After the last successful test (after all we made 100W before it crashed ) the system is now sufficiently advanced that I feel confident that it might become useful.
Time to start phase two of my evil master plan to save the world with open source airborne wind energy systems:
Enable anybody with sufficient access to time, tools and budget to make their own Rotary Airborne Wind Energy System. For that purpose I have just published all CAD files, the bill of materials and some videos and instructions. All in one convenient place.
Please post any questions or feedback about the system in this thread. It is the official “home” of it now.
If you like the system but don’t have the resources to build your own but still would like to help you can also design/make parts and send them to me to try them out. One example would be a torque limiter to prevent the last crash from happening again. We are limiting torque electronically now but I think it might be a good idea to have a second passive limiter.
I can do many things - but I suck at all of them. If you are an expert in any of the parts of the system and want to help to make that part suck less, let me know.
The best part: I am about to make a second system for Team Tueddelpower Germany. In the process I am more than happy to make any part that you can not make on your own and ship it to you free of charge. All you have to do is send me a PM and let me know which part you need.
So please get of Twitter, Youtube and this awesome forum and into your workshop and build a system that is better than mine. We have a world to safe!
Reader - If you are wondering how to invest in Airborne Wind Energy…
Right there ^ That post above. A side by side test was offered. We all need that.
Arrange to send me the bits please.
Super windy here today (Back in Lewis this weekend) I think we should start on an easier test first.
Pierre, I’m very sorry but we were flying “blind”. The same software that controls the generator also reads the wind speed. Since it was not functional for the test we do not have any data - except the reading from the power meter at the battery.
I did bring a manual wind speed sensor that read between 0-5m/s - but I do not have the exact value for the times that the power output reached >100W.
I promise that for the next test we will have all the sensors ready and I will publish the full data set.
Ask, and it shall be given. I will make some parts extra for you and keep you up to date. It shall be an honor to see my system fly next to the pioneer of TRPT :)/cb
Thank you Christof. If we assume that the wind speed was around 5 m / s (the peak of measured wind speed?) for a power of 100 W (the peak of measured power), this would mean a good Cp, of the order of 0.3, knowing the effective rotor area is about 4 m². But this is only an assumption.
Beside it, I suppose this system could scale a lot by widening the OTS transmission relatively to its length and the increasing kite size. But this is only an assumption again.
) the system is now sufficiently advanced that I feel confident that it might become useful.