Slow Chat

OK but if you are doing backflips on paper, to try to compare a kite to a wind turbine blade, and do not even take into account the fact that a generator is slowing the blades of a wind turbine, then what good is all that gibberish?
On the other hand, I did enjoy reading your links to Kitemill’s progress, and it seems like Kitemill is making decent gains, unlike most of the other kite-reeling efforts.

do not even take into account the fact that a generator is slowing the blades of a wind turbine

That was an error that was subsequently fixed. So if that ends the discussion over doing calculations over building stuff, you are not really having a fair conversation, rather just wasting time trying to win an argument

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Well good to correct it, but it’s just an example of people not understanding how wind energy even works at the simplest level, yet spending all day mathematically analyzing and postulating over stuff that either makes no sense, or leads nowhere. Out of all the papers written, presentations made, conferences had, in-depth analyses, CAD simulations, renderings, postulations advanced, etc., which one has turned out to yield any success? I’d take an ounce of focused effort that leads somewhere, over a ton of misguided busywork, handwaving, and happy-talk that leads nowhere.

Hi Doug, the difficulty is that a “crosswind” AWES is not intended to be only a wind turbine, but also a tethered drone flying in 3D in the end of a long tether, using a lot of artificial intelligence (AI). Mathematics are useful to improve the control among other things. One wrong equation and you end up with an AWES in your house.

47 posts were merged into an existing topic: More laddermill / spidermill ideas

I don’t see a great similarity. Kind of like a tricycle and unicycle are alike

I’m minded to agree with Pierre and Dave on this
It’s the ol fig5
And BTW… Please don’t reference unicycling into another aspect of AWES again :roll_eyes::joy:
It’s already a control theory
Ruins the sport for those of us who enjoy the practical

There are several variants of Payne’s patent figure 5 which describes two pulleys that are connected to the respective generators, and a tether connecting these two pulleys to the kite flying crosswind:

Kiteborne’s variant (on the video) where there are also two pulleys but only one generator.

I sketched another variant with two winches and two generators, one tether being stretched while the other tether being slack, and vice versa.

All these variants are discussed at What is possible with Payne's patent US3987987 figure 5?

I suggest that the currently discussed variant is also posted on the topic above.

I waded through 85 posts and nothing remotely similar. You seem to be making a point that this is an old idea when actually you have not understood what I was trying to convey.

I will accept maybe its an old idea, maybe even I have read about it then forgot. Its not terribly important, but please then just link to an exact match, dont send me to somewhere vague. Also if you dont want to join the discussion for any reason thats ok to. But saying «THIS WAS DONE» over and over just adds noise.

None of the «variants» you propose have similar functioning.

I stress; this is a pulley drive, not a pulling energy transmission. The kite position should be fixed in this design. It is «nothing» like Payne no 3.

Dave Santos, Rod Read and me find the same thing: it is reported to Payne’s patent figure 5. I have linked “your” system to other variants of figure 5.

“But saying «THIS WAS DONE»”: I did not say that, I indicated your design is a variant of figure 5, because that’s what it is.

Ok. Can you explain why you find that?

So I am glad we now agree that this design is a variant of figure 5.

Topic starter wants to discuss this idea, whether it is old or new. Beyond informing the reader the idea might be similar to other ideas, which can be done in a single post like Dave has done, the above discussion is off-topic.

Unclear title though I think, @tallakt.

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This is what I’ve been saying from day-one: AWE people have no idea what they are even getting into, let alone how to make it all work…

Are you saying that AWE is impractical except for engineers with experience in regular wind power?
And how do you explain the relatively low involvement of large wind companies in AWE?

Hi Pierre:
OK this gets repetitive, but here goes:
“Wind energy is a magnet for crackpots. Airborne Wind Energy is a neodymium supermagnet.”
Another Doug Selsam repeated theme is:
“Wannabe wind energy inventors think their passing ideas must be breakthroughs because the wind will behave the way they want it to behave, but the wind behaves the way IT wants to behave.”
I cannot reasonably be responsible for figuring out every aspect of why some people think they can revolutionize an industry despite no knowledge of it, but I will say, any actual experience might be helpful. Couldn’t hurt. Then again, hiring Fort Felker to run the business didn’t help Makani.
Stepping back from the details, any solution will have to stand on its own two feet at some point. We can’t just “wish” a solution into existence. A real solution must deal with the wind on its own terms.

I think the low involvement of regular wind energy people in AWE is a subset of people in general not being involved in AWE. Most wind energy people are not “inventors”, they are workers, executives, etc. Real inventors are rare, and as we now know, wannabe inventors are somewhat less rare.

Sorry, I forgot to include the REASON wind energy is a magnet for crackpots:
It is simple:
The wind is INVISIBLE.
Since the wind is invisible, crackpots (or people in general) can IMAGINE the wind doing whatever they THINK it “should” do (or whatever they wish it would do), but it does what IT wants to do.

I was one of the debunkers he talks about. The problem with energy storage is you have already taken the effort to create the energy in the first place. Storage involves first “un-creating” that same energy, then “re-creating” that same energy yet again! Logically then, you could expect that stored energy to cost 3x as much as the energy in the first place cost.
Notice toward the end of this video, where a “study” predicts a $50/MWh cost.
What did they leave out? The original cost of producing the energy, that’s what.
And we could predict that their predicted figure is too optimistic, and would really be $100.MWh, and if it costs $50/ MWh to produce the electricity, you now have a wholesale price for electricity higher than retail, leaving no room to pay for the transmission infrastructure.
Bottom line for energy storage is it should logically be expected to cost 3x as much as just generating electricity.
So it may never work out.
Possibly one more pipe-dream.
If anything they should build a conventional water tower for a pumped hydro system. That seems like an obvious thing to look at. Maybe someone has and the cost is a showstopper?

I think your analysis is a bit too simplistic here so that some useful results are probably glossed over.

Having some energy storage will enable more windmills. The energy storage will fill in the gaps during lulls. Otherwise the windmills, even if cheap in LCOE, may not be used at all. And most energy is produced directly to grid with no storage, storage only deals with the remaining energy gaps

Also, one would expect energy storage to be a lot cheaper than producing energy in the first place, because one is free to choose the form
in which to store energy. Also, the energy after being produced the first time, can be cheaply moved, so one can combine a shut down mine shaft at one location with a wind resource at a different location

That being said, I agree that energy storage is quite price sensitive. And some options exist already, like pumping hydropower, that are not utilized today. So probably this is not easy to get right.

One word @dougselsam
Arbitrage
Buy low
Sell high

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