Just come back from unicycling… Wait… This is a bit similar … 3 kites is easier than 1. Most anyone could learn to unicycle… I think it’s harder to learn how to make a tricycle fall over. Especially if its a wide equilateral designed to spin with wheels perpendicular to their node.
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Imho instead of thinking about possible niches, it could be better to think about possible AWE technologies like crosswind or constrained-crosswind-rotating-like (with higher power and lower elevation angle) and static devices (with lower power and higher elevation angle). Then niches become more obvious. The two technologies could be also achieved by different companies or a single company.
AWE has already an available static device as kiwee-one. Its both high elevation angle and simple use determine the possible niches. As it scales other niches can be seen. Perhaps some elements could lead to an utility-scale system, but it is not sure, and perhaps not important.
Besides it an utility-scale crosswind or constrained-crosswind-rotating-like device can grow in the shadow of the marketed kiwee-one static device.
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I was not thinking about you when I said in the garage. I was just saying that sometimes even the initial product needs to be at a bigger scale. It’s not certain that you can grow an alternative to windmills and solar organically because they already have a firm marketshare and an optimised production system.
Kitewinder is still a great product though. It can evolve into a bigger player in the “transportable energy” niche (or whatever your niche is), or be a door opener to a bigger development like I am talking about. Being commercially available makes you AWE’s closest thing to Elon Musk right now 
And these are just my thought on the subject. I may well be totally wrong
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Well, in fact once you have a company running with a initial product, it is a lot more easy to find investor for something bigger.
What if AWES wasn’t about lower LCOE but about achieving almost permanent electric generation?
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Yepp. More expensive power but more consistent. That is a possible success recipe
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The nice thing with awes is, that small systems can reach altitudes with more consistent winds usually reserved for huge turbines.
Is there any rule of thumb of the relation between altitude and capacity factor?
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Well, I think if you go higher, in favorable places, there might be locations were wind blow almost permanently. That implies higher = better capacity factor.
At kitewinder we haven’t try high altitude yet despite the fact that there is no identified issue to go higher, just us an additional high capacity winch with kiwee. And efficiency is the same with a long or a short belt with our design… Work in progress
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That should be fairly easy to test and would provide some content for your channels. (But I know you’ve got some work lined up already)
Look forward to hearing about it.
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You try to eliminate risk as much as possible. Depending on a few investors to sustain you is riskier than depending on a small niche market (and a few investors) that can sustain you. You just do what you can to hopefully make a useful product before the money runs out.
You can look at the prerequisites needed for a product. For yoyo based systems it is computing power and machine learning and small electronics and so on. In the seventies what the current players are doing with automatic flight was impossible, now it is very hard, in 10 or 20 years it will be comparatively trivial.
Everyone is building stuff in their garage. It’s just that some garages are bigger and have more equipment than others. Making kites and airplanes is done by hand, still.
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My garage comment was perhaps misplaced. It was just another way of stating that according to the current market conditions, cost of entry could be high or low. In the energy market, cost of entry with a new tech is probably quite high just now. And probably will get higher due to battery and solar technology advances.
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Cost of entry depends on your own costs in developing and making the product, not on your competition? I also think competition is going to increase, perhaps completely eliminating the need for wind energy in a few decades. Cost of entry, depends on what niche you’re going after and how big you want to make your product. Also how you structure your business and how you partner with suppliers and customers.
You can try to develop a 2 MW turbine, but proceed with caution. Like @kitewinder says, you’re going to struggle if it takes you two years to build a prototype.
Edit: there may be costs of entry that are fixed. Maybe a new system needs to be certified by the flight authorities before it is allowed to fly and that is a fixed, high, cost? Maybe there are other such costs?
I am not thinking about competition with AWE, but competition from the established players.
Eg for electric cars the competition would be cheap gasoline cars with zero R&D expenditure. Why is the cost of developing an electric car dependent on this? Because if everyone just had horses, selling electric cars would be a lot easier even at a much higher price and zero range.
Also I gather building windmills, only the largest sizes are competitive in the market. Someone building a small windmill in their garage could not (probably) be competitive.
For electric energy the competition is largely from solar and windmills (excluding non renewable power). But the niche for AWE could be the fact that both of these require massive resources in terms of area (solar) and area+wind resources (windmills). AWE will probably be able to cater for those lacking in those resources, willing to pay a premium for any power that may be delivered.
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Also some thinking: large utility-scale AWES would go to a centralized production, while small AWES would be dedicated to almost individual productions.
If kiwee-like can scale to about 2-10 kW, electric production for individual house would become a potential market. Let us imagine some houses within an housing estate with a central area allowing the kite to tilt to wind direction. Such an installation would be possible if the elevation angle is about 60 degrees and if the safety depends to both passive and active controls, but not possible with large crosswind systems flying at 30 degrees, and of which the safety depends only to an automated control.
This is an example where a 2-10 kw scale AWE market could be far higher than a MW scale AWES market.
Same.
I was thinking of barriers to entry. I think we are talking about different concepts. I think costs of entry are what it costs me to set up a business, hire people, do R&D, and so on. Doing that for an electric car costs me the same, regardless of whether I am competing with horses or gasoline cars.
Or you’re saying that because now the competition is so far ahead, it’s difficult for a new entrant to compete so that’s why you have to try harder to make a good product? I’ll refer to my first post then. We’re agreeing there.
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For Kiwee One the swept area of a 2 kW rated unit would be 20 m^2 or diameter 4.5 meters. For a more useful 10 kW rated unit (giving 2-3 kW on average every day) we are talking 100 m^2 and 10 meter diameter.
With these dimensions I doubt most people would like to have them on their roof without major safety concerns.
For comparison: solar cells for my roof cost approx 11k €, give me 0.88 kW on average through the year, and have rated power approx 8.8 kW. This is approx half of a typical Norwegian household consumption.
Solar cells are not really competitive in Norway, but some people do it out of ignorance, environmental consciousness coolness or whatever.
All this just shows what I am saying is true (or at least has some valid thoughts in it) - the market conditions are making it very difficult for Kiwee One to enter this specific market.
The reason why Kiwee One could succeed in this niche: My roof could not withstand the large moments from the base of a traditional windmill, but a platform could easily be built for the 100 m^2 unit. 
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I agree it can be a bad idea. But what about utility-scale AWES? Why not a giant HAWT with a thin tower, a gigantic thin rotor with secondary turbines instead of a multi flygen AWES flying at 30 degrees, or a multi yoyo with intermittent production, hard control, and serious issues of the ground installation as the low reel-out speed doesn’t facilitate scaling up?
I really dont know. I think it could be possible.
“@dougselsam, I think a reason for your doubt in the players is from not knowing how new disruptive product development and market penetration works.”
My Reply:
I’ll stick with “idiots, idiots, idiots”, if you don’t mind.
You are trying to talk and squawk your way out of facing simple facts.
Like all ineffective wannabe wind energy innovators, you:
- resort to name-calling. Santos spent many years calling everyone he disagreed with on the internet “trolls”. Now I guess the game is analyzing and explaining exactly what type of “troll” someone is. Sure dude.
- do not appreciate the magnitude of the challenge of improving wind energy technology. Every newcomer assumes it will be simple and that their simple “understanding” will “crack the code”. Nope, try again. Even most wind turbine companies are out of business, usually because they never got a handle on overspeed protection.
I’ve invented and created more types of wind turbine than anyone. I’ve fully paid back every investor with interest. I have a little turbine in front of my house that is partially airborne that has been running into the grid unattended for 9 continuous years. I shit wind turbine designs and the toilet paper I use has more knowledge than most wannabe wind people. We produce our own generators, our own blades. I’ve single handedly burned out more generators than any supposed AWE company has ever used, just perfecting overspeed protection for various models. And yes, I can, (and have many times) tell you if any company has the slightest clue, at a glance. You, on the other hand started a chat group for AWE. Thanks but it involves completely different skills. There are far less than 1% of wind energy wannabes who will ever even begin to “get it”. I can tell you are highly resistant to facts - that is another really bad sign. But you have plenty of company. You are in the majority. Those of us who know how wind energy works are in the minority. Many of my friends are some of the most talented wind energy creative minds in the world. Doesn’t mean they are rich, but we build real solutions that stand the test of time, and have a lot of fun goofing on the wannabe idiots who think they know something when they don’t. Easy to see the signs after enough years. Easy to see when companies are just wasting money and will never get anything going. Wind energy is a very unforgiving endeavor. The wind is brutal and doesn’t respond to name-calling. What it does is make a fool out of crackpots. It will destroy your best efforts in seconds and laugh at you. If you pay attention and don’t give up for many years, you might begin to master it just a teeny bit, but you’ll have many many attempts destroyed first before you get even a single real machine capable of handling real wind developed. It is so funny to see even people who design jet engines fail when they try what they THINK will be an easy challenge. No, wind will kick your ass and some of us know it. Pay attention or not, your choice. The battlefield of wind energy is littered with far more windidiot bodies than survivors. I’d estimate the ratio at about 1000:1.
Have a McDay!
Yes this is what everyone thinks. They think wind is easy. The aerospace companies were funded to develop wind turbines at first, but they broke because they built them from riveted aluminum like airplanes. It was a wrong direction. One rule-of-thumb in wind energy is to never use aluminum. The aerospace companies’ skillset was more suited for space travel. An airplane (or your car) is really a spaceship just with very limited range (near a planet surface).
Fossil fuels would still be cheap but the oil companies have learned to turn all oil rich countries into war zones or be under sanctions, revolution, etc., stage spills, fires, blowouts, and explosions to shut down production, and fund “environmental” foundations that pretend to be against big oil, all to get legislation passed to restrict drilling for everyone but the established players. If you watch the financial channel you’ll often hear how just a few hundred thousand barrels a day of extra supply will drop the world price through the floor. If the price gets too low there’s a refinery fire, a drone strike or incursion - whatever it takes that week to keep supply and demand in line. Oil is abundant and should be $10/barrel. It was $2 a barrel, and gasoline was 22 cents a gallon, when I was a kid.
This guy received 500k NOK (50k $) to build a combined savonius turbine and solar power plant.