A major symptom of what I fondly refer to as “The Professor Crackpot Syndrome”:
We have to build a really BIG one tho people will take uth theriouthly!
(Hope the good profethor ith wearing a fathe mathk tho he doethn’t thpray uth with thpit!)
In the footsteps of Makani …
Good to see progress on the Interreg MegaAWE project
The progress on Interreg MeagAWE is also discussed in the recent presentation Udo Zillman gave at
Wind TV, Wind Energy Hamburg Digital 2020
It is a good and precise video That said a MegaAWE project remains a hypothetical project, excepted for kite ship towing. And only two main methods are presented: yo-yo and fly-gen. In the current state of art these methods are more proved. But there are also rotary torque transfer systems and perhaps some other possibilities…
MegaAWE is a project run through Interreg NWE https://www.nweurope.eu
There are very real companies involved in the project @PierreB
The latest Newsletter
and some really honest straight forward radio coverage
Wow, a rotatable landing deck. Is this an example of the “reduced infrastructure” for AWE vs towers? Reminds me of vertical-axis wind turbines, stating the advantage of no need to aim, then adding blade pitch adjustment (to try to “rescue” the efficiency) that makes aim essential to its operation, while it still requires more material than a regular wind turbine to operate less efficiently. Would-be wind energy innovators often state an advantage, then immediately discard that advantage.
I think from the report - Getting the deck made under the proposed cost has been an issue. There’s been a fair bit of redesign needed. No big surprises there it looks bloody hard to make and get right.
Is it scalable? - I don’t know enough to debate that
There’s a clue to a significant scale enabling advantage which the MegaAWE project and Ampyx have in their cooperation partners. Our foxy pal Reinhart from KiteSwarms is in that collaboration list.
So if they find the ideal scale of wing to fly pumping cycles… They may yet be able to scale up the proportions of the whole system by multiplying the number of wings being flown (albeit with very accurate control) on a single main tether.
That would be extremely cool to see
With that we get back to “All roads lead to SuperTurbine™”.
SuperTurbine™ the torque based (not yo-yo based) auto rotation (not controlled flight) system?
Must admit Ive been thinking a lot about something very similar to the superturbine lately
It’s been agonizing, yet amusing, and disappointing yet encouraging, to watch so many people slowly, unknowingly, take occasional baby steps to approach the SuperTurbine™ concept, but never quite catch on and get there…
Kite-reeling I did when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old and of course wished I had a generator to attach like every kiteflyer. Laddermill I officially recorded as an invention as a teenager, knowing it would someday be seen as a big idea. Never imagined it would be abandoned as “too difficult to build” by grown adults. But then, still in the 1970’s, I sent away for a single thin booklet on wind turbine design, read about lift vs drag, and immediately realized SuperTurbine™ was the next step. I find what I’ve witnessed for the last decade+, coming from actual grown adults, as really unbelievable. I’m just going “really?? REALLY???” I thought grownups were supposed to be smart. OMG. But then again I have also seen that understanding wind energy is not intuitive, and years of studying it still leaves unanswered questions.