How debunking to advance in AWE field?

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The debunkers add little value because the “idiots” (if we could playfully use that standard term-of-the-art), are incapable of hearing what debunkers try so hard to clue them in to. Example: Kleiner Perkins fell for a ducted turbine scheme, and seemed unable to comprehend my warnings that simply explained the problem was it increasingly used too much material per unit power as it was made larger, plus noise, a resulting high-solidity rotor that then ran slower and became less efficient. They fell for the line that swirl contours inside the duct would make ducted turbines a success this time! Nevermind the fact that they had recently failed in a big way - no matter - swirly contours were all you needed! And these are “the smartest guys in the room”… Go figure.

The regular wind turbine rotor is the product of 3000 years of evolution. Vertical-axis was superseded by H-A well over1000 years ago in the Greek islands where rotors consisted of rings of interconnected triangular cloth sails mounted on radial sticks, spinning in a circle on a tower. Rotors started using regular propellers with defined dual-surface airfoils 500 years before DaVinci invented the repeating pistol that freed humanity from the king’s knights, but failed to comprehend reality with his helicopter design. DaVinci’s heck-of-a-lopter was easily debunkable, even at the time, by just looking at the windmills that had already been in operation for 500 years.
The Wright Brothers wind tunnel experiments resulting in single-surface airplane wings were also easily debunked by looking at these same dual-surface hard airfoils on windmills that had been the standard for 1000 years at that point.
(I’d like to put together a video debunking the great geniuses.)
Yes they made huge progress, but in retrospect they didn’t really know what they were doing in many ways. Still they changed the world.

The symptoms of GOOD wind energy concepts include:
high swept area for the material used,
steady operation,
crosswind blade travel,
high blade speed, and so far anyway,
placement into high speed, steady winds
blade rotation.
Blades configured to avoid unnecessary forces

“Look! It wiggles!” is a symptom of monkeypox - er I mean “Professor Crackpot”.

Little-to-no swept area is another symptom. (like the wiggling pole from vortex-shedding)
Anything that shakes or wiggles or reverses direction in any way is in possible danger of wearing out quickly - a short service life in many cases.

Adding intercepted area in any way that disproportionately adds excessive mass and/or expense is another symptom.

Forcing too much air thru a rotor so it has to be a higher-solidity rotor that thereby spills power is another common symptom.

Rotation slower than optimal is another common symptom.

Talking about the vastness of the wind resource with diversionary statements such as “It has been calculated that wind power could provide 4x the energy used today” is another symptom. As though they need to explain that wind energy is even “a thing”, rather than explain how their version is better.

Large, heavy structures with tubes that pipe wind to a central location for energy extraction constitute one of the dumbest, yet common crackpot schemes.

Saying you will power X hundred homes in remote location Y by date Z is another common symptom, and I think this one may be exclusive to AWE. Altaeros, Makani, even that latest article about Skysails mentions powering “50 homes” on a remote island.

The word “pyramid” is OK with me, as long as it does not refer to the sales tactics of the company. I’m trying to remember if anyone has had a pyramid scheme for a crackpot wind energy idea - Seems like there should be one - like vaporware squared - a vaporware business structure around a vaporware technology. Quite appropriate, actually. Maybe the Windtree spinning roof ventilator debacle selling “sales territories” qualifies as a pyramid scheme. Imagine, an idea that WILL SURELY change the world, and YOU can buy the sales rights to an ENTIRE STATE!!! This could be a great path forward for AWE! I can see it now! At any rate, WIndtree sure made a big splash at the time.

Reversing cycles are another big red flag: Steady-state operation is the key. Reversing forces are hard on materials and will cause failure eventually, whereas steady-state rotation keeps forces more consistent, for years of trouble-free operation.

Related: Interruptions in output (time of mo production) is another red flag that seemed to emerge mostly with kite-reeling.

Related again: USING excessive power through part of a cycle might be a very big red flag - again this symptom seems to emanate mostly from kite-reeling. However using some power to optimize blade surfaces (pitch blades for example) is how the best turbines work, but they are making power during that time, and the power needed is low compared to output.

Soft fabric working surfaces are one more warning sign. Can’t think of them ever working out. Wearing out, yes, working out, no.

Generators at the periphery of the blades are another common misstep - a “solution-in-search-of-a-problem”. That was how the Honeywell roof-mounted turbine started out. They kept eliminating all it’s key distinguishing features eventually, but in the end it was still just a turbine mounted in a poor wind close to a rooftop - no tower wanted for worthless turbines - the symptoms are so consistent…

Building-mounted is another common monkeypox symptom. Not that it couldn’t ever work, but noise, vibration, and wind blockage and turbulence seem to be difficult challenges.
Can’t think of an example of anyone happy with a building-mounted turbine. Aerovironment had a few on Logan Airport - they are long gone.

Professor Crackpot, knowing not much of anything about anything, loves to ignore the concept of placement into the smoother and faster winds at higher heights. It is extremely rare to see a crackpot turbine placed on a decent tower for this reason. Vertical-axis turbines, even darrieus, are almost never on a high tower. In fact I’d say you are more likely to see a savonius on a high tower than a darrieus. In both cases, you start to notice the pattern of ignoring every known aspect of wind energy, including basic factors like simply exposing your device to actual good wind.

Anyway, this list is by no means exhaustive - just the crap that came to mind at this moment.
But it includes most of the areas of concern, I’m sure I messed a few.
The point is, these symptoms often go together. Most crackpot wind energy concepts violate multiple known advantageous features, not just one.

Why? I know, I sound like a broken record, but repetition is how you learn:
“The wind is invisible, so people can imagine it doing whatever THEY want, but the wind does what IT wants to do.” :slight_smile:

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Hi Doug, by reading your detailed comment, can we conclude that, for AWE:

  1. Flexible wings are no suitable

  2. Unsteady systems like kite-reeling should be abandoned?

I agree that 1 and 2 would not be used in regular wind energy. But AWE is both wind energy and flying system where the lightness is predominant.

Trade-offs can lead to solutions that are not suitable for traditional wind energy.

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I think I’d watch
Debunking the geniuses of history, how the human race accidentally survived and flourished

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Hello Pierre: I would not necessarily say that. I would just say that these approaches do cross over the line of previous bad ideas in wind energy, but with the qualifying factors you mentioned. So the qualifying factors might overcome these “rules”. But at least when people are aware of the repetitive mistakes of the crackpots that came before them.
As I’ve pointed out many times, attempts to improve wind energy past the nearly-perfected-over-3000-years state-of-the-art, go back to before the current AWE hype-cycle.
If you were at a place where there was a big pit covered over with sticks and leaves, and you had watched 1000 people declare in no uncertain terms that it was solid ground and proceed to try to walk over the pit and fall in, wouldn’t you try to warn people that they are saying the same things the previous 999 people said before falling into the pit? Or at least get a decent laugh out of it when they fall in because you could at least know they had been warned? Like “Hey, did you know the previous 999 people who said they were going to walk across that “solid ground” fell into the pit because that solid ground was an illusion?”
That is basic common sense.
Anyway I thought about it and of course I missed some important items on that list.
How about “drag-based machines”? That should probably be at the top of the list. But like the people who can’t comprehend “the pit”, many do not even understand if they are creating a drag device or not because they don;t even understand what the term means, let alone whether a given device functions as a drag device of any kind or not. They just think the known rules don’t apply to them. Hence the 999 people in “the pit”. :slight_smile:

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Its more like if you have a multitude of these, its probably a looming disaster, but someone who is very good may afford to break the rules here and there to a specific effect…

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Hi Doug: I don’t think the AWE players have made any theoretical errors in relation to traditional wind turbines. For example drag and lift terms in M.Loyd’s publication do not mean the same than for regular wind turbines, but their use is logical for these flying devices. This has been discussed several times and new terminology has been sketched out several times.

The problem is that regular wind turbines do not fly. This changes everything, comprising in terminology which is the less important issue. Actually we cannot debunk a particular AWE system.

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Pierre, coming into an established art, saying you will improve it, without knowing even the most basic terminology of an art, is just a symptom. A red flag. A signpost. The fact that hundreds of people could then adopt and repeat it, without ever knowing it is backwards from established convention, is, again, a red flag. Personally, I don;t see what anyone would need someone else to tell them a kite could produce energy, and just go on using their terminology, as though they are incapable of thinking for themselves. It is one more example of wind energy being a magnet for crackpots. If I wanted to improve a car engine for example, I’d want to come in at least understanding the existing knowledge and terminology. Same with wind energy. If it is already producing a significant percentage of all electricity, it makes no sense to pretend it is all new and unknown and just make up terminology, or attempt to mis-apply established terminology. If you were working on cars and someone kept saying “forward” when they meant “reverse” you might say they should get up to speed on what already is. :slight_smile:

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AWE is not an established art. And regular wind turbines do not fly. Their technologies are quite different, and one is working, while the other is not working at the moment.

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Hi Pierre: The thing is, the more broad category, wind energy, IS an established art.
Let me just relate to everyone here, new entrants to wind energy seem to always think that “This time it’s different!” They believe that their instantaneous first impressions are more valid than the actual knowledge gained through decades of hard work and experience of the actual practitioners of the art. Every new person is convinced that the 999 people who were warned about the pit, yet fell in anyway, like all the rest, are different from them. No, they are the same: people who know nothing about wind energy and are destined to fall through their delusions that cannot hold them up, and fall into the pit. It doesn’t matter if they think everything is different because they want to avoid using a tower. The exact reason doesn’t matter. The fact always remains, there are standards that must be met to make an improvement. In the worst case of the most extreme crackpots, you might even hear a declaration of resistance to ever measuring output, citing, for example, Einstein being a theoretician and not a practitioner. Of course that would be a neodymium super-crackpot, but in any case, most efforts to remake wind energy into a completely new form start with zero knowledge of the actual art, and not knowing the most basic ABC’s of wind energy, starting with the difference between a lift machine and a drag machine, is where most newbies begin their adventure, and then having it proved to them is the end of their adventure. In the interim, they often do a lot of blaming and name-calling, but results are what count in wind energy, and so it is in the results that the winners and losers are determined…

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Hi Doug: if we keep the tower, that might be a regular wind turbine. In this case AWE makes no sense.

Basically, compare any AWES prototype with a traditional wind turbine: they look nothing alike.

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Just saying, the original theme was eliminating towers, which could reduce costs. It does sound silly today to think that the towers are the main cost or “the big problem”. But that was how this all started. :slight_smile:

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Tower cost accounted for 20% in my book which is probably already 20 years old. The tower is just a steel tube, dead simple stuff. Removing the tower is not enough…

I think this angle of AWE optimism though also takes into account that the more inefficient inner swept area is not present in AWE.

I think this could add up in a nice way contributing to reduced costs, but then we must also not add other expensive elements.

For me the question is rather; can it be done? Only then will we be able to say if «that» could make business sense.

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AWES were originally designed to massively harness the more powerful and steady high altitude winds. Their main chance of success is to meet the initial goals.

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My take is that maybe you dont need something better on a logarithmic scale. Maybe is just has to be in the ballpark as good as HAWT. Then maybe slightly better over time. Or just better for some sites.

Its nice to be super good, but that kind of says that HAWTs are bad, which I think is a dangerous assumtion to make

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There is little chance that AWES will replace HAWT for the same wind ranges. HAWTs are more efficient, more reliable, and take up much less land use.

On the other hand, AWES could be more suitable for winds that are difficult to reach with HAWTs, as the amount of energy exploited could compensate for their weakness (space use, efficiency, reliability) if they can harness much in a limited zone.

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Hi Pierre - yes you are right there. I think that original “Jet Stream Dream” degenerated to “just replacing towers” as people began to calculate tether mass and drag for stratospheric placement.

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Hi Doug, tether drag and weight are no longer a problem if we consider that the longer the tether is, the larger the (networked) kite is. I mentioned several times the required huge dimensions of the kite(s) compared to tether length, and Dave Santos and John @AweEnthusiast well understood this:

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100% in agreement with you Tallakt.
“the best possible AWE design will not look like a flying HAWT. It will contain some «debunked» elements to the design”
Look at Makani et al.
Does this not tell that Flying Turbines in AWE may not be the way to go considering its #scalability?
That tends to leave us with #Groundgen #AWE, doesn’t it?

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John3:8a - " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: …"

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Let us summarize this reasoning by imagining Doug around 1955:

Standard vehicle on wheels:
We, in standard vehicles on wheels, experience an endless parade of supposed improvements on the already-minimalist “standard vehicle-style on wheels", which is literally the result of thousands of years of refinement. See the date when the wheel was invented. The same basic “standard vehicle on wheels” form serves many uses, both for moving road and rail and to takeoff for aircraft. Obviously, the “standard vehicle” form has turned out to be very useful, and has in fact become “the way” to accomplish transfer from a place to another place.

Rocket:
The rocket is a curiosity that has been around for over 700 years, in which time there has been no compelling use-case found for it.

So, without going into all the details, it would seem unlikely that a standard vehicle device without wheels would turn out to be advantageous.

We know what happened after 1957, starting with Sputnik.

Now, let us be serious: none of the AWE solutions exist in traditional wind energy: there is no reeling system, no flygen of course, but also no tilted rotor, and no kite or Magnus balloon to sustain the wind turbine. Current wind turbines don’t fly.

So you have two possibilities:

  1. You always try to demolish each of the proposals, arguing that such an AWE proposal is not aligned with current wind turbines, which is a nonsense since both AWES and current wind turbines are not identical;
  2. You try to see the propositions, READ them, try to understand then comment or not.
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