Au Contraire, Mon Frere. I’ve contemplated shapewave-type structures literally since I was a little kid.
Meanwhile whenever I come here, just as in the previous AWE forum, I find the most naive, completely off-base, non-starters of an idea, one after another, being endlessly discussed by armchair analysts who seem permanently stuck in fantasy-land, with an inexperienced mindset that gets most everything wrong. Today is more of the same. Congratulations. 
Hi Doug, you are right. My problem is that my armchair is too worn. I’m going to replace it with something in shapewave® to be more comfortably installed. And there, I will have no fatigue in sending the most absurd or hackneyed ideas.
It’s all about the comfort of the armchair. The advantage of the armchair is that it cannot fly away any more than the AWE ideas that can be expressed while seated there.
Big Lammy 5,91m 13Kg geflogen von Michael Röll Wasserkuppe Abtsroda
https://www.rhoener-ueberflieger.de/
Only 13 kg for almost 6 m: if it’s strong enough, it could be a way to build AWES.
Nice derivation and explanation of Loyd’s formula by Moritz Diehl: https://youtu.be/qjcg-k82Knc?list=PLQN0Q-K1FkmRuZALIMv9LngYk5OobxCzf&t=890
Let’s continue with Paris 2024 Olympic Games, with kitefoiling, now an Olympic sport. Some videos:
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For the fastest sport in the o-limp-dicks, I’d suggest ski jumping, downhill ski racing, archery, shooting sports, javelin, baseball? is baseball an olympic sport? - anyway, lots of sports faster than flying kites.
This may be true, but it may not be the reason for the stagnation of AWE.
Have you considered that this could also be because those who know about wind energy show no interest in AWE (with the exception of Dr. Fort Felker)?
Considering these two points of view as true or not true, and being optimistic, we can also think that wind energy by AWE bears little resemblance to conventional wind energy in a technical point of view, even apart from the fact that it is not operational.
As a result, it may not be so important that AWE developers have little knowledge of conventional wind power, knowing that wind developers don’t care about AWE, both confirming the narrowness of the intersection between these two fields.
This is a typical forever-newbie attitude we have always seen in wannabe wind energy, of which AWE is just one of many subsets. (Another is vertical-axis turbines.) In other fields, the same rings true, such as investing where the common newbie phrase “this time it’s different” is often mocked by the veterans.
All ayone had to see right away was reversing the terms for a lift machine versus a drag machine to shake our heads in disbelief at the extreme level of not only voluntary, but enthusiastic, ignorance.
BUILDINGS KILLING BIRDS
More than a billion birds could be dying from flying into buildings each year in US | Popular Science (popsci.com)
This number pales in comparison to the number of birds killed by housecats. Motor vehicles also kill millions of birds. But you will notice the less someone knows about the details of wind energy, the more they will talk about “the bird issue”. It’s useless to try to explain how far down on the list windmills are - these people only have room for a single bumper-sticker slogan in their non-wind brains. “Look at our new thuper-exthpenthive turbine that maketh no power what-thoever! It-th bird-friendly! Wheeeee!”
The Father of the Flying Car" Video
Father of the Flying Car (youtube.com)
Pauk Moller was 8 months away from putting a flying car in everyones’ garage 55 years ago when i was a kid. People took it very seriously even way back then. A major “press-release-nreakthrough” of its time.
Paul Moller ended up selling high performance rotary engines and exhaust systems instead, just like Joby “pivoted” to selling electric motors after his brief stab at AWE 15 years ago. Paul is still at it, and so is Joby : both are still working on getting a multi-prop flying car really working well enough to have an actual use, as the decades roll on…
Hey guys! Guess what? Remember the previous article I posted about here, regarding the dual-rotor “world’s most powerful” turbine supposedly “installed” in China? Remember me saying that article was probably one more wind energy lie, and that it had not in fact been installed at all?
Well here’s today’s article:
Dual-headed demon: World’s ‘most powerful’ wind turbine sails to power 30,000 homes (msn.com)
# Dual-headed demon: World’s ‘most powerful’ wind turbine sails to power 30,000 homes
"A Chinese firm has initiated the journey to install the world’s largest single-capacity floating wind turbine platform.
The new design by MingYang Smart Energy, called Ocean X, has been launched from the port city of Guangzhou in southern China to its final destination the Qingzhou IV Offshore Wind Farm in Yangjiang, Guangdong.
According to the firm, the journey spanning 191 nautical miles is expected to be completed in 72 hours."
Further down, the article states:
" To ensure safe passage, it has carefully adjusted its massive blades to minimize the platform’s aerial profile, a testament to safety and precision,” said the firm in a post on LinkedIn."
OK, so the first article was a complete lie - the turbine was NOT in fact installed. Now how do you think such an article could be written, and published, and people all around the world can think it is true, yet little old me sitting here at my computer can so confidently declare it was a lie? Hmmmm…
Further down in THIS article, they repeat the statement that the same company’s previous “world’s largest turbine’, at 18 MegaWatts, was “typhoon-proof”:
" The business debuted the first typhoon-proof wind turbine in history in December 2023, with a power rating of 18 MW.”
But if that previous turbine was rated at 18 MegaWatts, and this “dual-headed demon” turbine installation is only rated at 16.6 MegaWatts, then how is this the world’s most powerful turbine?
“Ocean X has a dual-turbine ‘V’ shape and a total capacity of 16.6 MW.”
The article ends with their final misleading statement: That the turbine can keep producing power at 161 MPH in 90-foot waves!
“Moreover, the platform can resist gusts of up to 161 mph (260 km/h) and waves as high as 98 feet (30 meters) in Category 5 hurricane conditions. Impressively, by facing the wind, it can still generate electricity under these harsh circumstances.”
Hmmm, so “the platform” can resist “gusts” “up to” 161 mph - OK now it’s just “the platform” that “can resist” “gusts” of 161 MPH - the claims are slowly being watered down. But they still repeat the lie that “by facing the wind, it can still generate electricity under these harsh circumstances.”
So, once again, as you can see, almost every sensational article about wind energy is not just one lie, but an entire collection of lies. Today we’re told the ship has sailed, whereas a couple of weeks ago, it was already “installed”. Now let’s wait to see it “producing power” in 90-foot waves, in 161 mph winds!
Will we ever see a “press-release-breakthrough” when it falls apart and is decommissioned, or even just abandoned? Probably not, but let’s stay tuned, for more wind energy lies!
Why do I point all this out? Well because the AWE contingent seems overly impressed when one of us gets a little press coverage, but meanwhile, history shows most of those articles are mostly just lies as well, so, at some point, do the math!
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The last point is one of the things expanded on in this short video. The video is also a nice history of wind energy:
History about Nordex and other wind turbines, Growian test facility
In an older interview, one of the founders talks about this system being based on a helicopter rotor principle instead of a propeller rotor principle, and the system having a teetering/seesaw hinge, which should help the rotor yaw out of the wind. Also he for example talks about that a concrete base, as opposed to a steel one, dampens the sound coming from the turbine, benefiting sea life.
The company seems to have several YouTube channels, the above videos were from an older one, this panel discussion from a newer one. It talks about a 3.2 GW floating wind project off Sardinia.
Here on another YouTube channel an animation of how the turbines would be made and transported. The base of the turbines and the method of transport now have changed.
News Archieven - Seawind Ocean Technology %
This turbine was made by a company whose IP and manufacturing rights were bought by Seawind. One of the founders of Seawind, Silvestro Caruso, was also at that company.
A 2018 study: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1037/4/042007/pdf
I notice a similar phenomenon in product reviews.
Half of them are written before the buyer even tries the product!
“Fast shipping - 5 stars***** !!!”
I’m currently looking at reviews on certain LED light bulbs at Home Depot (trying to avoid the short-life and radio interference of cheap Asian LED bulbs ordered online).
Always check the one-star reviews first!
The one-star reviews are from people who have used the product for some time, and found out they do not have the advertised life. In the case of these particular LED bulbs, rated to last 13 years, multiple bulbs fail in weeks or months for many writing one-star reviews, with the buyers declaring them “unacceptable”.
The 5-star reviews are from overenthusiastic true-believers who say things like “I’ve calculated these will last for 13.5 years, and they are mercury-free - blah blah blah…” with all kinds of optimistic forward-looking predictions, with their predictions based on the advertising lies about cheap products made overseas, earning the 5-stars.
Similar to AWE and EVTOL enthusiasm: The hype is all around forward-looking statements, but in this case. it’s even worse! You can’t even find any actual reviews of users because there ARE NO USERS, because there IS NO PRODUCT!
Well, unless you believe the single online article Pierre found indicating one company had sold 5 systems… I think we’ve already covered the fact that almost every online article about any new wind energy system amounts to nothing but innocently naive predictions by know-nothings, to complete lies by rip-off artists or struggling entrepreneurs pressured to keep their stock price up.
Composites Exchange Swancor -Swancor recyclable thermosetting epoxy resin “EzCiclo” and "CleaVER”
Continued…
Not sure where to post this
There’s a cool wind field measurement graphic on the Americas Cup preliminary regatta
Uses an array of lidar equipment to analyse the race course
Could be really useful for shifting kites about
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How stupid the press is regarding wind energy:
This Reporter, Doug McIntyre, states that a wind turbine blade is as long as an aircraft carrier. Last I knew, aircraft carriers are about a quarter-mile long (as long as my yard here in the Mojave Desert). Meanwhile, even the biggest rotors have a total DIAMETER of around, what is it now, 500 feet or so? About an eighth of a mile? Making the longest blades about a sixteenth of a mile? So this windidiot, nonetheless doing a video on the supposed facts of wind energy, casually overstates something as simple and straightforward as the length of a wind turbine blade, by 4 times! Now I have heard this reporter for years - never paid much attention, but his name has been out there for quite some time.
And I’ve seen other, similarly ignorant videos showing diagrams of a rotor, labeling an Indvidual blade length of 500 feet, when they got the number from the entire diameter. So they casually doubled the blade length and size of the turbine without missing a beat. This is the sea of ignorance we find ourselves in when discussing wind energy from even the seemingly most reputable sources.
Just look at the “concern” on his face. And he spends a good part of the video espousing his “position” as “Editor-In-Chief of ClimateCrisis247”, whatever that is. I still can’t figure out if he is pro clean energy or against it - or maybe neutral, the way “reporters” are supposed to be? Is that even possible these days?
Anyway, it is ONE MORE EXAMPLE of the simple FACT that people who don’t know anything about wind energy should JUST SHUT UP and stop spreading their ignorance! When I talk about “idiots, idiots, idiots”, this is why. And you notice the more idiotic the article, the less likely the publication allows comments! God forbid they would be exposed as…, well, “idiots”. But as you can see, they are! This guy is an idiot for even thinking he knows the first thing about wind turbines, let alone that he should be talking about them!
And the very sad thing is, 99% of the public will eat up whatever nonsense is spewed from the press, without the slightest bit of scrutiny.