Doug continues to overlook that mini-mothra turbine has a geared flygen and heavy conductive cable. It was shorted repeatedly, for max load power testing. It did not stall, as Doug wrongly guesses below. We did not let it burn out. Its available for further testing.
Its x-Wind whose turbine is not even flying.
kPower has the original turbine available for proof. Its honest work. We did not short measure and average to fake a power claim as he describes.
Pierre has never mailed any proof of past censorship, nor copied any proof here. Doug should not confuse consistent factual rebuttal with actual censorship.
I have to say DaveS is correct here. Thanks Joe and Dave for helping to put AWE on the map. And thanks to them both for inviting me. As much as we like to give them a hard time for their silliness and past censorship, etc., we should appreciate their role in popularizing AWE. Can’t take that away from them. I think it was my Sky Serpent as the “Invention of the Year” centerfold in the June 2008 Popular Science Magazine that really got things kicked off though.
The downside of making wannabe wind energy so popular is it drew in a thousand know-nothing (about wind energy) idiot-idiot-idiots and Professor Crackpots who knew how to tell tall-tales that got gullible investors and governments to waste a billion dollars on these stories about projects that “would” (in the future of course) "power X hundred or X thousand homes, never asking the simple question of “Hey Professor Crackpot, if you are so darn smart, can you show us one house powered by your genius ideas?” Wouldn’t it seem reasonable to ask that question? One house before thousands? No, this stuff appeals to people without even that small amount of common sense. “Global Warming Derangement Syndrome”. A fool and their money soon go separate ways! Multiply that by 100X when it’s “other peoples’ money”!
Regarding Makani, well they sort of had me partially-fooled or at least giving them the benefit of the doubt for a while, until I saw that video of their giant 8-propeller albatross, laboriously struggling to even make it all the way around a circle. “OMG”, I thought “These poor people must be looking for a way to get out of this while saving face and not look like complete idiots!” The crash-at-sea seemed to fulfill their need for an “exit strategy”. So weird how people can take all these highly-funded, highly-credentialed companies soooo seriously when they are in realty completely inept.
Dave seems unaware that stunts like shorting the generator to demonstrate power output is how idiot-idiot-idiots attempt “proof” that their feeble and whacky wind energy attempts are effective.
It works like this:
They run it unloaded and measure just the voltage. Of course, unloaded, pretty-much anything can generate a high voltage
They short-circuit it and measure the momentary current spike (amps) before it stops the rotor
They multiply the open-circuit voltage by the short-circuited momentary current spike, and try to claim that as their legitimate power output, when neither number nor their combination was ever legitimate in the first place.
You know what is so disappointing about wannabes in wind energy? They always do the same stupid predictable crap, yet can never appreciate that they are just more typical know-nothing idiots, in a long line of know-nothing idiots.
Wind energy - it’s not just for breakfast anymore!
I have to say, I never really appreciated how rare even a basic understanding wind energy is. I guess I should feel lucky.
There is no “king of censorship” in AWE, only kite royalty as Pocock defined it.
kPower will continue to briefly short generators to confirm max-load response. Doug does not say just who does so to concoct misleading numbers. Kpower offered no numbers.
As to your first claim, you are simultaneously in denial and delusional. You, Joe, and Wayne, the trifecta of zero-power in AWE, “royalty”. I’m pretty sure Joe does have the record for censorship in AWE. Probably reaching into the thousands of instances. Then again, the “power” behind McBlarney routinely censors across their platforms, including the “open forum” of video they bought, where people are routinely banned after helping them build their business. There ought to be a class-action lawsuit. It seems really strange to me how most every entity purporting to offer open internet access to all, feels that their next move must be to squelch any source of actual truth that dares to appear in their realm. Open access as long as it agrees with what they want people to hear. Which means NOT open access. So they’ve failed at that too.
Regarding “briefly shorting generators” hey, you’re like someone festooned with little red bumps saying you don’t have chickenpox. Shorting generators to measure current IS a COMMON SYMPTOM of people who have no idea what they are doing in wind energy, with no meaningful numbers to offer, so they pull such complete nonsense out of their butts. Such idiots, being idiots, are therefore incapable of understanding how idiotic it is. And you can’t teach them. They will just remain in denial, just like being in denial of being the twin kings of AWE censorship. There is no cure. Can’t be overcome. No point in trying. As the saying goes, “You can’t cure stupid”.
Shorting gen wires is not for measuring, only to confirm the circuit is live and to see if rotor-stall occurs under electrical max-load condition.
kPower holds with Gipe, that third-party power measurements for certification purposes are the best numbers. Let Doug claim his own numbers if he wants.
I’d guess your “rotor” is always stalled anyway. I sometimes learn about impossible people from our interactions. It occurred to me today there are two kinds of dumb: The first kind is the nondelusional kind, where a person just realizes they “just don’t get it”, and says “I just don’t get it”. Simple. There is hope for them. They might get it with some more instruction. The other kind “doesn’t get it”, but they also “don’t get” the fact that they “don’t get it”. They think they’ve mastered it, while not even comprehending what “it” is. You can’t teach them anything, because they are convinced they know everything. A critical first step in putting together a wind turbine is matching the generator to the rotor so it “works”. Non-starters in wind energy cannot even get this far. The just hook up any generator to any rotor and are relegated to “taking whatever they get” while calling themselves “domain experts”, “royalty” etc. Well in one case at least. I think you have the world’s record for claims made versus results attained in wind energy, by far. Good luck with that. It would be nice if you’d stop abusing the name of Paul Gipe, one of the most dedicated debunkers of wind energy nonsense. If he were in on this conversation, he’d chew you out a new one. But he, unlike me, had the sense to stop talking to people like you in venues like this, considering it a waste of time. Third party certification is how I do research when using outside funding. That way nobody argues with your numbers. We even paid extra for certified, calibrated anemometers, just to keep the wolves at bay. Yeah, sure Dave, go for that third party certification and get back to us with the numbers generated by your kite-show wind-toy and mismatched generator. We’ll all hold our breath while you get it all set up and generate your certified power-curve using excel, a scientific data-logger, and certified instrumentation, M’Kay? Meanwhile I’m still waiting for your AWE-powered concert-that-never-happened and the results of your years-long assertions that Altaeros would be powering Alaska except for a brief “engineering delay”. I mean, you are always right, right? You never BS anyone, right? So we can count on all this, right?
The scrap generator was well-enough matched to rotor and wind. Our primary object was to design, rig, and fly mini-mothra. KiteSat was another matter, we used a COTS hand-charging unit and matched the best-of-testing Brasington Turbine to it by removing two blades. It reliably puts out USB charge, but does not burn out.
kPower is not interested in sourcing generators as such. We hope to source EVs, with motor/regen ESCs, across all scales, and match them to power-kite quivers.
We’ll leave you your choice of best generator for whatever AWES you design. The harder challenge for non-AWE wind power experts is to master kite essentials. Good luck to them!
The Ambient Camping Music Event did feature kites for show and power. Sorry you missed it, but ~100 attendees dug the AWEfest angle. There have been several AWEfest parties documented, like KiteWinder’s Spanish party and Enerkite’s Waffles-at-Templehof. Wubbo never meant only future giant kPower events should count. Try an AWEfest yourself, if you still rock. Don’t stop hoping, we’ll keep at it.
As for Altaros’ engineering delay, they did eventually pivot, but it took time. Quote carefully to confirm the engineering delay factor was no prediction, just a standard R&D factor to account for. That’s why 2030 is a good estimate for AWE to really prove itself. Its a long game. Folks are not as stupid as you fear.
But with a lot of effort and a few years of moderation against you, the new forum perhaps may be able to dethrone you. It is far from being won. So you can be happy that your censor AWE king crown is well hung.
A few years ago I measured the power of small wind turbines for AWES that I made by connecting a propeller to a direct current DC motor, both being generally used in model making. The best result I obtained was with a 23 cm diameter Master Airscrew MA 9x4 propeller, on a Mabushi RS 380, driving by car at 14 m/s in real zero or low wind. As my multimeter did not provide all the data at the same time I took a measurement in intensity (amps) at 14 m/s, then another measurement in voltage (volt) also at 14 m/s, obtaining 3 amps then 9 volt, so 27 W. Do you think this method could be correct, given my perhaps limited multimeter?
Hi Pierre: You don’t say what you are charging into (batteries?) so it is difficult for me to answer. Normally there is some sort of electrical load such as a battery, inverter, resistor, light bulb, etc. to complete the circuit. The key factor is that voltage and current should both be measured without changing the wiring configuration. Ideally you would want two (2) meters so you could measure both voltage and current simultaneously. But if you have the same configuration and same speed for both measurements, one meter is capable of doing the job, at least good enough to get a decent idea of output, considering we’re just looking at meters and writing down data anyway. What I was referring to is the completely wrong method of having one wiring setup for measuring current, and a different wiring for measuring voltage. In Santos’ case I don’t remember him saying he measured voltage. My understanding is he just short-circuited the output, and measured the current. That would normally require a hall-effect clamp-amp meter (ammeter) by the way, which is not just a simple multimeter. But for small amounts of current a multimeter can work. Short-circuiting the output is charging into zero volts, which normally brakes (slows or stops) the turbine. You risk making too much current for a multitester and ruining it though.
When you see advertisements for cheap little plastic wind turbines that cite ridiculously-high outputs, such as 3000 Watts for some little turbine you could hold in your hand, often vertical-axis, drag-based, etc., the basis for such misleading claims which are completely untrue, are often based on measuring open voltage (no load at all) then momentary current spikes that may last a fraction of a second when shorting out a fast-spinning unloaded rotor, before the rotor slows or stops. Sometimes they will show the open-voltage and shorted-current measurements separately and let you draw the inaccurate conclusion by multiplying the two numbers, other times they do the wrong math for you and just cite highly-exaggerated power output claims. From my understanding, Santos only measured current from a shorted out generator, mismatched with the rotor so it was still turning. Such a measurement has no real meaning. How he measured the current, I have no idea. Really when such a small amount of information is provided, it’s difficult to say much about it, other than the person reporting it has no standards, no clue, and there is no firm conclusion to be drawn from the claim. It is basically more meaningless drivel from “the world’s leading wind energy researcher”.
Here in the U.S., multi-meters are given as free gifts at Harbor Freight with any purchase, so I have lots of them sitting around still in their packaging. The more expensive measuring tool, used for measuring current, is a clamp amp meter which may cost $40 or much more, but is good to have around. It clamps around the wire like a ring, and is not connected to the circuit. It uses the “hall effect” to infer current. You can measure current with a mulltimeter, but be sure the settings are appropriate for the level of current you expect to measure, or you can burn out (ruin) your multitester. Most are limited to ten (10) amps. I have never tried to measure current with a multitester because a decent small turbine will produce too much current and ruin the multitester. If you’re measuring 3 amps and 9 volts, I guess you can do that with a multitester. It would be nice to measure both amps and current simultaneously using two (2) multitesters, but as long as you are measuring the same configuration at the same speed you should be OK with the way you were doing it. Still, a clamp amp meter, or a ring-shaped hall-effect current sensor connected to a data-logger, is the best tool for measuring current. Voltage is easy to measure, current a little more difficult.
I feel obligated to say nothing you’ve written makes any sense, from my viewpoint. You seem to just want to keep posturing, never meeting any standards or making any sense. People flyng kites at the beach while someone fires up a boombox is not the AWE-powered concert you announced to take place at a certain park in a certain city (Austin) at a certain season of a certain year, with a certain live country band that you told us all that you had hired or lined up for the supposed event. It was all complete nothingness - not a single thing you said about it ever happened. Everything beyond that is just more lies. It is you, as usual, lying and then trying to rewrite history after the fact. I’m not talking about “Wubbo” I’m talking about YOU.
People have been flying kites at the beach and listening to radios and boomboxes all over the world for decades. None of them ever tried to claim they were doing energy research, or hosting a concert.
And Altaeros did NOT have an engineering delay, they gave up. They did NOT “pivot”, they gave up on everything further they said they would do, as I predicted. Once a liar, always a liar. MIT is maybe letting the wrong people in. I said from the beginning, “Nobody knows what they are doing”.
I’m feeling like I’m really wasting my time and energy in these AWE forums. We seem to be relegated, after over a decade, to discussing high-school-level basic electricity, lies told by you, censorship, and a billion dollars wasted on failed projects.
I have stuff to do. If anyone believes anything you say, I think I have to just let them. I can’t save the whole world from liars and incompetents. I actually DO have stuff to get done, and I’m “burning daylight” talking to someone like you. I could be out mowing the lawn, or getting paperwork done. Tell any lies you want. If anyone believes it, I’m sorry for them.
Guys, if you want your AWE forum ruined like the last one, you’re well on your way. You have the same key toxic ingredient.
Doug still thinks kPower somehow measured current. We did not even bother to measure the rotor diameter (~4m).
The challenge was refining the flying dynamics of mini-Mothra, made from a few tarps, realistically loaded with a fairly large but light HAWT, and heavy-gauge conductive cable.
We aced the flight requirement. kPower is kite-flight royalty in AWE. Pierre is mistaken about our royal modesty.
Let PhysicsForums.org remain the proven king of censoring Doug, where Moderators promptly informed him he “came to the wrong place”, before canceling his account.
AWEfest was Wubbo’s dying vision for how AWE could be popularized, not kPower’s. Its obviously not about Doug complaining in vain, unwilling to help even if he could. AWEfest will continue to develop, by those who care and try.
Thanks for your indications.
I tested both the propeller and the motor as generator. Control with only one multi-meter was not so easy while driving the car and holding the turbine. But I think this gave an approximation as several speed were used with results accordingly. Beside it knowing my drill has 3000 rpm I tested the same motor with the same multi-meter, giving 3.8 volt (and 1.8 amps). Certainly the motor slowed down the drill a little, but it was an indication of its rpm then the rpm of both motor and propeller at 14 m/s: 9 volt for the motor-generator as I indicated, and also about 70-85 m/s for the tip speed of the propeller.
OK so your previous statement of measuring current was another lie? One reason it is impossible to have even the most basic conversation with you is you do not stick by what you said previously, but just try to avoid it. You tell us you got, what was it, 7 amps from shorting out your generator? Or was it 3 amps? Then it “disappears” like the vapor it was to begin with. Zero credibility, zero accountability, zero power, zero brains.
Yes, you qualify as the royal jester of AWE.
Even though I happened to be a physics major at UCI, I went to Phys.org for “third-party verification” that you were totally full of crap in claiming a flapping kite was some sort of “quantum” system, a theme you had milked for years of empty bragging in your previous Joe-enforced forum. They confirmed you were full-of-it, and still send me emails. Where is your quantum kite energy system today, after all that bragging about what a genius you were?
Your lying behavior includes constant shifting of topic and changing the subject. According to you and Joe, virtually anything can be “called” AWE, including leaves on a tree or a chunk of buried concrete, and on that basis, virtually any activity could be “called” an “AWE-Fest”. What your lying this time consists of is to attempt to substitute a nebulous blanket term “AWE-Fest”, applying it to anytime anyone has ever flown a kite while listening to the radio, for the specific AWE-POWERED concert with a certain live country band you had promised in a certain park, in a certain year, etc., etc., etc.
I say you lied, and your response is to try to confuse the issue. Now a boom-box at the beach is “a concert”, you, by flying a kite at the beach, are thereby “a concert promoter”, and whatever additional fantasy you wish to invoke. Sure Dave. In desperation you cite the name “Wubbo” since he is dead and you hope to gain some sort of weird points by invoking the name of an unfortunately dead person, as though that rescues you from the lies. AWE-Fest is a nice concept, and it has nothing to do with you or anything you’ve done. People have been playing CDs, tapes, and radio songs while flying kites at the beach forever. It is irrelevant to your empty promises.
Hi Pierre
I know I gave you a long-winded answer. The short version is I think your data is fine and I would not question it. I believe your methods are valid and I know driving while looking at instruments is difficult. No worries, you did fine.
Doug’s comedic misadventure on the Physics Forum is preserved in JoeF’s archives. kPower has located the old discussion and sent you a confirmation email.
Why should kPower care more about sourcing generators than flying kites? We used to source them, but times changed. The EV kiteboard, for example, has a generator already, plus a motor/regen ESC and LiPo battery, as a complete system. We are more interested in an elegant static anchor jig design to hold an EV skateboard, while a small kite turns its drive wheel.
Go ahead and source your AWE generators just as you and Doug describe. Count on kPower to happily depend on EV engineers to source ours, while we focus on novel kite R&D.
Vintage Rock the Kite AWEfest graphic-
No current was measured. The “7 amps” claim does not exist. It was a successful flight test of the overall rig.
Doug is still not providing accurate quotes to support his accusations. Such quotes simply do not exist.
