use as a crosswind kite would not lead to an efficient crosswind AWES.

66

Yeah, I’ve got a 24-foot wooden tower here - works great, a portable pyramid with a steel top to support a turbine, moveable, tiltable, and we use chunks of concrete to weigh it down against storms. Big deal. All windmill towers were made of wood for most of history.

This kind of crap gets so redundant after a while. One more “press-release breakthrough”, this time from “Rosie” - a great source for beginners to possibly learn some teeny bit of information about wind turbines, that all real wind people already know. How many articles have we seen over the last decade celebrating this “new” concept of wooden towers for wind turbines? And what does it have to do with AWE? Newsflash: structures of all kinds, including towers, buildings, vehicles. and turbines themselves, can be made of wood! OK, now you can go back to sleep.

I ‘ve pointed out hundreds, if not thousands, of the daily “press-release breakthroughs” for “advanced” wind turbine designs, “revolutionary” battery technologies, the underwater turbines, the “flying taxis”, the spinning cylinders on ships, on and on. They all lead nowhere. None of the “game-changer” wind turbines are ever even built. The spinning cylinders are a passing fad of greenwashing desperation, which will soon be removed as a nuisance. Almost none of them emerge as any working product, except maybe LFP batteries, which, while heavier, are at least cheaper.

We’ve discussed all the minute details of “windsleds” over and over, ever since THAT topic became Santos’ “fallback position” after he couldn’t come up with any workable AWE ideas. Like I’ve said, even as little kids, we had crafted sails for our sleds and rode them across icy fields - big deal!

Yeah, sure, “Rosie” again… I mean, I guess, for people who don’t know anything about wind energy, it’s better than nothing. Another “gamechanger” “press-release breakthrough”… Stay tuned now, as everyone forgets wooden towers for a couple more years, until next time it is once again re-announced as “a new idea” - the next great “game-changing” “press-release breakthrough! :slight_smile:

67

More grants, “preorders”, group selfies…
Notice a pattern?

Kitepower, new website for the 100 kW Falcon AWES
68

…for the present; results for the future…We must be satisfied with it.

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Hi Pierre:

OK thanks for distinguishing between the two concepts.

And yes, of course, “remote regions”

That means locate your early prototypes thousands of miles from curious eyes, where nobody ever goes, so you can pretend they are working when they are sitting idle and ignored.…

And let’s not forget “disaster-relief”!!!

The little remaining problem is the lack of any AWE system in regular operation, at any scale, at any time or place, despite billions spent by even the largest corporations, “teams” “renting office space” ( Wheeeee…!) , uninformed dreamers confusing fantasy ships supposedly pulled by kites with their propellers turning gearboxes spinning generators generating electricity to be wasted in highly inefficient electrolysis of seawater to end up with a 12% (or maybe even zero or negative) energy return - the endless untargeted dreaming by those who cannot master even elementary school arithmetic…

Which AWE effort or person, out of thousands of wannabes, has even a single windmill running right now? Who in AWE has even enough interest in actual wind energy to even have a single regular wind turbine running anywhere?

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And by the way, to respond literally, the hypothetical AWE system would likely get tangled in the lower-level wind turbine blades.

71

The lower-level wind turbines would be hypothetical low-level AWE systems, alongside equally hypothetical but higher-level AWE systems.

72

This topic reminds me of the decade+ of such posts by Dave Santos. A pretense of high-level analysis, coming from the depths of ignorance and nothingness, without any promising examples, or even promising directions to pursue. Seems like a bunch of pseudo-intellectual gibberish to me. People with nothing left to say, trying to say something, but there is nothing.

I used to tell Santos his endless nonsense was comparable to showing up to a Formula-1 race with a wheelbarrow, while bragging about a future win.

Imagine if, rather than an improved wind energy system, the focus was on an improved diesel engine. A thousand people were involved, with $billions spent, but out of the thousand people, none had any experience designing diesel engines, in fact not one had ever even driven a diesel truck or operated a diesel generator. Further, the people would keep bragging about their future conquest of the space, while investors threw money at them, but as a decade and a half went by, still none of them had ever even just driven a diesel truck, let alone designed even a workable diesel engine, let alone an improved version…

At that point, could one possibly cite some sort of derangement syndrome?