Slow Chat

Hi Pierre!
I must admit I do not remember what the term “actve lift” referred to in the context you mention.
I also agree with you that giant vertical-axis machines seem like a compelling possibility, but also play devil’s advocate when I see nobody looking at the downsides. Still, the concept does seem worthy of consideration and perhaps a few teams giving it an actual try rather than just talk-talk-talking about it.
AWE? I need to get back to more active status. So many unexplored possibilities!
Right now it seems to me most of the big-name, big-money players have eliminated themselves in a Darwinian sense, (they quietly go away) and the last (dying?) gasp in the current popular consciousness is kite-reeling, which always sounds so good, but is still not powering anyone’s home, as far as I know.
I guess everyone is now supposed to wait as these reeling systems go into “production” and get shipped to a small number of volunteer-guinea-pig “customers”. The numbers cited always sound tantalizing, but then we wake up and it was “just a dream”? Time will tell I guess, but we’ve been saying that for a decade now. We must remember, there are a million ways to get some energy from the wind at some cost, but is any given idea an actual reliable system capable of becoming an economic winner?

In the old forum: Digest (27143 to 27192) and Digest (27092 to 27142): a long discussion about “Active Lift Turbine VAWT” and “The gear which does not rotate”, ALT = Active Lift Turbine. It is not easy to found the whole discussion but there are some complete messages on these pages. The link for all old messages is Old Forum Archive Airborne Wind Energy AirborneWindEnergy AWES.

Beside it I think some concepts turn around VAWT carousel such like KiteGen carousel, but with kites. Also I mentioned and linked a study but it is mainly focused about how benefit from a flywheel effect, not the giant VAWT carousel by itself.

A possible secondary advantage would be the possibility of blades having the same (reversible as you point) profile on its whole height, allowing an easier building and the possibility to segment them in order to facilitate transport. But also some disadvantages can occur. Making deeper analysis and above all small then bigger prototypes would help to understand better if this can be a solution.

Regarding AWE in its current form I fear that time has already given its verdict. Now maybe some principles from AWE could help regular (ground-based) wind energy to progress.

OK Pierre I looked it up - yeah, yeah, active lift. I guess it means adjusting the blades of a vertical-axis wind turbine in real time as they transit a circular path - an old idea, and the typical attempt to do this involves adding a tail to the vertical-axis turbine so it can “know” the wind direction. Of course it could be accomplished by other means.

This is the first typical knee-jerk adjustment to try and “rescue” the vertical-axis concept. It’s like extolling the virtues of a two-wheel vehicle, but then adding more wheels to “stabilize” it. Like making a protein milkshake to lose weight, then adding lots of ice-cream at the last minute to make it taste good.

Interesting concept, but note how we are first drawn into exploring the vertical-axis space with individual aspects such as “doesn’t need to aim - responds to wind from any direction”.

But as the problems are pointed out, they change their tune: “Oh, well if you really want it to work well, we have to make it change its configuration in real time due to the wind direction.”

So you start out saying even though it spins slower, needs way more material, breaks down all the time, never emerges as a winner, but, its advantage is being simple and able to respond to wind from any direction without the need to aim, then the first thing they do is negate that single advantage - now it still has most of the bad features, but it gives up its single stated “good” feature - now it needs to “aim”.

Professor Crackpot tripping over his own feet? Maybe he left his brain at home that day.

Anyway, yes it does seem like continually aiming the blades for optimal power extraction at any point would be advantageous. Even the big horizontal-axis turbines adjust the pitch of the blades continuously.
But what I see is that addressing the weak points of vertical-axis turbines involves throwing away whatever stated redeeming (good) qualities originally used to convince anyone to try them in the first place.

Step 1) Use this design because of the simplicity.
Step 2) Throw away the simplicity so it “works better”.
Oh well, it is an interesting topic. :slight_smile:

Just add a bunch of little winglets to the vertical blades
Winglets in the horizontal plane (like plane wings) would add lift to the structure when it rotates

But only when… Could help lower ground support drag

This looks like a @JoeFaust list, last edited in 2013:

From this I found this picture:

image

And more in the pictures tab at: Seaglider

Related: The UNAv, a wind-powered UAV for ocean monitoring: performance, control and validation


This list is probably better:

http://www.energykitesystems.net/OEMs.html

I keep wondering what is the latest with such active kite energy systems as Skysails and Minesto…

Googleizing “Skysails”, I found this in “News” from 2 days ago!
You can find out all about Makani, Altaeros, KPS, and kPower!
(First time I’ve seen kPower mentioned pretty much anywhere, ever) - did you know it is an LLC? Did you know KPS stands (stood) for Kite Power Solutions? Got some extra money?

Clicking on the links led to A2Z Market Research: quote below:

Some of the Top companies Influencing in this Market includes:

Ampyx Power, E-Kite Netherlands BV, EnerKite GmbH, Altaeros Energies, eWind Solutions, Kite Power Solutions, Ltd., Kite Gen Research, Makani Power, SkySails GmbH & Co. KG, Windlift LLC, Twingtec AG, Omnidea, Lda, Kitenergy S.r.l., kPower LLC

click on links to buy this cutting-edge report!
(Someone should “report” this company as a ripoff!)
More “idiots, idiots, idiots”…
The song remains the same
:slight_smile:

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Funny E-Kite is on the list but not Kitemill. At least from my point of view we should at least be of similar importance?

Not to mention the mention of kPower LLC over Kitemill which seems just absurd.

I guess Makanis influence is dwindling these days as well…

I’ll pass on this report for now

Hello Tallak:
Thanks for reading my post. I hope you caught the flavor of sarcasm. I’m continually amazed at the results when you search for AWE news, these “reports” offered for, in this case, $6000 or so, when all the information must be years out of date. So many articles, usually written by girls or just kids under some assignment, are so clueless they don’t even know which companies are in business anymore versus having given up years ago. They read like plagiarized school assignments by some bored kid with a deadline to get in some fake report by the weekend, then have a paywall of thousands of dollars, a la Dr. Peter Harrop’s group. The blind leading the gullible? Does anyone actually buy these reports? Anyway I just thought it was funny. Wiind energy humor: gotta find it where you can… :slight_smile:

Update: today, a couple of days later, I am unable to pull up the article from the link. It just doesn’t load anymore. Maybe someone else noticed it was just silly and took it down? Who knows, the internet can act weird sometimes…

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7 views as of now on YouTube:

Zhonglu High Altitude Wind Power System Trial on Site

Website of Guandong High Altitude WindPower Technology Ltd. http://www.gdgkfn.com/

Sometimes it is not easy to know it:

Maybe it’s a comeback Zhonglu High Altitude Wind Power Technology - 中路高空风力发电技术.

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Finally AWE succeeds…

Pierre: Succeeds at what? What do you mean?

…succeeds to announce a new board of directors.

They are so unremarkable, I forgot they even existed.
[Edit: They may be amazing, I just haven’t heard of it]

Decidedly it’s the season of great successes for AWE: just previously success in announcing a new board of directors for TwingTec, and now success in launching a new website…

What this “industry” needs is more teams “renting office space” and publishing “group-selfies” on the internet, more “research” into “artificial intelligence” and especially, announcing more 3-D printed components! Also it would be nice if we could increase the number of teams pursuing “kite-reeling”, the great underrepresented “industry” sector.
Also, it would be helpful if the “industry” could “silence” any people asking any unwanted questions, like, if a highly-funded AWE “company” announces sales and shipping of AWE systems from a big factory, any pesky followup questions of how the system(s) are (is) working must be silenced!

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This fits better in this slow chat topic.

renting office space” , more “research” into “artificial intelligence” and more 3-D printed components

Yay
I scored 3