Wow, this “news” is already over a year old? Seems like just the other day…
I’m just gonna say, we’ve become used to celebrating any mundane detail of “progress” in airborne wind energy. with a press-release, and great fanfare (from the fans - most people couldn’t care less).
The first question asked of anyone with a new (advanced?) wind energy device is “Where is your power curve?”. Usually they don’t have one, and bristle at the implication that they should even have a generator, let alone deliver any power, let alone measure it!
In this case, a verified power curve seems long overdue, since they were supposedly selling finished systems out of their factory 5 years ago. I’d say Pierre has scrutinized this one as much as anybody, and his question about the height of the anemometer is appropriate - that’s a corollary to that first basic question of even having a power curve.
On the one hand, anemometer placement for a power curve is normally taken at hub height. On the other hand, I could see a rationalization for airborne to place the anemometer at the hub height of a conventional wind turbine of similar output. Normally though, AWE people like to pretend regular wind turbines don’t exist, so they can pretend islands hooked on diesel do not have the option to simply install regular wind turbines, rather than pretend an airborne system that can only operate occasionally, with full-time human supervision, is their only option. 