https://www.facebook.com/kitewinder/videos/2296841803976184/?q=kitewinder&epa=SEARCH_BOX : 250 W.
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Well I do disagree, that crosswind awes is far away. I expect market entry next year by kitepower or aenarete.
And I think you underestimate the difficulty of automatic launch and landing. Skysails are the only ones who have an automatically launching and landing soft kite system. We donāt know how reliable that actually was. Kitepower launching manually is indicative of it being hard.
The propeller can help a lot, working as a fan to inflate the kite settled on a support, by using the generator as a motor.
In the other hand a complete crosswind version could attract investors duringā¦10 years.
:doubt: The ropedrive doesnāt even work until it is unspooled. Would have to be a flygen system. And then it wouldnāt directly inflate the kite, but could pull the kite like this: https://youtu.be/YeqZC7wgmTo?t=887
The lifter would just have to sit somewhere. And the hard part is probably landing it so that it can be launched again. This might be useful for launching in confined spaces with little wind, spiraling upwards instead of going just downwind, in combination with an appropriate lifter that keeps the whole system from going far downwind. But only possible with a flygen system.
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We can take a bet about crosswind! maybe launch and land will be challenging, I donāt know, never tried that before.
But has said before there is already plenty of possible thing for kiwee one, excpecially high flight. We will try that in the coming months.
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You want to automatically reel in the tether, right? Otherwise your tether might get stuck in the trees or whatever when you try to land it. Do you have ideas on how to do that yet?
This one could be easy. Put a hook on the rotating part of the pulley connected to the generator. (In the direction that it avoids hooking, when in normal operation. Use a servo in the non-rotating part to push the rope towards the rotating part. Use generator to drive rotating part in opposite direction. Rope gets hooked and wound up.
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kiwee has already the automatic retrieval mechanism. Works with a servomotor. The Generator is use for reel in.
It also has a inclination sensor to detect low wind.
It also have an assisted reel out features. We control reel out speed.
So to do automatic launch, I just have to work on the kite, all the others things, we already do it on kiwee one
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Crosswind should be easy once you add electric control to the lifter kite
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I would think the market at this size could be mostly for fun. Look how much people spend on RC airplanes or just kites - no āreasonā or āuseā other than just having fun. The fact of watching it charge something, like a phone, is part of the fun.
At the moment kiwee one works with a 4 sqm pilot. Pilot exist up to 16 sqm, that means we can stay front wind up to next generation. Then from there we will see. Kiwee is rated 100W but we already record peak power up to 250 W. That mean kiwee two could probably go up to 1 kW. That is 24 kwh per day on 100 % duty. Almost 10000 kwh per year. That already is a lot for remote place.
Again, Kitewinder is not about utility scale for now, it is about permanent generation and high winds harnessing.
Tech development has always been from simple to complex thing, that is what we do.
About crosswind, I have never seen any power curve on any crosswind project, I will stick with @dougselsam on that : projects shall show us metrics rather than equations.
Last but not least, we focus on power transmission, what we do front wind could also be done crosswind. Maybe at some points a partnership could be possible with another team. Rope drive combined with makani style engine could make a great mixā¦ Maybe.
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32 posts were split to a new topic: Ideas for scaling up AWES based on a tethered airborne rotor driving a rope drive
@gordon_sp , I replied to you here. Kiwee is already a commercial product. you can buy one in a couple of minutes on our website. So as said in another topic, kiwee as devellop some others services that made us independent from our sells of kiwee one. Donāt think that we donāt focus on kiwee two because that is precisely what we are doing. Being financially independent guarantee that you could still buy a kiwee one in 2 or 3 years. you wil also get technical support when needed as well as spare parts. It also guarantee us to still be there in the comings years to be able to develop kiwee two. At the moment kiwee One is not a commercial sucess, far from that. We need time to try everything to market and sell kiwee as best as possible. Then by the time I make sure there is a market for such product, we will move forward to kiwee 2 . Do you remember my post on the āNo market hypothesisā ? We are the first one on that market with such product, so we had the time to. test the market, and the product does not sell itself. Let me ask you a simple question: Why did you not buy one to try the tech ? I find it hyghly dispointing that no other company ( big or small ) call us just to have our feedback on market. As for kiwee One, I donāt have the guarantee that there is an existing market for kiwee 2. Kitekraft will eventually release itās product on 2024. Fair enough, letās see what they do with that product, Iām curious.
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The market that I am considering is rural homes and small businesses who would like to get off the grid or save power costs. The only present options are a wind turbine or solar cells. Both these systems are fully automated. If we want to compete with them we need an automated system as well. We have all the advantages - lower cost, more consistent power, easy maintenance, portability etc. but if we donāt have full automation we are doomed.
I have suggested various methods of autonomously launching and landing and I am sure that there are many others.
I would like to suggest two criteria which control the system.
- Decision to launch is determined by the wind velocity and direction.
- Decision to land is determined by the tether (cable drive) tension. If tension is too high we must land to prevent damage to the system, if it is too low the cable drive can malfunction and the lifter kite cannot support the turbine(s).
I donāt think AWES have all the advantages, I will be much more shaded in my opinion.
About cost first, for small wind turbine, AWES is more costly than a traditionnal wind turbine.
About maintenance : there is a low probability that an immature technology has a lower maintenance cost than a well known and mature technology. not counting the fact that AWES has more moving parts than traditionnal Wind turbine.
Portability : agree with you, we are much more portable, that is a key difference
In my opinions you forget the main feature of AWES : land use. In most case AWES canāt be deploy because of land use.For the market you described for example: rural homes and small business. Just put a tree somewhere in the equation and your customer is gone.
Full automation is probably a key feature for large power production but only if you have a place to deploy your device. If you donāt, even with a fully automated devices, you will go nowhere.
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If he were the only one to forget this concernā¦ And this is one of the major points making HAWT devices that AWES cannot (or very hardly) compete with in utility-scale, unless they can evolve towards gigantism (well beyond what HAWT could achieve) in order to maximize the power to space use ratio.
Otherwise some niche markets can occur by exploiting their mobility, up to a drone that would search for good locations and deploy automatically to store energy in a battery or even recharge the car battery. Perhaps significant individual uses could then arise.
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