Hi again Pierre: I know it sounds skeptical, but only from many years of analyzing such scenarios. Of course there are other factors than just price, but price is still the main driver. An example of what I’m talking about is this:
Let’s say we’re looking at an isolated land (island), where the current option is diesel-powered generator that serves the whole island.
Well first of all, last I knew, it was illegal to put up your own wind turbine on many such islands, because they want to amortize the cost of the diesel power plant between as many users as possible.
Moving on, and setting that non-cost decision-driver aside, let’s say you ARE allowed to have your own wind energy plant.
OK so let’s say the diesel/electric plant offers electricity at 50 cents/kWh.
And let’s say a kite-energy company could honestly promise a lower cost - say 40 cents/kWh.
You might be tempted to “go for it” and purchase a kite energy system, if you had no other options…
So with that limited information, it’s a “no-brainer” to install a kite energy system.
But what if, looking into it further, you could install a regular wind turbine and get electricity at 30 cents/kWh? Now what happened to the “no-brainer” of the kite system?
It goes out the window (wind-hole), because it only looked good in isolation from other information.
Of course that example did not include “storage” (or an emergency diesel generator) which is necessary even if you have both wind AND solar, but it illustrates my point: you have to look at the big picture. “Single-factor analysis” can lead to bad decisions. One has to step back and take a wider view, and look at the big picture. Just as “no man is an island”, no island is an island! 
Thanks for sharing this important piece of information!
I think that in the open sea it will cost much more.
Why? because you are looking at a wholesale price of a possibly poor-qulity Chinese product, on AliBaba, before shipping, and not including installation. This facility is powered by a 10 kW wind turbine that cost $75,000 installed. A Generac-type backup generator of a similar power rating would cost around $10,000 installed. As with the wind turbine, installed cost, including all the labor, cabling, shutoff switches and required electronics, is way way more than just the cost of the component.
Anyway, unless you are on the grid, you do need battery storage even if you have both wind and solar. That adds to the cost. I will say that here, the turbine came with the property, and it costs me about as much as just paying the electric bill would cost, just to keep the turbine running properly. It is a Bergey system, and I am on the third turbine. The first was destroyed by an idiot installer who dropped it 100 feet. The second was a used turbine he put in after dropping the first one. The third is a used one bought from a neighbor who got a new one paid for by the givernment because his existing turbine had been in the way of a drainage project and they needed to force-purchase 40 acres of his land, and threw in a brand new wind turbine to sweeten the deal since they had to have his tower moved anyway. He even got them to throw in a 120-foot freestanding tower! I made out, but note: Even though we are in a high-wind location, nobody would have a wind turbine around here without the government paying for them. I bought another ranch a few years back for $66 thousand, and if I rented it out, it could pay for 10 electric bills+. Anyway, at some point, real economics have to kick in. We can avoid financial reality for some time, especially if the money is printed up from nothing and given to us by the government, but we can’t avoid financial reality forever. No island is an island!
Well, financial reality in Europe these days is that I pay 45 cents per kWh from the grid… Unluckily I cannot install any solar panels because I live in a rented flat… Fossil fuels are not cheap at all, and if they are still cheap in the US than that is only because the external costs are not taken into account yet…
Thanks for sharing! Interesting article.
Well, when hydrogen is used for steel production it is NOT used to melt the steel, but to convert iron oxide into iron.
Well, in theory this can also be done without hydrogen or coal by using electrolysis, but the maturity of using electrolysis to produce iron is not there yet. It we want to have 100% carbon free steel in 10 years, this will not be possible using electrolysis, but it will be possible using hydrogen.
Source: So geht klimafreundlicher Stahl auch ohne Wasserstoff
(sorry for citing German language references, but try Google translate…)
This is also not quite compatible with harvesting where there is wind. Say you have a slow moving vessel, with a huge turbine causing drag even in transit. How will you bridge the distance between wind and consumer? Say you produce in North Africa to deliver to Scandinavia. The transit alone is going to take 4 days in each direction, and also you get to spend all your fuel on the way. Even if you didn’t, and you get your capacity factor of 80% while producing, how long time would you actually need to produce H2 to fill your ship? If that number is 10 days you are effectively going to get less than 40% effective capacity factor due to time lost to fueling and unloading.
Compare that for an offshore installation with an AWE rig and subsea turbine, in autonomous drive, with a modern windmill capacity factor 40% on land or even 50% offshore.
There are a few things that don’t add up. One is; the market does not move like the wind does, and transit will be a real issue. You could sail in transit, but that would take even longer time, and also there is no wind where your market is, otherwise you would produce locally.
A very important number thus is how long you can harvest at full capacity before the “tank” is full. This number we don’t know. Say we had a tanker [Medium Range] capable of carrying 60 thousand m3 of H2 gas. Uncompressed that represents 5.4 ton H2, which again represents 210 MWh of energy. Lets assume that vessel was 200 m long, and with an AWE rig capable of producing 1 MW. If that gas is uncompressed, you need less than nine days to fill the tank. So the assumption that transit time is important holds.
The keel of such a vessel must be around 50 m2 wing area if the ship is sailing 8 knots. So that’s going deep, as an AR of maybe 2+ will be required to have small losses. Eg. 10-15 meter deep. That keel must also be there when going ashore. Normal port depth is 15 m for large container vessels. So you will probably need some special ports to get ashore. (the keel must be mounted under the hull)
If the gas was compressed though, you could probably be at sea for much longer, but the compression adds more losses. And to keep a full H2 and compression factory running smoothly on an unmanned vessel out at sea 24/7 in salty water, that is going to be a real challenge.
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Let me say how the concept could be improved, like I have stated previously;
- collect energy offshore and deliver to ships in transit. These ships would otherwise have to go ashore to recharge. Loss of time is your business model
- use a battery rather than H2. H2 has some nice attributes, but battery is much simpler because is accepts electricity and delivers electricity. Once that is mastered, consider H2 maybe
- Use an AWE rig to collect energy. A TRPT design like “The Pyramid” I think is the best suited design for this. The pyramid is good for sailing but can also produce electricity depending on how much moment you add. Maybe some rag’n’string™ TRPT may be even better, as servos and such on a rigid wing may be hard to maintain offshore, something like W&I Daisy?
- The ship must be huge to have the least amount of drag because you want to sail crosswind. Drag means sailing upwind which means less power produced
- The ship must have a keel to prevent drifting downwind while producing
- The system must be as simple as possible. I think maybe it should have a crew, at least as a starting point. Any autonomous functionality must not be in the scope of the energy producing team. The core team must focus on integration and building as few parts of the complete system as possible.
You should always compare the “inventive” way of producing H2 with running a large H2 factory somewhere convenient, maybe next to the steel mill to avoid compression, and consuming energy directly from the grid.
I am sure what I would go for. Like you say, carbon neutral steel is needed in a short while, not maybe in 100 years from now.
After discussing this a little bit, my verdict ends up at: 
Large ships towed by kites face all sorts of difficulties: intermittent wind, arriving in port on the day they are supposed to, going in this direction or that.
If you add electricity generation (again by kites), the difficulty increases.
If we add electrolysis, then the association of the hydrogen produced with the molecules necessary for the production of e-fuels, it becomes XXL.
I think that it would be necessary to conceive another economic and industrial type.
All the tasks of wind harnessing by kites or rather by regular wind turbines (and also other renewable harnessing such like solar, wave, ocean thermal energies…), then electrolysis, then refining and manufacturing of e-fuels, or production of liquid hydrogen…, should be assigned to fixed installations of oil platform type, as gigantic barges that could eventually be moved.
It would then be up to the ships to come and get their supplies as there would be an additional function of refueling, as well as the tankers to take or deliver the e-fuel or liquid hydrogen.
This would be an economic and industrial model quite similar to what we know today, with oil platforms and tankers and other ships, but based on synthetic fuels (e-fuels) associated with “green” hydrogen.
I will say I bought pre-mixed fuel in a can for a chainsaw and I’ll never go back to pump-gas. By the way, the term “PumpGas” is like swearing or cursing to many people. The ethanol added to U.S. Pumpgas ruins engines. It does raise octane levels, but custom-made gas could have whatever octane number you wanted, naturally - like use actual octane!
Dirtbikes, even with 4-stroke, water-cooled engines, also run poorly on 10% ethanol mix gas. But that pre-mixed fuel in the can smells good, and even the exhaust smells good. It makes chainsaws start easily, and run perfectly every time, Also, when you see “synthetic motor oil”, it is made from Natural Gas (mostly methane). Apparently, synthetic motor oil is better for your engine and lasts longer. Gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc., seem to be just cheap, easy-to-refine, unsophisticated products. So what I’m wondering is how long it will be before gasoline quality is improved by producing it in more sophisticated ways. It does seem that there is a lot of potential organic feedstock from trash, sewage, and all kinds agricultural and forestry waste, trash, food waste. etc., not to mention methane clathrates on the ocean floor, to make hydrocarbon fuels sustainable and renewable, maybe burning cleaner too.
Hi Tallak: I would not worry too much. Curious, gadget-oriented people like us always get sucked into analyzing such complex schemes. One thing I noticed long ago: All we really need to do is concentrate on how to generate electricity. Then let other people worry about what to do with the electricity. If we can do our part, in this world of specialization, that should be enough.
Electricity produced with AWES = almost zero. Perhaps let other people worry about how to generate electricity, in addition of what to do with.
Yes. But designing a kite energy system for a vessel will be different from onshore. Just as a HAWT probably is not suited for these energy harvesting vessels. So that could make for an interesting technology to develop.
More on steel electrolysis CO2-Free Fe: Green Steel Tour with Boston Metal - YouTube
Is getting far from the topic of ocean energy though
I’d suspect onshore wind is a lot more suited to this application
Oh yeah, no doubt - interesting. The thing is, it falls under the category of “mission creep”, where you start with one mission, then get sidetracked toward another mission. Like you’re about to install a wind turbine, but then you go “Oh wait, look at that little puppy! He needs a home! Let’s call it a day - he looks hungry…”
Oh yeah - hey, forget AWE - did you realize you could tow a ship by a kite and produce electricity from a propeller in the water, then use that propeller to create the world’s worst form of energy storage? So what? What happened to the mission? It’s like we are birds attracted to any shiny object.
Dear Tallakt,
if I would live in Norway I would agree with you: Lets have a H2 factory next to the steel mill…
But this would not work for Germany or Japan, because these countries do not have enough renewable energy resources to replace all the current fossile electricity, and the power needed for heat pumps and electric cars AND for the industry… They can decide to de-industrialize, like Britain did, or to import renewable energy.
Importing renewable energy via long-distant high voltage DC lines is the most efficient way to do it, but for many reasons the DESERTEC initiative failed…
So now, within a time frame of 10 years, getting renewables from Africa or Australia or the Ocean, from any of the many places where they are available in larger quantities and cheaper than local production in Germany or Japan is the only alternative if you want to de-carbonize the society AND keep industry in the country. And importing renewable energy on a long distance only makes sense in chemical form, e.g. as hydrogen or methane or ammonia.
I agree that some industries, like aluminum production should just be moved to locations with cheap renewables, like Norway or Australia… But I think Germany will still need to produce its own steel…
So I am in favor of green H2 production from wind and solar… The only question that is open from my point of view is if kite pulled ships are a good choice or not…
Well, they still have a lot of coal in Germany, right?
LINK: Russia's Catastrophic Oil & Gas Problem - YouTube
I stumbled across this video last night, that explained how Russia’s main industry has always been supplying oil and gas to Europe, even way back when they were “The Soviets”. I never knew the communist Soviets were only able to make a pretense of a thriving economy due to selling oil and gas to Europe, and it was low oil prices that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to this video, all the unrest in Europe for the last 20 years or so, now focusing on Ukraine, has always been about control of natural gas fields and pipelines, All the areas being taken over are significant gas fields, and gas pipeline locations. I’ve also seen old video of knowledgeable people warning that this would happen, many many years ago. It’s interesting that when we watch the news, they don’t usually focus on the conflict as a mere struggle over fossil fuels, which reminds me of wars in the middle east, where they try to sell the idea that conflicts are over “womens’ rights” or “weapons of mass-destruction”, when in reality, the real action is to destroy hundreds of oil wells to keep prices high. I hope Germany gets thru the next winter OK. At least they know how to build warm shelters, herd reindeer, make warm clothing from fur, etc. Hopefully they can burn a little coal and stay warm all winter.
Currently (week34) 37% of the electrical energy is from coal, over the last year it was only 30%: Energy-Charts