I’m watching the first video about smallest airplanes. Youtube feeds me videos of these exact tiny planes all the time. I noticed at time 6:30, it says the Archeopteryx at 54 kilograms, “is considered one of the lightest hang gliders in the world”. Nonsense. Maybe one of the lightest stick-and-rudder sailplanes in the world, but even the highest performance actual hang gliders weigh only about half that. Actually, it is not even a hang-glider at all, but just a foot-launchable sailplane. I’ve been in Tehachapi for a flight of a similar mini-sailplane that was towed up by a car. Fun, fun, fun! (I think there’s a video of that flight somewhere on youtube)
And AWE: good or bad idea?
For typhoons AWE have two advantages: first, they can be brought back and hidden underground at the announcement of a typhoon; on the other hand, they do not produce any significant commercially exploitable energy during the year, hence the absence of losses during the passage of a typhoon.
As for harnessing the energy of the typhoon itself, I don’t think anyone seriously believes in it.
Hi Pierre: Well, what you say is exactly my point: We tend to get all excited at any article, video, or press coverage of AWE. But is that excitement warranted, considering how inaccurate such coverage is, in general, let alone over wind energy, which few understand, let alone over AWE, which even the AWE people themselves don’t understand? How do such rumors about a turbine continuing to produce power during a typhoon, in 164 mph winds, with 90-foot waves proliferate? Who would make such claims, and why? And how can any “journalist” be gullible enough to repeat such statements in any context besides “the manufacturer claims”? And how are these unwarranted claims any different than all the similarly dubious AWE statements of the past, promising to power X hundred homes in remote location Y by date Z? Or any of the other ridiculous claims made by certain people on this very forum, about their own vast and overwhelming progress, always set in the future of course, in light of their own consistent past and current lack of any progress whatsoever? 
Hi Doug, Makani M 600 flew at 50 m/s (112 mph). A little more effort and we could use Makani’s secondary turbines during small typhoons.
They would be sold with a good guarantee: your little turbine will last the duration of a typhoon. 
The funny thing is that a secondary turbine designed for an AWE device (Makani) could partly adapt to typhoons. 
Clearly it is not impossible, but what is impossible is to think that we will be able to use traditional wind turbines sweeping a correct wind area, even very improved ones: at best they will survive but without producing anything.
I moved the 3 comments above this one from this topic: Typhoon-proof Wind Turbines - #6 that topic is not about journalism or AWE or things like that.
This is a forum about AWE. https://forum.awesystems.info/
Accordingly, all topics have or should have a connection with AWE.
My two messages above are both in the general topic of this forum which is AWE, and in the Typhoon-proof Wind Turbines topic. They therefore have their place in the original topic. The same goes for @dougselsam 's message.
It will be easy for you to recognize your mistake and return these messages to their original location. I’ll give you some quotes that will help you.
I might as well have cited everything from these comments.
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Yes Pierre, this character, “Windy”, whomever that actually represents, seems to have “too much time on his hands”, with nothing much to do or say except trying to nitpick, scold, or squelch the voices of others.
Regarding turbines continuing to produce power in a hurricane or typhoon: 99% of the general public would have no trouble believing such a statement, that those with experience in wind energy would find absurd.
Sure, a Makani motor/generator unit with propeller might be able to survive and produce power in 164 MPH winds, but not the whole aircraft. And even just the propulsion unit itself might quickly burn out or be destroyed in such high winds, because, let’s remember, the power is a cubic function of windspeed, so doubling the wind speed will increase power by eight (8) times. Even coming close to doubling the windspeed will increase power by 5 or 6 times. Even slightly exceediing the rated continuous output will burn out a generator. Greatly exceeding it will quickly cook the generator, and it smells really bad when that happens by the way. Of course (sigh…) nobody reading this knows that, because few if any reading this has ever built, run, or even worked on real wind turbines in sustained high winds, to have ever experienced a burned out generator, but anyone who has, knows that smell! And you don’t want to ever smell it again! The first one I ever burned out in Tehachapi had a smell so strong it would almost knock you out, from up on the tower!
Anyway, what the general public has no knowledge of, is the simple fact that, like most machinery, wind turbines are designed for a specific task - which for wind turbines is overall energy capture in the “sweet spot” of the wind speed range where the most energy can be captured over the long term.
All components are therefore specified and designed to address that “sweet spot” wind speed range. To go outside that range would entail unnecessary cost and excess material use. Therefore, it would be highly unlikely any professional wind turbine designer would ever have a reason to even try to design, let alone build and install, a turbine targeting energy capture from 164 MPH winds. All one might accomplish is to overproduce for a few minutes out of maybe a decade, when in reality, whatever grid they were trying to feed would probably not even be intact at that moment anyway. The whole concept is so stupid that only an idiot would even think of doing it. Reminds me of the guys predicting AWE systems designed to harness updrafts of thunderstorms were going to lead the “industry”. But as we know, there is no shortage of idiots when it comes to wannabe wind energy, let alone hapless “journalists” trying to write accurate articles about wind energy, even long-proven wind energy, let alone AWE itself!
That one is about typhoon-proof wind turbines. That is a wide enough topic already that would be good to have a basic understanding about. All or most of the comments there are still mostly off-topic as we still don’t learn what things to do to make a wind turbine more typhoon-proof or what the industry is doing to typhoon-proof wind turbines, or what research is being done.
These are the basics of this forum. When you understand this, you will avoid the nonsense of calling anyone off-topic when they write about AWE in an AWE forum, as you have done, and continuing to be wrong (see below).
Within an AWE forum.
On this forum many topics are discussed even though they do not seem directly related to AWE. There is a need to connect the elements that could result in a better approach to AWE.
In any case, that’s what I do as much as possible, like lately. This gives weight to my interventions on seemingly peripheral subjects. You would do well to take inspiration from it to progress instead of moving posts about AWE in a AWE forum.
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And also, if the wind speed is 164 MPH, the speed of the rigid kite can be much higher, further increasing the tip speed and the rpm of the secondary turbine.
It would then remain to use the secondary turbine as the main wind turbine, with all the limits that we have spoken about.
That is only relevant in deciding if the topic should be on the forum or not. You can use the topic to do market/competitor research and how to design typhoon-proof wind turbines for your AWES of interest. So if the topic explores the topic it belongs on this forum. It still doesn’t, or very superficially, now, so let’s hope it grows into something. You give it less chance to become useful if you don’t even explore the topic itself. I didn’t move Doug’s original post to Slow Chat to allow it to, even though his original comment is off-topic on this forum as it is more about journalism and his opinion on things than anything else.
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Surely we could use a further category
“Loosely related research”
Or
Nearly AWES
Or
Possibly useful…
Sure we’re working in tensile design
But we’re still building on top of strong foundations in other sciences.
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What do you expect in a group where almost nobody has any experience in, or basic knowledge of, wind energy?
If anyone was stupid enough to want to design/build a turbine for typhoon wind speeds, you would need to make all components many times thicker, heavier, stronger, etc. and the generators would have to be much bigger, heavier, more expensive, etc. In the end, your turbines would cost 5 times as much for no god reason than being able to say you could continue producing power in a typhoon. And if it were engineered around typhoon wind speeds, it would not be effective 99.9% of the time, since normal winds would not be able to turn it. It’s all just idiot-talk, by and for complete, know-nothing, brain-dead idiots. As a worldwide resource, there is no shortage of idiots, so we are in good standing as far as never running out of them.
I’ve been monitoring these AWE discussion groups for 16 years now, always with the same goal: to see if there is anything going on in AWE. The answer has always been “no”.
No, there is nothing going on in AWE, and in retrospect we can see there really never has been, and as for the future, who knows if there ever will be.
So we’re relegated to talking about peripheral subjects, that may have peripheral, background information, which might inform AWE efforts. Debunking other stupid wind energy ideas represents what is de rigeur in engineering: Knowing the common pitfalls, as a starting place, so you don’t end up as “just another (predictable) idiot”.
Isn’t that what Makani did with its wings flying at 50 m/s (not yet typhoon wind speed but that comes close to), and the secondary turbines accordingly?
That leads to a question: can secondary turbines resist during longtime, given a so high apparent wind speed?
If no, this is a serious drawback for fast crosswind fly-gens, unless new types of turbines were in operation.
Otherwise, so-and-so wouldn’t take care of AWE. Have you heard of conventional wind companies getting into AWE?
Hold on
There’s a chance here for 2x of these peripheral topics to come together and make a viable AWES
1 Minesto+
2 Typhoon operations
Because Minesto kite is so heavy
Maybe it can fly in a typhoon
Yeah bit left field
Let’s not try it … Only because the props aren’t optimised and we might scratch the paint
I think we just need to think bigger! Think GIGAWATT not megawatt. Think kilometers not meters… thats what we are missing. And think passive oscillatory motion rather than controlling stuff
As I said, if a component is built to withstand continuous high winds, then it can handle such winds. But that component would be too heavy, and too expensive, for ordinary winds. I do not think any pilot in their right mind would try to fly a Makani-style AWE aircraft in a category 5 hurricane or typhoon, even if it were just holding its position, any more than anyone else would try to do much of ANYTHING outdoors, in a typhoon!
And not just any old oscillatory motion - Bose-Einstein Condensates - it has to sound like the person proposing such an idea (which he is unable to build) is a genius, like Einstein.
World’s Coldest Stuff: Nobel Prize Winner Explains Bose-Einstein Condensate
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Pretty good, Rod. I never would have thought of that!
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