The first day of IEA TEM102 Airborne Wind Energy was yesterday
It was great to see such diverse representation.
My first zoom with ~80 attendees from ~every timezone.
And it wen’t surprisingly smoothly.
The smoothness is thanks to the planning which went into the event.
AirborneWindEurope, NREL, IEA and the various other bodies… well done.
No major hicups.
There does seem to be a genuine want to develop science, technology, business, capacity… where gaps are identified and to do this on a global level.
OK the event has to be steered. Herding cats otherwise… So, the suggestions of what to discuss & take forward to IEA felt Eurocentric. But this didn’t discourage participation. There is a general want to know what systems & methods work best. It is technology agnostic as claimed. Maybe the dogmatic dictum “There are 2 principle ways” could have been avoided… there was also “The essence of AWES is substituting hardware with software.” For me, those are wholly disagreeable statements but a room full of 80 researchers is going to find 80 viewpoints on each aspect.
The dedication to progressing AWES is obvious in the familiar faces of the group. People don’t tend to give up on AWES. At AWEC2019 It was noted previous hosts seem to be at every conference. Makani were well represented and gave sound technical advice.
AWES is growing as a field. Expect to see diverse sub-aspects & specialities form. What highlighted this for me was the talk on Safety aspects and airspace regulation by Michiel Kruijff Which showed the subdivision of managing how including drone tech in airspace law has necessitated the creation of U-Space Service Provider companies to handle data and permissions with the CIS Common Information System run by the ATM Air traffic Management system. We AWES folks at the low end of this scale are UAS developers, (maybe not even operators) There are huge niches still to be carved and a lot of scope for how we do it.
WOW, Day 2 of IEA TEM102
just as (if not more) encouraging
I couldn’t agree more with Jochem Weber’s call for tech agnostic analysis.
We need to explore the known unknowns in AWES, + the qualitative and the stakeholder metrics.
A global cooperative effort can use aggregated data tools to avoid wasting time.
There was agreement that a textbook, an Msc course and open courses were high priority in education.
There was a good explanation from Daniel Zywietz of enerwhere.com on why scaling >100kW & <20MW makes sense for modular, low cost AWES in portable microgrid applications. 3-5 year deployment is too short for normal wind. Solar isn’t at night. Microgrids and storage tech is well proven so any DC input is fine. Most portable sites are manned with tech staff who can do an occasional tie-down / relaunch. He’d like us to show more pictures of working systems to get investment.
I found it hard to distinguish a top priority for road mapping. Mostly people are keen find ways to drive LCOE down and EROEI up.Having a hub that can deal with localised planning needs & restrictions whilst coordination varied deployments for tet metrics was mentioned.
Everyone seemed glad to see wider community participation & oversight potential.
Thanks everyone who organised and took part.
I can only apologise for my flashy branding signage and joke about @rschmehl 's mic.
A huge lot of unpacking, decompressing, reconnecting and reading over notes today.
well done all
The Task Proposal for IEA is now being developed. IEA Wind Task Proposal_Airborne Wind Energy 20201014 (2).pdf (1.3 MB)
A lot of work has gone into preparing this document.
This document will guide how AWES is perceived by IEA
This document will influence policy, funding,… advancement of AWES
Straight up
I’m concerned by slide 10 - The 2 types cliché
I don’t think this slide fits the conversations over the 2 days
Airborne Wind Europe as the operating agent of this presentation has responsibility to represent wider AWES potentials than those represented within Airborne Wind Europe.
Much more appropriate were the two earlier slides 5 & 6
I’ve highlighed where I see these terms applying to the wider AWES field - The known unknowns…
Delighted to see these issues addressed and terms included
The 2 types cliché of slide 10 was the old view on AWES from some top experts in the decade till 2018.
It has never been relevant in an international framework.
The cliché is even worse when you analyse what crosswind AWES means
We all want the best for AWES development.
The best science is not a prejudged hypothesis.
There are significant known unknowns which can massively change the direction AWES may go.
It’s good to see they will be addressed.
