4 posts were merged into an existing topic: [Wiki] Wiki Creation and Editing Guide
How about adding a new category called something like âShippingâ or âship propulsion.â I canât think of a good name⊠@tallakt, @Rodread and others?
If someone wanted to start a wiki on ship propulsion then for example that could be pinned so it was easily findable. There have also already been plenty of topics on this, so I can move those to there as well.
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A post was split to a new topic: [Wiki] Wiki Creation and Editing Guide
This page looks to be updated, being more or less recent since several references date from 2020 or even 2022.
A roadmap of the AWE sector has been described in a White Paper by BVG Associates in 2022. It shows that about 1 GW could be deployed by the early 2030s and several hundred GW by 2050[13]
And the advantages compared to current tower wind turbines are well stated, but not the disadvantages. Maybe the downsides donât exist. If wind turbines are prosperous, unlike AWES, It must be a matter of luck.
The first companies have started commercialising their systems.
How many units have been sold, at what price, and what annual production do they generate, or rather how many hours in a row did they work?
In the meantime, Kitewinderâs Kiwee ââwas the only AWES marketed having flying during 132 continuous hours. It can produce 200 W.
Many AWE pages have been published in different forms (patents, publications, wikis, etc.). What if we limited ourselves to the AWES marketed?
Some AWE ideas:
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A new way to achieve AWE by carrying wind turbine blades through the air. All that remains is to rotate them during the flight.
It reminds me of Christophe Verna ideas Verna voile de traction libre auto portée prototype
Not to be taken too seriouslyâŠ
âGreen shippingâ using âGround Effectâ on
Another future failure, masquerading as âthe next big thingâ. Wing in ground effect -like vertical-axis turbines, one more very old, already mostly disproven idea, as far as actual usefulness. Not that I donât like it - not that it isnât sexy, but after all these years, where is one in operation today? Iâd say what we can gather from the AWE forum lately is nobody has any solutions, no new ideas, and there is basically nothing going on in AWE anymore, not even any remotely hopeful prospects recently. :OâŠ
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Advanced Kite Networks is now a proven AWE way, with the help of DeepSeek, to power the world. No need for prototypes and all the superfluous stuff: just proclaim it and use AI as an echo chamber.
You also know that certain projects have made it possible to achieve around 100 kW. For how long? In a commercially useful way? No one cares.
As for my personal research, it turns out that the more I advance, the more the solutions I hope for turn out to be nonviable: for example parasails with high drag coefficients but which melt as soon as the wind speed increases, or even inflatable profiles whose effectiveness is reduced as soon as the real or apparent wind increases.
AWE will remain the energy of the future until a spark of intelligence comes to turn everything upside down.
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Hi Pierre: At least you actually build and try ideas, and admit when you are not convinced of their efficacy. I think youâve built and tried more AWE ideas than anyone else, worldwide, actually.
As far as âknowingâ any project made over 100 kW, many people also thought they âknewâ the same source had built âa factoryâ selling AWE systems worldwide, yet we see no evidence of this so many years later.
I could show you recent clickbait articles and videos, probably âA.I.â-generated, still making those same outdated claims, but Iâll spare you the humor.
Yep Iâd second that
@PierreB champion du monde at AWES building
For me, I do have a design which I believe is viable for a few different usages [The Pyramid]. I am not looking for wacky new ideas, rather whats necessary now is probably working systems at smaller scale, to enable iterative development.
I do think a few designs could work. TRPT hovering for sure, single tether single kite bounding probably [yoyo]. Maybe high altitude drag bounding. Maybe dancing kites with two kites.
Ideas are here, working implementations still missing
I might agree, maybe in a different order, maybe âhigh altitude drag boundingâ in first.
This would suggest that the architectures would be different depending on the altitudes targeted, which would be a first for a discipline (AWE) if it hatches in earnest. Indeed, we are more used to a single predominant architecture, for example HAWT for onshore or offshore wind power.
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It seems much easier, quicker, and cheaper to make kites out of this than out of glass fiber, for comparable characteristics? And, like the text says, you have greater flexibility in blade design, so you can do quicker iteration. Are there downsides?
Today I bought a photo-luminescent based flying ring led. I tried it: when you spin it quickly the LED, powered by a battery, light up.
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Looks like a great gift for kids! 
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The Ivanpah solar plant in the desert of Southern California, out toward Las Vegas, is set to close, due to being uneconomical.
This huge array of mirrors focus sunlight on water boilers on towers. But the steering systems for the mirrors tended to break down, limiting output, birds were routinely fried in mid-flight, as the mirrors drew insects, which drew birds, which then flew thru the concentrated light beams. The thing was real ugly and visually disturbing when you drove thru the area along Interstate 15 freeway. And it burned natural gas for certain low-sun periods, such as early morning and late afternoon, while charging exorbitant solar rates for what was really natural gas fueled generation.
Just as there are âa million waysâ to make some energy from the wind at some cost, same with solar. Photovoltaic solar is now far cheaper than the mirrors, and even that is no longer needed, due to the simple fact that power demand is super low when the sun is shining and nobody is home to use any electricity anyway, with the daytime market for electricity already saturated with overambitious large solar arrays, nobody needs more daytime electricity. They call it âthe duck curveâ of power demand, and daytime is the bottom point of the curve⊠Anyway, rates are supposed to drop here when the utilities are no longer required to buy overly-expensive solar power from this big, ugly, bird-killing mirror solar powerplant.
So you can see, due to the heavy bureaucracy, by the time any project can finally be approved, the technology is often obsolete. Another example is the supposed bullet train from Hesperia, California to Las Vegas, which was finally approved with a stated goal of being complete by the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Right after approval, itâs now been decided it will open at the END of 2028, after the Olympics are over. Most people can read between the lines and doubt if it will ever even be built at all, like the other bullet train from L.A. to San Francisco, which has been âin the worksâ for decades, yet never gets built, despite spending tens of billions of dollars trying.
Meanwhile, like the ugly mirrors, the bullet train is supposed to have ugly overhead wires for 200+ miles, ruining the view for drivers. Not only that, but the average speed is supposed to be only 90 mph, due to hills and curves, making it no faster than driving, since most people drive at 90 mph in the open desert.
But it gets worse: Assuming that 5 years from now, weâll have efficient electric self-driving cars capable of very high speeds, they would be faster than taking the train anyway, with no driver attention required. Then thereâs the price for tickets: Supposed to be around $130 per person, each way. That comes out to over $500 for two people, round trip. Meanwhile a car might cost $100, and you have a car to drive around when you get there. HmmmâŠ
Anyway, point is, new energy-making or supposed energy-saving technologies often have a pretty tight time window of relevance or ability to pencil out. Something to keep in mind for AWE projects.
Doug
careful with your logic here
describing a mirror as ugly
?
Not in my experience