Christina Archer is inviting AWES submissions to
…
To all Airborne Wind Energy experts out there: Consider submitting an abstract to Track 6 of the NAWEA/WindTech 2022 conference, deadline April 15!
https://naweawindtech2022.org/abstract-submi
https://www.naweawindtech2022.org/about/ :
Track #4 – Wind turbine and wind plants (Leads: Cal, Portland State, and Martínez-Tossas, NREL)
Includes research on wind energy systems at multiple scales. At blade scale: loads, aeroelasticity, airfoils, aerodynamics. At wind turbine scale: new turbine concepts (e.g., airborne systems), turbine design, very large wind turbines, horizontal axis turbines, vertical axis turbines. At wind plant scale: wakes, wake-wake interactions, controls, steering, model development, and wind farm layout optimization.
I seem to have seen “airborne systems” only at track 4, and timidly mentioned as an example in parentheses (see above).
This forum concerns mainly regular wind energy in its various aspects. And Cristina Archer is one of the two leading scientists (Conference Chairs): Committees | NAWEA/WindTech 2022 .
We are far from the time when Cristina symbolized airborne wind energy (AWE) as the promising future of wind energy, as harnessing more consistent and strong high altitude wind power (HAWP).
I was a bit dismayed at the first HAWP conference in Chico/Oroville in, what was it, 2009?
The participants seemed largely, literally, “frothing at the mouth”-insane, bringing in such a nice lady, almost as an act of desperation. Between all of them they had nothing compelling in the way of even ideas, let alone working demos, and my feeling was they were just desperate for any hint of legitimacy, so if they could bring in a PhD to confirm that there is wind in the atmosphere, and in general, it does get stronger at higher altitudes, up to a certain level, they could then rest on their laurels, having “firmly established” what everyone in wind energy already knew - yes there is wind, and yes it gets stronger at higher heights. This emphasis on the raw power that exists in the wind is a typical focal point in most crackpot-wind-energy presentations. The promoters want to sound scientific, so they avoid talking about their piece of crap ideas, and concentrate on the fact that wind exists and contains power. For example, the old scam known as “Windtree”, which marketed standard spinning rooftop ventilation units as a wind energy breakthrough, spent a lot of time talking about how much energy existed in the wind - as though that basic fact were ever in question. If memory serves, I think they were selling “territories” rather than the units themselves, as their main marketing effort. They certainly wanted to avoid talking about their (lack of) product! So they talked about the wind instead. Very typical - seems like the crackpots with the worst designs, or especially at that first HAWP conference, full of stammering drooling nutcases without a single workable idea, they had to have SOMETHING that nobody could argue with, and it was Cristina Archer confirming that “Yes Virginia, there is wind”. Wind does exist. Just in case you weren’t sure. I remember noting how so many crackpot wind energy promotional articles and videos were focused on the wind resource itself, as though confirming that resource somehow magically legitimized their whacky inventions.
I thought Cristina Archer seemed like a very nice person, and probably good at her job, but the sad thing was the lack of understanding of wind energy among the AWE wannabe participants. They seemed mostly powered by buzzwords and wishful thinking. And to the very end, the previous promoters from “the old forum” remained fixated on characterizing every possible angle of the wind resource. One biggie was “low-level jets”. Despite over a decade of introducing no compelling wind energy device of any kind, the promoters-of-ignorance running the old forum were yet happy to gleefully dissect and characterize in minute detail what they thought were the intricacies of exactly how fast the wind might be going at various levels, at various times of day, hanging their entire reason for being on the buzzword of “low-level jets”. Of course, that was after some of the “really smart people” pursuing AWE started factoring in basic things like tether weight, tether drag, etc., and moved on from claims that they were about to harness “the jet stream”…
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