Yes, obviously. Good conclusion. Pierre, months ago you were appropriately skeptical of the endless parade of unworkable ideas, and we were having a good laugh privately over the next conference at the time, asking “What is the theme this year, “Why we can’t do AWE”? And the main attraction will be an antique oil painting of a kite?” And sure enough Roddy’s presentation had that exact theme, and he included the climax of his trip, a photo of the oil painting of a kite, in his report back to us.
So we could read the writing on the wall, and it was funny, as usual. You were perhaps the one, single other AWE chat participant besides me who could even think independently, rather than being completely indoctrinated to believe whatever nonsense was presented at the moment.
If one is incapable of debunking bad ideas, one will never be able to develop solutions, because it means being able to sift through many ideas that sound good, to find he ones that really ARE good. If you can’t tell the difference, you end up in The La Brea Tar Pits, like the rest.
More recently, you were able to dig up enough references, and do the 5th-grade math, to show that the Chinese airship could not possibly generate reliable power at the advertised level without burning out its generators, and that was partly because you were sensible enough to listen to my input from the real world of actual wind energy, about how much generator is needed to produce sustained high power, rather than brief peaks that look good in a demo, but in no way reflect sustained output.
You actually listened to wind energy facts from an experienced source, and even made the astute observation that overheating generators may have been a problem for Makani. So you showed me you were pretty smart for someone without any experience in wind energy.
However, in the last week or two, it seems that you’ve had a brain transplant from Dave Santos, suddenly questioning all my good information, and denigrating my accurate pronouncements, observations, and even the sayings and metaphors I use to try and impart such basic facts to the unwashed masses here.
I asked myself - what is wrong with Pierre? Why would he suddenly submit to a brain transplant from Dave Santos? And how is Dave doing without his brain? Or doesn’t he notice the difference?
Well I ruled out the Chinese airship, because initially, you had happily debunked that one. I guess I trained you well. Facts. Arithmetic. Most bad ideas are easily disproven on paper.
I had even told you that you had run more various AWE experiments than anyone else, albeit at a junior-high-school science-fair level, but they were nonetheless legitimate experiments. Whether they would ever lead anywhere was besides the point, at least you tried.
But then I thought of the very nicely-executed project you more recently introduced to us here, with the Magnus/Flettner spinning sausages in kite-reeling mode. “Ah-Hah!” I thought. “That was Pierre’s turning point! - that was when he lost his mind!”
Why? Because Pierre had been talking about spinning sausages as his latest pet theme for months, and the project using the sausages was from the country of - drumroll please… FRANCE! And I expressed my instant opinion that this flawlessly-executed project was nonetheless destined for The La Brea Tar Pits of extinct wind energy ideas, like all the rest.
I guess you had some emotional ties to this French project, which is understandable, so, sorry to burst your bubble, but let’s face it - it is one more kite-reeling adventure (fiasco?), and so far no kite-reeling adventure has panned out. The sad thing is, even with this forum, we have NO IDEA WHY!?!?!? As far as I know, and maybe I’m wrong in this, but it seems that nobody from ANY failed kite-reeling effort has shared with us what exactly has been holding the kite-reeling field back? Why are there no systems operating regularly to this day? No sales, no mass-manufacturing, no customers, no kite-reeling systems operating on a regular basis anywhere in the world, even on the island of Mauritius???
Now I’m certainly willing to be proven wrong, and wish the best for the very impressive spinning sausage effort, and it is only my opinion it’s not going to turn out to be an economical wind energy solution, so take it for what its worth. Just because most everything I say here turns out to be true doesn’t mean I can 100% predict the future - maybe the helium sausage people will spin themselves into the next wave of wind energy!
And who has revealed, every time the “press-release breakthroughs” tell us an Altaeros is powering part of Alaska, or a Skysails has a factory mass-producing and selling kite-reeling units worldwide, beginning with the Island of Mauritius, who has done the simple math and declared that these are, rather than the stated AWE progress, merely false statements? Lies? Fraudulent promotional material? Nothing more, and nothing less? Oh yeah, that’s been me, having the courage to tell the truth in the face of a firehose of lies, as you have at many points acknowledged.
You do have some good points though, such as why am I wasting my time here? When it seems “there is no intelligent life here”? Good point. I guess I should keep that in mind. I did think there was one other realistic mind here, but maybe that was only partially true.
Oh well, as I often say, of I had missed the last 15 years of these forums, I would have missed exactly nothing. So, trying to help people learn about wind energy has probably been a waste of time - either people want to know, or they don’t, and just like an alcoholic has to decide they want to stop drinking, people who want to do wind energy have to decide whether they want to learn how to do it. This simple fact has always existed.
My latest project is fitting a Predator 6.5 Horsepower engine from Harbor Freight on a Motovox minibike that had been left for dead. Very similar to building wind turbines. I guess knowing how to use tools is a useful skill on many levels. Anyway, good luck with the brain transplant, and I hope it doesn’t do too much harm before it wears off. ad I hope Dave is doing OK without his brain, for now! 