3D printing is useful by itself. The only relation to AWE is it enables production of cheap parts.
Well, I think you are missing some important details. Generative AI can actually produce useful search sometimes much better than a traditional search engine. And it can generate text, images, convert speech to text and many more things. If you don’t think this is something new then I think you just don’t understand what we are looking at.
Yes, cheap parts that break. What “3-D printing” does for wannabe wind energy inventors is distract them from learning how strong parts are actually manufactured in either small or large quantities, relegating the wannabes to cheap demos that quickly fail.
What I’ve experienced is “A.I.” giving the exact same totally flawed and self-conflicting results as a regular search, except the “A.I.” doesn’t even seem to realize its results are ridiculous.
I have my own visions for “A.I.” that include improved diagnosis of disease from large databases of symptoms and possible causes. No doctor can have every medical fact at their fingertips, therefore a lot of diseases go undiagnosed until they become so severe that the patient sees enough doctors that somebody finally figures out what they have, or maybe nobody ever figures it out. But that would just be standard computer programming, really. I’m not sure what exactly has changed so radically recently other than a new version of the same old story, which is that computers are slowly becoming increasingly useful. Well, so is electricity, and we’re supposed to be figuring out how to make it more affordably, with a lot of people promising they knew better how to do it than the people who actually DO do it, and I don’t think “A.I.” is helping “AWE”. I think it’s just one more excuse, one more distraction. If wannabe wind people don’t know what they are doing, a computer is not going to save them! 
perplexity AI is very handy for complex search and referencing
Very worth trying https://www.perplexity.ai
Chat GPT can help script grasshopper components for me using the python plugins (This helps with testing designs)
As for what it can do for your business communications - A lot of us engineers NEED or at least should be seeking help with that
To say 3d printing is … meh … when there are so many types and processes. Is like saying CNC will never be better than hand cut
Seems like this was the most challenging question I’ve posed to Perplexity so far…
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/How-can-we-_i1ChIJgSyy2jCHXythRwA?s=c
ChatGPT says:
Cheering up Doug on the airborne wind energy forum can involve a combination of personal support, positive reinforcement, and engaging discussions. Here are some ideas:
Personal Encouragement: Send a personal message to Doug expressing appreciation for his contributions to the forum and acknowledging his expertise in the field.
Highlight Achievements: Publicly acknowledge any of Doug’s achievements or insightful posts in the forum. Recognizing his efforts can boost his morale.
Engage in Discussions: Actively participate in threads started by Doug. Ask insightful questions and provide constructive feedback to encourage a positive and interactive environment.
Create a Supportive Atmosphere: Foster a community culture that is supportive and friendly. Encourage other members to engage positively with Doug’s posts.
Offer Help: If Doug seems to be facing a challenge, offer help or advice. Sometimes, just knowing that there is support available can be a huge morale booster.
Organize a Virtual Meetup: If appropriate, organize a virtual meetup or a casual online gathering where forum members can discuss topics of interest, share experiences, and have a relaxed conversation.
Remember, the key is to be genuine and supportive. Small acts of kindness and recognition can go a long way in cheering someone up.
I will take up some of that advice btw. I appreciate @dougselsam what you are bringing to this forum. Also don’t cheer up, you are fine like you are.
(2) You have so many posts and I dont think ever once you were «arrestable». Mostly approaching things from a negative side, but never really untrue. And you do still seem to have retained your childish interest for new ideas, in spite of your negative first impression.
Also rather redundant to mention you are probably one of the [or dare I say the] «windiest» people here, having actually produced airborne current+voltage simultaneously.
I guess this a bit redundant as you dont need cheering up. Also offering help; Im not sure with what. Let me know if I can. The output of the AI seemed a good opportunity to thank you.
This might be of interest. It’s not just 3D printing, but knowing how to create and manipulate components in digital space. Printers have been getting better for decades. They are now being used in aviation, military, space, etc.
Thanks for trying to cheer me up guys, and I am not against 3-D printing or computers, and I do see uses for A.I. I just see such minor details as “more of the same” type of diversions, that serve mainly to confuse the conversation when it comes to whether someone has an improved method of capturing wind energy.
There are endless distractions and endless long-disproven, wrong roads to go down. In that sense we all start out about the same, not really understanding how wind energy works. Some people are naturally interested enough to learn what is known, then build on that, if possible. Others can’t be bothered to learn anything about the subject, and are content to make false promises while coming up with derogatory names for regular wind energy, and showing photos of the very rare instances of a wind turbine on fire, as though that “settles the question” of whether they are just one more windidiot.
The thing that people don’t seem to understand, and I guess they probably never will, is that we who have been even minimally successful in producing real, useful amounts of wind power, at some reasonable cost, with systems that work for years before needing service, in high wind areas that tend to destroy anything but near-perfect turbines fairly quickly, is that we KNOW what it takes to DO wind energy. Not just talk about our “future wind energy success stories”, not just make youtube-ready demos using paper plates and soda straws, but actually practice the real art of producing reliable power at a reasonable cost! Meanwhile, the windidiots can;t even be convinced that they need actual wind to do wind energy! Nope, they’re perpetually stuck at ground level in their backyard, or in the parking lot of their rented industrial unit, with the wind blocked by their very building or house., probably in an area with no wind anyway! Such “minor details” simply don’t matter to “idiots”.
We “windies” (to quote a slang term I’ve heard used at NREL) have been fielding the same old highly-redundant newbie questions, and sometimes arguments, for decades, and they never change! And of course, as I’ve explained, we just refer to these people as “idiots” because it is short and sweet, and, at some point, we don’t know what else to call them.
It’s not a matter of needing to be cheered up, since on some level, we actually do enjoy standing our ground for the actual reality of what we know from hard-won experience. It’s an honor to stand up for facts. The only problem with AWE is, because it is more difficult and involved than regular wind energy, it has a built-in “excuse factor” that makes it seem OK to just keep saying stupid things for literally, going on decades now. It’s people who literally can’t achieve any output beyond lighting an LED, who claim to be some top authority in wind energy!
When AWE became popular, I immediately found a WHOLE NEW LEVEL of COMPLETE IDIOCY. Like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. All these wet-behind the ears know-nothings, denigrating regular wind turbines because they thought they were just SOOOOOOO smart, while nearly everything they said rang of the standard newbie idiocy ON STEROIDS!
They had ZERO experience with wind energy, and ZERO respect for anyone who did. They were SO DARN SMART that everything THEY said MUST be true, even though they had NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT - I mean, you know, people from “MIT”, people raising millions of dollars from OTHER complete idiot investors, on and on, idiot after idiot! More insistent than any idiots that had come before. They had enjoyed windsurfing, or kitesurfing, and therefore KNEW EVERYTHING, and gave out timelines as to when they were going to make everything else in wind energy obsolete! How many houses they “would power” at some remote location, by some date. (Yeah, sure) They called wind turbines “windtowers” as though they had come up with a universally-valid derogatory term for what was known to work. I had never seen so many STUPID people, thinking they were SO SMART! To a “real wind person”, it was unbelieveable!
Anyway, I came in thinking I could help at least maybe a few people understand the situation better, but that never really came about. I slowly realized the old expression was so true: "You can’t cure “stupid”. And windidiots, I learned, are not always curable. With regular wind energy, the idiots come and go, usually it’s just someone who doesn’t know any better trying to tell us about the perceived “advantages” of vertical-axis turbines, from some crackpot article they once read, then we tell them they are wrong, and the conversation is over.
In the case of AWE, even 15 years of nonsense doesn’t seem to have slowed down the profusion of know-nothing know-it-alls, still making claims that they “will” “very soon” revolutionize the field of wind energy.
All I can really say is, I’ve never wavered (very much) in that 15 years of AWE hype, as far as my impressions of all the promises made by all the idiots, who fall by the wayside as fast as chunks of snow thrown to the roadside by a fast-moving snowplow. In fact, that might be a good analogy for most wannabe wind energy innovators -
“You are gonna be snowplowed off the road of wind energy so fast you won’t even know what hit you!”
But the reality is, at a certain level of ignorance combined with arrogance, you can’t convince an “idiot” that they are an “idiot” - if they could understand that, they wouldn’t be an idiot in the first place! The temptation for us “windies” is arguments with know-nothings are like shooting fish in a barrel! We win every argument, because we are simply right, as in “been there done that”, and it is just really simple.
The problem THEN is the fish in the barrel won’t admit they’ve been shot! They are too stupid to UNDERSTAND that they’ve been shot. They just go on forever, saying "Nope, you MISSED ME, and NEXT WEEK, I’ll revolutionize the world with my NEXT airborne wind energy project, oh and by the way, you are a BAD PERSON for even suggesting that I don’t know what I’m talking about or that you shot me down like a fish in a barrel (even though you did).
And so it goes, and it will never end, because (drumroll please):
“Wind is invisible, so people can imagine it doing whatever they wish”.
Just go on Youtube, and you can probably find many more times the number of completely wrong wind energy “facts” from “know-nothing idiots” than actual real information. That’s because really crappy drag-based turbine styles operate on principles that “any idiot can understand” See the dynamic there?
And that mostly-false information on the web is the same stuff Chat GPT is likely find, and believe, too.
You see how this all works? “You can’t cure stupid”, idiots promote turbines that “even an idiot can understand”, you can’t convince idiots that they are idiots - it all dovetails, and it all fits together.
That was why I soon realized, I could tell everyone in AWE they had no idea what they were doing FOREVER, and nobody would EVER come around, NO MATTER HOW MANY YEARS WENT BY!
You’d think, after 15 years of this current hype cycle, SOMEONE might admit “Geez Doug, you really called it from the very start!” But no, it doesn’t work that way. Why? It just goes back to “You can’t cure stupid”.
I saw an interesting cartoon about a bearded guru saying something like
“The worst thing you can do is try to argue with a stupid person”
Then another person expresses disagreement.
Then the bearded guru says “You are right”.
On that note, for me, it’s probably a poor use of my time to try to fix stupid, but I find it entertaining, and it keeps me sharp, and I’ve learned a lot about techniques of accomplished liars (like subtly changing the definitions of words, to make their lies seem true, for example).
When I point out how the EVTOL (bowel?) movement has been going on for - is it 15 years now(?), and still nothing operating on a regular basis, it is because I’ve started to see that wind energy is not the only place we find the same sorts of “professor crackpots”, and I had hoped that, by pointing this out, people would take that as an example of what not to do. But that didn’t work either. In fact, one of the leading EVTOL efforts, that has probably wasted(?) more money than most, was in fact an early “leading” AWE personality, who quickly realized it was way more difficult than he had thought, and “pivoted” to EVTOL.
To me, hey, I hope at least a couple of the EVTOL efforts work out for some valid use-case, but you can see it as clearly as I can - all the same “symptoms”. The endless and redundant promises of “future success”, just nothing really working out today, the huge market that “will” emerge, as soon as they can manage to get anything working well enough, the endless excuse of not being certified, or not having the right place to test, the group-selfies, the predictable “press-release breakthrough” announcements, on and on, it’s all just like a big Deja Vu!
How long does it take you to write 1582 words on how stupid AWE wannabies are @dougselsam ?
You’ve repeatedly felt the need to relay this message theme to the forum.
Imagine how much time an AI would save you
Yes I do see stupid and yes I do see BS in AWES at all levels
But I’m not an AWES doomer
There are also fantastically productive folks with positive developments and real companies in AWES pushing the envelope every day
Very little time Rod. One thing I forgot to mention is how AWE chat groups have increased my typing speed to the point I can type as fast as I can think, then when I look back, I can’t believe how long my post that took only a few minutes turns out to be.
“Pushing the envelope” - more buzzwords… Well thanks for making my exact point. No matter how the years go on with no AWE system operating on a regular basis, it makes no difference to the dummies. They will just keep on saying the same old things, forever - how “smart” they are, how great their future accomplishments “will be”… There is no stopping it - in wind energy, you can’t tell an “idiot” they are an “idiot”, because if they could understand it, they wouldn’t be one!
The one thing they can never comprehend is “Where is a working system today, and how much energy is it providing per month or year?” Which is only the main thing that matters in wind energy! But they don’t care about what matters. they just care about more bragging over their mythical accomplishments of the future! Very typical and redundant for real wind people to hear!
Hi Doug, maybe you could make a song accompanied by your guitar, and which would be the only AWE success.
Something like this:
Fifteen years, fifteen years, and still nothing.
Dougoudougoudoug (guitar)
Pouloum pouloum (guitar);
All crackpots, all newbies, all know-nothings.
Dougoudougoudoug (guitar)
Pouloum pouloum (guitar);
Always selfies, always in the future.
Dougoudougoudoug (guitar)
Pouloum pouloum (guitar);
You don’t know what we, real wind energy guys, know.
Dougoudougoudoug (guitar)
Pouloum pouloum (guitar);
Because you are all idiots, idiots, idiots.
Dougoudougoudoug, DougouDoug, Doug Doug (guitar then applause)…
Of course it is only a sketch. We should work on the choruses and verses.
Love it - thank you Pierre.
I hope people don’t really think I’m trying to say everyone in AWE is actually an idiot, in the literal sense, just that as a group, all the wind wannabes all seem to say the same redundant stuff, and it gets so frustrating, we’ve gotta call 'em something.
Mostly, I’m just trying to make the point so that those who are reachable might realize there really is “a syndrome” and maybe some of the reachable people might try to avoid falling into it. In the end, just trying to be helpful, by sometimes poking a little fun at the whole scenario.
As a fellow musician, I recognize your penchant for song-writing. I’ll share that I have been playing a lot of guitar lately. I’ve accumulated a decent collection of guitars, mostly of Asian manufacture, but the quality is really good, and I have a few amps, like a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, another couple of amps using EL34 tubes for that British Marshall or Laney type sound, a PA, a few bass guitars, probably the best-sounding bass amp in the world (Gallien Krueger), and recording-studio-in-a-box from Korg, that my old guitarist let me borrow.
What I’d like to do is get set up with a good quality digital studio with its own dedicated digital audio workstation (DAW) computer, and some software like ProTools. I’ve got so many songs I want to record. So many windmills I want to build. Meanwhile, it’s a nice sunny day out there and I think I’m gonna go out and pull some weeds and pick up some trash from the construction site across the street.
We have a new neighbor building an 8000 sq ft house (that’s about 800 sq meters) with a 6-car garage and a 50-foot indoor swimming pool, that also has an outbuilding with a 4-car garage, and a taller, longer garage space, for RV parking - that means a large camper about the size of a bus. So far, I’ve had the biggest house around here, but not anymore!
This appears to be a fundamental criticism of AWE for electricity production, and of the inherent problems, especially as this section of the commentary comes after a similar criticism of vertical axis wind turbines which now have a long history of unhappy experiments.
There will still be boat traction and other kite sports.
The experiments seem pretty happy as long as they are performed in wind tunnels!
I’m still perversely drawn to try building a long or tall Savonius using oil drums.
Or, to take a clue from trash stuck to a fence, tie pieces of trash to one side of chain-link fence gates, and arrange them on a merry-go-round-style spinning wheel. Let the trash do the talking!
But the “real wind guy” I recently spoke to about vertical-axis turbines made a very good point I had not really thought much about: How to balance the rotor(s). Seems like they would have to be balanced both top and bottom, at each level. In trying to find a good Savonius on YouTewb, I did find one that the builder said only made enough voltage to actually charge the batteries in a very strong wind, at which point it was going so fast it produced worrisome vibrations and shaking. The video did show it going pretty fast, and it looked worrisome, and I guess I didn’t think too much about what it would do if it got going really fast. I guess that makes me a Savonius newbie! “Gosh I never realized this thing would go fast!” If I ever built one, I might even become an “idiot”! Imagine what people would think! My whole reputation would go down the drain! Well, unless it worked OK, but…
The thing is, most people can’t build a decent turbine no matter what, because everything has to match up just right, as far as RPM, voltage, current, and power, not to mention perfect balance. I think that’s at least half the reason we never see one working well. Lack of proper execution skills. But when you get right down to it, a regular turbine is probably easier, even though a Savonius is “easier to understand”.
Just read this new article on global cooling and “nuclear winter”:
Mass starvation after nuclear war could be partially averted with one specific food — seaweed | Live Science
Haven’t seen much talk about “nuclear winter” since the early 1980’s - maybe 1984?
That was when we had no internet and basically 3 television networks, so “everyone” would be talking about whatever show drew the most eyeballs, the next morning. There was a “made for TV” movie called “The Day After” about a hypothetical climate disaster from a nuke war causing “global cooling”. It brings to mind a possible shift in the historically cyclical panic over warming vs cooling, going back to the 1700’s.
Above you can see a current readout of the inverter here, and below that, a snapshot of my current electric bill, which is a negative number, as it hopefully should be. That 47 Amps is at 240 Volts AC (nominal utility line voltage).
Reality check; “We’re going to power 1 (number of homes) by date (12 years ago) at location (my house), using (a standard 10 kW wind turbine on a tower).”
It has not been easy. The local installer is not only dishonest, but incompetent, so I’m on my third (3rd) similar turbine now, and I bring in other service people these days. The forecast is for 18 mph winds right now, but as you can see from the readout of over 11 kW being produced, it’s more like 29 mph at 120 feet. We’re expecting a year’s worth of rain in the next ten days (El Nino going into effect for February), which is bad for blade erosion when combined with high winds, so I may manually furl the turbine overnight (21 mph winds predicted) to avoid problems. I’ve noticed when a storm is coming, winds can be much higher than predicted. High winds are when turbines can catastrophically fail, as in explode, with parts landing hundreds of feet away, so, better somewhat safe than really sorry. Those few extra kWh are just not worth it!
It remains to do the same with an AWES…
Update: The turbine is still furled, using the winch at the bottom of the tower. We apparently had somewhat high winds last night, because I have a couple of potted pine trees that always blow over in strong winds and I find them laying on the ground.
The highest winds in the forecast are supposedly decreasing now, and the output is varying between 2 kW and 7 kW or so. So now the decision is when the turbine will be out of danger from blade erosion or flying apart, so I can unfurl it and resume full power operation. It turns out we’re not getting as much rain as forecast, even in real time, by the most sophisticated weather “A.I.” in the world, so we locals have to take whatever their forecast is, and apply our actual experience in this area to what their machines predict.
For example, when I mentioned to a neighbor yesterday that we were supposed to get an inch of rain (last night and this morning), he countered with the fact that they often say that, but then we get a lot less rain than they predict, because, after all, we’re at the edge of the driest desert in North America. “Storm-Watch” turns into “Sprinkle-Watch”. Oh well, the National Weather Service has only had 50 years or so to get their “A.I.” working properly, so I guess they’re still fine-tuning it a bit…
I’m glad I did furl the turbine though, because in storms, once the inverter lets the turbine go so it runs unloaded, the RPM readout often says 450 RPM, as the turbine cycles from being completely sideways, whereupon it slows or almost comes to a complete stop, to then turning back fully facing the wind, since it has little thrust loading when stopped, at which point the voltage and amps exceed the capacity of the inverter and it “lets go” of the turbine, so the turbine runs unloaded, facing directly into the wind, which is unacceptable, and a flaw in the way the turbine furls and its overspeed protection.
At 450 RPM, and a 22-foot diameter, that’s 31,086 feet per minute, = 518 feet per second, = 353 miles per hour = 568 kilometers per hour.
That’s about half the speed of sound, right? = > Mach 0.5
That is three 50-lb blades, going more than half the speed of sound at the tips, (no wonder they get loud) and imagine the stresses on that turbine in such a state.
I have a friend, another “real wind person” who has probably sold more small turbines than anyone else over the years, who put 3 samurai swords, on a grinder to make them into blades, and ran the resulting rotor unloaded. He said it exceeded Mach 1 making popping sounds like firecrackers (mini-sonic booms), and the resulting vapor looked like smoke coming off the rotor.
Anyway, one of the things I’m trying to avoid is the leading edge damage from 350 mph raindrops hitting the blades. At that speed, even “just” water droplets can cause a lot of damage. That’s one more reason why “real wind people” know that overspeed protection is the most important factor in any wind turbine system’s design.
And think about this: Imagine the bending stresses on any vertical-axis blades if a VAWT even approached such a speed. At least HAWT blades are aligned with centrifugal force, rather than opposed to it. Can you imagine how stiff a VAWT blade would have to be to survive? No wonder the large VAWT that was previously a mile or so South of me only lasted about a year, before a blade became detached. Basically, I think it lasted until the first decent storm, and I’ve shown the picture of it with one immense blade hanging off the side of the supporting arm structure, with a crew removing it using a man-bucket on a telescoping arm.
You can’t explain any of this to non-wind people, or newbies. Their brains just cannot accept the immense destructive forces and speeds that come into play when winds get strong. The only way people learn is when their project explodes, or burns out the generator, etc., at which point they either give up, or start to figure out what’s the real deal in wind energy systems that will still be working after a storm.
Professor Crackpot never sleeps!
Hi, thanks, but not so sure about why you send me this link. I cannot see the connection with the solution I proposed or do I miss something ? Pierre
Yeah, uh, sorry about that, Pierre. Normally when we talk about either extracting or adding kinetic energy to a fluid flow, the standard propeller type device is, well, standard. That includes both wind turbines and airplane propellers. One may note the similarity. This article mentioned using a “fin”, so I thought it might be a way to ADD kinetic energy to a fluid flow using a fin, as I thought it sounded similar to the device you described. But the word “fin” should not have been used, since, as it turns out, the device uses a membrane, moving parallel to the flow, not a fin moving perpendicular to the flow. My guess is it is not very efficient, although, of course, the promoters claim otherwise. Well, what else is Professor Crackpot going to say, except it has better efficiency? Anyway, by the time I had realized all this, it was already posted. I guess the only relevance to the partial-propeller you referred to, that does not make a full rotation and instead has to reverse both direction and pitch after every partial rotation, like a real fin, is it is a reciprocating substitute for a fully-rotating propeller for the exchange of kinetic energy.
