Reasons why I’m not into the idea of establishing a large scale, highly organised test site for AWES here - YET.
The transitory, portable nature of the AWES machines likely implies more work for a test centre per device. With shorter term deployments and cheaper devices… the ratio of initiation per work hour would go up… so rent of site would be less and initial work load certifying would be more frequent.
Smaller, early-stage, devices wouldn’t need the same level of permissioning as the likes of the Orkney EMEC site. (They will also consider establishing an AWES test site offshoot)
AWES wouldn’t need the integrity levels for reporting, nor safety inspection or the verification levels provided by EMEC. So we couldn’t charge so much for infrastructure and expertise per device.
We do have great environmental advantages which can accelerate testing to verification here.
Folks here are keen on setting up a test site, so cooperations may yet come this way. Especially as the scale of the proposed systems and the need for extreme testing grows. And with so little infrastructure to install, a future test centre could be set up as rapidly as bureaucracy allows.
This may sound like a cop out…
But of course, I’m flat out on my own kite turbine development which, although it has safety and scaling advantages, it isn’t yet at the level which needs this scale of test site. Might not be long though.
We are planning to further prove the scalability of rotary network transmission soon.
As such, I’m still planning for test site needs. But I think a large invitational test site would be premature for me to tackle now.
Let’s maintain the idea and if any AWES developer with a small scale system visits, I’ll help them try get small scale tests done.