A search for goodness, kite, and tether gave me these results. The first few talk about goodness of fit:
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2367/htm
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/we.2343 LiDAR‐based characterization of mid‐altitude wind conditions for airborne wind energy systems)
https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/research/RAF-Historical-Society-Journals/Journal-54.pdf
Book by Saul Griffith:
In the meantime, however, the wind industry at large also made historic strides, and is now routinely deploying turbines at 4–5¢/kWh. In 2020, Makani shut down due to this evaporated advantage. The technology and execution were sound, but the industry found its own way to slash costs, just by the improvements that come deploying at massive scale. Despite the fact that Makani’s technology didn’t win the cost battle, it was part of an enormous movement and ecosystem of global innovators responsible for driving down costs and making wind, solar, and batteries competitive with fossil fuels.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/717149.pdf
AIR FORCE CAMBRIDGE RESEARCH LABORATORIES
S L. G. HANSCOM FIELD, BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Proceedings, Sixth AFCRL Scientific
Balloon Symposium
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FibreTrac 1500 MacGregor’s Fibre Rope crane
low tension spooling and storage
significant increase in rope lifetime
@rschmehl: Do some yoyo designs have this? Are there drawbacks?
Perhaps doing this would make it easier to add more kite tethers to the drive shaft?
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Seems to me the technology, as implemented, just didn’t work well. Are we pretending it was just off by a few cents, and otherwise worked fine? If so it would be in use today, since costs could be cut over time in this as well. Sheesh!
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Witt Subsea Feasibility Study Video_31st Jan 2019
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This one may well be the future of AWE 
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Some discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of VAWTs and HAWTs:
An idea from the geodesic dome struck him: use pairs of cables that cross so they form triangles with the blade. It was Buckminster Fuller’s idea for his dome. It uses a pattern of self bracing triangles for maximum structural advantage. “I manipulated the cables in many configurations until I came across what I thought, was the correct number of cables crossing at the right locations,” says Lux.
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Like Led Zeppelin said, “The Song Remains the Same”. 
Hi Doug,
Yes!
+ Advantages
• The blade and cross cable system eliminates or reduces all problems associated with previous Vertical Axis Wind turbines including reduced vibrations, torque ripple and premature blade failure. The power output is improved, especially in low winds, by using an advanced blade profile and by building a rotor with a larger swept area. This is practical because the blade and cable system is light in weight and therefore relatively inexpensive. The ½ cost analysis includes this larger swept area.
• The tower at the bottom of the rotor is short but the equator of the rotor, on megawatt machines, is as high or higher than the hubs of conventional turbines, therefore, taking advantage of higher wind speeds that occur at higher elevations.
• All of the mechanical and electrical components are at ground level. This makes it easier to erect and also reduces maintenance costs and also makes it a more practical vertical axis wind turbine for residential areas.
• A yaw system is not required because this turbine accepts wind from all directions.
• The blades do not need to be pitched, which eliminates the need for the large diameter slewing bearings, retainers and hydraulic components. The blade speed and power output is controlled by aerodynamic stall.
• According to Dr. John Dabiri at Stanford University, counter rotating Vertical Axis Wind Turbines can be spaced closer together than conventional Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines https://arxiv.org/pdf/1010.3656.pdf. This is advantageous because most high wind speed sites are already occupied by widely spaced conventional wind turbines.
• The blades on the prototypes are made from aluminum, which are extruded at relatively low costs. However, since the blades experience only small deflections, they could be made from a wide range of materials or a combination of materials. Conventional wind turbine blades have large deflections, therefore, their material selection is limited.
• The blade profile is constant from one end to the other. Manufacturing this blade is much easier than manufacturing the conventional wind turbine blade, which has a profile that changes in width and curvature along its entire length.
• The blades can be made in sections and assembled like tent poles. This is possible because the blades are always in compression, unlike all other wind turbine blades that change from tension to compression through each cycle. The blade sections are easy to transport and assemble.
I think you’ve heard of Dr. Dabiri before, and also VAWT 
. That said if we keep talking about AWES, then why not VAWT? One of the points of the last posts is the higher density assumption for a VAWT farm: maybe some deductions could be drawn for AWE …
Hi Pierre: All I can say is:
Blah blah blah blah blah - yup heard it all before as we know. People in wind energy know better when they see “research” such as Dabiri’s. Endless attempts to “rescue” bad wind turbine designs. It is academic beard-stroking versus practical experience. One demands results, the other merely seeks additional funding. Always an excuse. Why are vertical-axis turbines never placed on a tall tower? Why does a Dabiri talk of placing smaller vertical-axis turbines between regular turbines at a windfarm, without comparing his concept to placing small horizontal-axis turbines between existing large turbines at a windfarm? To me it is one more case of “grasping at straws” to try and “rescue” long-disproven or at least ill-advised configurations. A shell-game to dupe people who refuse to think it through. It gets worse - there are still crackpots promoting (200% solidity!) Savonius turbines out there.
I sat with the founders of Kleiner Perkins trying to explain why their “Flowdesign” (later called “Ogin”) turbines with a funnel would not work out. They maintained “This time it’s different” because their particular “Professor Crackpot” told them their new version of the old bad design would suddenly be better than the state-of-the-art, due to some minor contours added to the inside of their funnel.
I tried to point out that the reason large-scale wind energy was even viable was the low solidity of the rotor, which required far less material engineered to withstand a 100 mph+ wind, and how could they realistically plan to build giant 100% solidity funnels around utility-scale wind turbines(?!?!?!), and what would they make them from(?!?!?!?!) and how much material might it take(?!?!?!?!) and how much might these giant funnels weigh(?!?!?!?), how much might they cost(?!?!?!?!?), how could they possibly support such monstrosities while maintaining the ability to aim(?!?!?!?!?). They have no answer except Professor Crackpot said some added swirly contours inside the funnels would be so great that nothing else (normal facts) would matter.
You can say the same for hydrogen as energy storage or as a fuel. Compared to batteries that give back 90% of the energy put in, hydrogen loses so much during electrolysis, compression or liquification, and recovery, that there is literally almost no energy returned at the end, but that doesn’t stop people from saying it is the answer. Elon Musk begs to differ. Seems like an emotional derangement syndrome where facts just don’t matter, while the lemmings run toward the cliff. A big part of it is if investors don’t bother to understand what they are investing in, there is unlimited funding available from people who know accounting but not science or engineering. Same shizzle, different day - the song remains the same! 
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Table 1. Comparison of VAWT and HAWT power density. The power density is calculated as
the turbine rated power divided by the area of the circular footprint swept by the turbine rotor
blades when rotated in yaw by 360 degrees.
Turbine Type Rated Power (MW) Rotor Diameter (m) Power Density (W/m2)
VAWT 0.0012 1.2 1061
HAWT 2.5 100 318
HAWT 3.0 112 304
This is from the reference cited:
“Whereas modern wind farms consisting of HAWTs produce 2 to 3 watts of power per square meter of land area, these field tests indicate that power densities an order of magnitude greater can potentially be achieved by arranging VAWTs in layouts that enable them to extract energy from adjacent wakes and from above the wind farm.”
Pierre, in wind energy, there has never been a shortage of clueless people who spew never-ending nonsense promoting “alternative” designs for wind turbines. There is only so much power going through a given area or volume, and extracting any of it slows the wind, clogging the entire volume or area with dead air, causing the wind to go around rather than through that volume or area, making further extraction more difficult. I’d say if this guy were accurate, you’d definitely see windfarms using his concept by now, since any developer would obviously jump at the chance to get 10 times the output from the same land area.
Not sure about “table 1” but I’ve never heard of anyone calculating power density in this manner that “appears” to favor vertical-axis turbines. Whacky stuff.
Wind energy is a brutal sport that quickly determines winners and losers by destroying the losers, either physically, or financially.
As I’ve pointed out many times, wind energy is a magnet for crackpots, (and AWE is a neodymium super-magnet) since the wind is invisible, so people can imagine it doing whatever they wish, except their “wish” is seldom accurate or pertinent.
I really regretted posting on this topic the first time after I looked up when I was done and found I had wasted something like 45 minutes trying to explain, once again, the folly of Dabiri or anyone else promoting inaccurate information based on half-truths. He actually makes little-to-no sense whatsoever, and I doubt if you can find any person in the actual wind energy industry who takes him the least bit seriously. Who is installing his BS today, anyone? Why not, because he’s so smart and they are so dumb? I’m sorry but after the Altaeros charade, MIT is losing credibility with me. Good talkers can make almost anything sound reasonable to people who don’t know any better, but the acid test is whether someone can separate fact from fantasy and real useful levels of economic output from fictional contrivances that only sound good “on-paper” to inexperienced newbies who don’t know any better and are not adept at applying simple logic to outrageous statements and exaggerated claims.
A difficult secondary use (farming) could result from a high density of small VAWT.
In the other hand perhaps VAWT could be interesting if some structural features are studied to reach scaling more than any HAWT while the implementation is facilitated, above all offshore.
See below the available publication confirming some favorable structural features:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276078069_Darrieus_vertical_axis_wind_turbine_for_power_generation_II_Challenges_in_HAWT_and_the_opportunity_of_multi-megawatt_Darrieus_VAWT_development
I have maybe some structural ideas for large VAWT offshore, in combination with some other quoted elements above.
Hi Pierre:
I would think farming under conventional windfarms would be fairly straightforward. I think farmers in the midwest already enjoy turbines in their fields as an additional “crop”. If anything, having a bunch of Dabiri vertical-axis turbines littering the ground below the regular turbines would prevent farming, rather than facilitating farming. As a wind inventor, of course I share your urge to leave no stone unturned, including vertical-axis designs of various sorts. Ideas for better designs need to be tried out, not just talked about in vague terms. Things can look really good on paper, but have major problems when actually built and run. That is why we do not see any vertical-axis machines in windfarms today.
Page 564 from the link above:
The blades are made in pieces, and are joint using Crystic Crestomer 1152 PA, which is a carbon and glass fibers adhesive. The design, which is not applicable for HAWT, lowers the costs in manufacturing and transportation compared to a one-piece blade.
Below there is also an analysis of the potential of scaling for VAWT offshore:
I think that perhaps the rotary part of a giant VAWT could be a carousel, allowing to benefit from both higher speed for the generator, and a more resistant and stable rotary basis, as shown on the sketch below:
Hello Pierre: What you describe has long been one of my favorite pet configurations - agreed.
Wish I could build and run one of every idea that comes to my mind!
Still, let’s remember all of the inherent detractive aspects of VAWTs.
No matter how much we may imagine rescuing the concept, there are basic reasons why we seldom see one running. Higher cost, more material, lower efficiency, slower rotation, strong bending forces on the blades, reversing twice with every rotation, etc., etc., etc.
You know the drill. Still, those of us with “enquiring minds” can’t quite let go of possibilities! It is though, always funny to see the next PhD run through the gauntlet of promoting one more weak attempt to save the verticals, not comprehending any of these basic facts to start with.
Hi Doug, roughly the same with SuperTurbine ™ and other tilted autogyro-like machines.
With a tip speed ratio >5 and a hollow axis >span - apparent wind stays fairly constant across the blade on a tilted autogyro
So, why not HAWT arranged on a geodesic dome, reputed to be one of the most solid structures in relation to its weight? The dome rotates according to wind direction:
The objective is to overcome the distances imposed by separate units due to changes in wind direction, while also harnessing high altitude winds for HAWT settled in the top. A wind farm still takes up too much space.
Hi Pierre: The main forces on a blade stay fairly constant for a propeller-type rotor, hollow or not, compared to cross-axis reversing forces on a VAWT, which, added to the slower rotation requiring more blade surface, is why their blades can often require so much more material to accomplish the same energy extraction, depending on the exact design. Would-be designers can keep their head buried in the sand, or figure out why there are essentially near-zero working vertical-axis machines out there, compared to the vast multitude of regular machines.
Many such structures could be worth a try. There have been several multi-turbine support structures built and run in the past. Seems like conflicting resonant frequencies are the problem they end up having. Many windfarms are in predominantly unidirectional wind resources. The turbines are still spaced for best economic return. I think they place as many turbines as they can while still getting good performance. Overcrowding of turbines negatively affects performance by creating large volumes of stagnant air.
On https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344902649_So_many_decisions_to_make_so_little_time page 61:
On the picture above, all wind turbines face the wind. There is no turbines downwind. So they can fill the space. There is an orientation system rotating the full rack.
On the dome, the wind turbines share the frontal airspace in a similar way. So according to a preliminary approach, there is no wind shadow on the wind turbines behind, a little like for SuperTurbine ™ where all rotors harness “fresh” wind. I think a dome could be easier to use than the rack above, above all concerning wind changes.
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The problem with a geodesic support is that the turbines must be mounted on a cantilever arm to avoid hitting the dome. This problem gets worse towards the top of the dome where the cantilever is longer and wind forces are greater.
Yes for a HAWT, but for a tilted rotor of type autogyro the advancing blade undergoes more relative wind than the retreating blade.
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Perhaps by modifying the mesh, allowing the insertion of wind turbines. Indeed, if we install cantilever arms, we lose the possible structural advantage of the dome. Another problem is the wind shadow caused by the structure. That’s why I might come back to the VAWT dome (see above).
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Pierre: true enough, there is a variation, but that is nothing compared to a vertical-axis turbine which undergoes a complete reversal of forces 2x per rotation, with the main forces being perpendicular to the blade, no less. OMG! “Hello, may I thpeak with Profethor Crackpot pleathe? Thir, we have an emergenthy!”
Doug: it is not for nothing that De la Cierva invented flapping hinges in order to solve the dissymmetry of lift, preventing the blades from breaking.
Concerning VAWT I think there is some possibility for giant installations (about 1000 meters diameter and more) lengthening the rotation time, such like the device on the sketch below:
The too low density in a farm of HAWT is a crucial problem. If giant VAWT are implementable the density issue can be solved, at least for offshore wind turbines: a single VAWT becomes like a farm of HAWT whose units are scattered over too large areas.
Hi again Pierre: Of course “everyone” knows about the variations on blades. Even the very large regular horizontal-axis machines face a pulsation of blade loading (wind speed) due to the wind gradient and their huge size. Low wind speeds at the lower heights at the bottom of the circle, high wind speeds at the top of the travel path. Even the wind direction can vary with height.
Now when you say “the too-low density in a farm of HAWT is a crucial problem”, well maybe you should get a job with a wind energy developer moving the turbines closer together, or adding smaller turbines in between. See if they will listen. Why choose long-disproven vertical-axis turbines though? Because Dabiri says so?
Let’s realize the reason for towers is to place turbines higher in the wind gradient. If we add smaller turbines below, it is equivalent in some ways to raising “ground level” to a higher height. Which is like lowering the tower height of the regular large turbines. Adding turbines below would slow the wind down there. The result might be to mix slower air into the wind the larger turbines receive, possibly negating any advantage to adding the smaller turbines. A large part of the wind energy industry involves “repowering” windfarms, which means plucking out the old, smaller turbines and replaciing them with modern larger turbines. I’ve never heard of a repowering effort that left the old, smaller turbines in place. Why might that be? I’ve wondered myself what harm it does to leave the old turbines in place. Probably a lot of it has to do with visual clutter, how many turbines they have a permit for, how difficult it would be to get approval for adding a higher number of turbines, etc. Then again they might have figured out that smaller turbines below would not add to total energy capture. Do current engineers and scientists have no idea what they are doing, and they should be tuned into our chat groups to get a clue from us smart people? Should they be hanging on Dabiri’s every misguided notion? Well, maybe. Or maybe windfarm developers do know their art fairly well, and it is Dabiri and our chat groups don’t really understand the subject matter very well.
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Doug, as soon as we speak about VAWT, you evoke the works of Dabiri by a sort of Pavlovian reflex. My previous messages are not about the arrangement of Dr. Dabiri but, among several things, about a large diameter carousel VAWT. For example if a 1000 meters diameter and 150 meters high VAWT is implementable, it would harness a frontal airspace of 150,000 m² (even perhaps almost two times as the leeward row is far enough from the first row) , by using less than 1 km² sea use. Spacing requirement means that in 1 km² only one or two 15,000 m² HAWT can be implemented.
According to the current state of the art wind energy cannot compete with fossil fuels or nuclear energy, because of their too low density, in addition to their intermittence. So we should examine some other possibilities. Yes, “the too low density in a farm of HAWT is a crucial problem.”
On the other hand if alpha and omega are in the relative success of wind farms as they exist, then we should stop all those innovations that have little or no market reality such as AWE and multi-rotor structures.
Well Pierre, you echo some Dabiri assumptions that I believe are questionable. The specific text I replied to was “The too low density in a farm of HAWT is a crucial problem.” Funny, I’ve never heard that before from any knowledgeable wind energy person, but Dabiri seems to agree. Like I mentioned, I am not aware of anyone in the wind energy industry taking Dabiri seriously.
This is reminiscent of some know-it-all with a PhD on the radio a few years ago who derisively claimed that most of the energy was obviously slipping through HAWT rotors due to the blade spacing. He obviously did not know the first thing about wind energy, yet believed he knew far better than actual turbine designers, with his naive, beginner-esque, first impression, 100% wrong “observation”, on the level of something a first-grader might say, before the basics of wind energy were explained to him.
Here’s another one for you. I’ve often mentioned this particular university project that forced air through a Savonius turbine in a wind tunnel, and published the favorable results.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228818185_Development_of_Optimum_Design_Configuration_and_Performance_for_Vertical_Axis_Wind_Turbine
Did he really improve the Savonius concept? Hard to say, but he could have doubled the unimpressive performance of a Savonius, and it would not matter - they would still be the worst performing type of turbine known.
While I point out the dismal track record of vertical-axis machines for the purpose of informing people who really are not well-educated in wind energy, that doesn’t mean I’m not also attracted to the same types of designs you point out, including giant vertical-axis machines. I’ve thought of most of them for years. Remember “Laddermill”? Just one more idea I originally thought of. With regard to offshore, you may remember I was recently granted two (2) patents that cover most designs for floating offshore wind installations. The popular “spar-buoy” floating wind turbine foundation is just one of the many floating designs being promoted, covered by my patents. The reason these patents were granted was because it was determined that I was indeed the original inventor of the single-turbine-on-a-buoy concept. So I’m pretty happy to see my original idea now changing the world, but I have further ideas, including many of the vertical-axis configurations we commonly read about, some of which you have mentioned.
Many people are protesting against the various impacts of wind turbines. The low density due to the need for spacing between units contributes to their scattering over very large areas. And it is difficult to conceive of a HAWT unit of the size of a small thermal power plant. On the other hand, configurations of giant VAWT carousels could perhaps allow it.
Well Pierre, When I start to consider such structures, I note factors such as
- How to support blades at a speed of 4 times the wind speed, so in a 30 mph wind, your blades are traveling at 120 MPH.
- 4 G’s of centrifugal force, even at a 1-mile diameter
- How big, How heavy? How to support against centrifugal force and the reversing wind force?
- Blades only effective during portions of the travel
- Possible shielding of downwind blade by upwind blades
- suboptimal blade performance even at the most effective portions of the circle, due to no camber
- Tunnels or bridges to get inside the circle?
Here are pictures of rows of turbines in Tehachapi:
Tehachapi Pass wind farm - Wikipedia
The rows are spaced apart enough to allow fresh wind to dilute the expanding, slow-moving wakes of the previous row.
I agree that a mega-large rotating structure sounds good in some ways, but someone would have to provide sufficient details of something workable. To just pick a few factors “out of the air”, without a complete analysis is how the “Professor Crackpots” of the world like to operate. But you can’t just pick out a few favorable aspects to consider - the whole picture must be examined. I like the “idea” of coming up with this “idea”, but at some point, we would need a complete “idea” to consider, not just an idea for an idea.
Hi Doug, I don’t tell that a giant VAWT carousel will work, but we can examine it.
Centrifugal force F = m v²/r where m is the moving mass, v is the tangential speed, r is the radius. When the radius is 10 times higher, centrifugal force is 10 times lesser. So a large diameter is a significant factor for a lower centrifugal force.
I think Tehachapi Pass wind farm is for predominant wind, allowing low spacing between the turbines in the same row. This is not possible for many other wind farms where all wind directions are more or less considered.
Pierre:
Yeah I was going to say, check my math.
I got 4.5 m/s^2 and too quickly thought 4.5 G’s (sounded a bit high at that size) - wrong - more like half a G, sorry about that. Thanks for the link to the calculator.
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Doug, I am examining your other observations: although they are relevant, I think some problems can be solved. I will try to detail later.
Pierre:
I’d surmise such a thing would “work”, Believe it or not, I spend a good amount of time thinking of such configurations myself. It’s what happens when you suffer from CSIS: (Can’t Stop Inventing Shit). Oh wait, I think my mommy said it should be “Can’t Stop Inventing STUFF”. (Can’t stop inventing FLUFF?) (Marshmallow Fluff?)
As I’ve always maintained, there are a myriad (million?) ways to extract SOME energy from the wind, at SOME cost. The idea is to do it less expensively than competing wind systems or energy sources in general. I mean, dude, riding a bicycle across the country will “work” but how many people want to bother? What about blindfolded with a guide dog? Maybe a tricycle? It could “work”… Competing with the airlines? Probably not.
Doug, the complete quote is:
If a giant VAWT carousel is feasible, the power/km² would increase drastically compared to a farm of HAWT whose unities are largely spaced due to wind change requirement.
Hi Pierre:
OK I was figuring for a carousel one (1) mile across (diameter). So you’ve got 3.14 miles of blades traveling in a circle. How many miles of blades are working at any moment? Maybe half of them? Many blades will be traveling upwind, downwind, etc. Then you have a circular mile of emptiness inside - how many rows of turbines could fit in that same area? How many turbines would fit in the unused corners of one square mile of land not taken up by the circle? Then also consider whatever physical structure it would take to support over 3 miles of blades traveling at 120 mph, and extract the power. It would be interesting to run some hypothetical numbers on power produced, material required, etc., and compare it to a square mile of regular windfarm.
The question is the frontal airspace as swept area. For a VAWT of one mile diameter with blades of 1/8 mile height (see the document I attached above), the swept area is one rectangle of 1 mile x 1/8 mile. But as such a diameter corresponds roughly to the distance of two rows in a HAWT farm in such a way that the second row is not too penalized by the wind shadow of the first row. The same for a VAWT when the diameter is huge. So the rectangle is roughly multiplied by two.
Knowing the coefficient of power of a VAWT is about 0.35-0.4 against 0.45-0.5 for a HAWT whatever the dimensions, you can calculate how many 15 MW HAWT you have to implement in order to achieve the power of a VAWT of one mile x 0.125 mile (and almost 2 times). Then you have to calculate the spacing requirement due to all wind direction possibility. The land use will be far higher.
I think @Massimo has well studied carousels of any dimensions, until GW range. I only propose replacing kites with vertical blades. Carousels could scale in any dimensions, not HAWT because of the tower, and the weight of the generator in altitude.
Hello Pierre:
I think you mean one mile x 0.125 miles. 1/8th of a mile = .125 miles.
I’d say let’s acknowledge the edges of the circle will probably not contribute much, if any, power, which may be one reason for the lower overall Cp of vertical-axis machines. The other reason might be the non-cambered blades which have to be designed to accept wind from both sides of the airfoils.
Regarding the “armchair-genius” link you provided:
Note the requirement for the “floating” blades to travel over 100 MPH in the water. That would sap a lot (all?) of the power, if it is even possible.
Anyway, have you calculated how many regular turbines it would take to achieve the same output as the mile-across-circle vertical-axis turbine?
Hi Doug, yes: I just corrected.
Yes, this is well known, so the whole calculation takes into account of the lower efficiency of VAWT.
On the description there is air cushion between the reservoir of water under the blade and the water of the sea. But there is no detail about how air cushion would work. I agree that this point is questionable but it concerns only an use of the carousel as flywheel, not the carousel by itself. Moreover the generator is settled in the center: so as the angular speed is very low, big gear would be required.
The solidity could be about .1 or .2. If it is .2, the whole blades would cover one mile X 0.125 mile/5. So it is sure that for an equal power this VAWT carousel would use far more material than HAWT. But in the same time it would use far less land/sea area, and likely less anchors.
Below is how a blade could be:
https://www.oceanbirdwallenius.com/the-vessel/
Yes whereas the solidity of HAWTs can be 0.02.
But I was not asking about rotor solidity. I was asking how many regular wind turbines it would take to equal the output of such a hypothetical, mile-wide, 1/8 mile tall, vertical-axis wind carousel turbine? I think you mentioned Haliad X from GE? How many of them to equal the 1 x .125 mile carousel?
By the way, I like that OceanBird ship design. Telescoping sails - seems like a nice idea!. If those sails were a wind turbine rotor, it would be a high-solidity, low efficiency water-pumper.
Yes, but only at the tip blade, and about 0.1 for the whole blade (there is more width and material close to the root). A VAWT can also achieve 0.1.
Very approximate calculation:
Swept area of 1 x .125 VAWT carousel: about 320,000 m²; power = about 80 MW (perhaps far more by taking account of the leeward row which is far enough from the upwind row, so the power of about 6.6 Haliad); Cp = 0.4; sea use = a square of 2.56 km², so density is 31 MW / km².
Swept area of Haliad: 38,000 m²; power = 12 MW; Cp = 0.5; density: less than one unity / km² due to the spacing requirement in all directions (due to wind changes in all directions) of more than 5 widths (rotor diameter 220 m), so about 10 MW / km².
Blades would be more narrow that the sails on the photo, and should be connected with cables in order to reinforce them.
See also some comparisons on:
OK I’m thinking it would be cheaper to install 7 or even 10 Haliads than to build such a 1-mile ring of blades standing 600 feet tall, traveling at over 100 MPH… What do you think?
Sure, but the question can be: you have only n km² for the complete installation.
And each time we double the diameter and the height of the blades (keeping the diameter/height ratio of about 8, allowing the leeward row to be more efficient, perhaps like the second row of a correctly spaced HAWT farm) the power is multiplied per 4…
Below is an article (see 1 about “extremely wide VAWT (a low rotor-aspect-ratio)”) from Peter Allen Sharp you well know:
Pierre: Wind Harverst International never got any traction with their vertical-axis designs. Peter Sharp, who also suffersfRom CSIS (can’t stop inventing shit) has a lot of interesting ideas, but like most armchair inventors, presents a partial picture, mostly mentioning hypothetical advantages. Unfortunately he does not build realistically well-developed prototypes, but, like Santos from the previous forum, more concentrates on simple, miniature, paper-and-string “talking-point-demo” projects that are easy to build, but only show a bare essence of a possibility for future more comprehensive development by someone more serious about, for example incorporating an actual generator, sufficient construction to withstand a real wind resource, overspeed control, etc. What you’re doing is just reciting the long list of “talking point-insistence” by vertical-axis advocates, who are never short of “why won’t anyone listen to me?” type “reasoning” but who can never come up with even a single house powered by their “highly-advanced”, “why won’t you listen to me” insistence on listing all the various brainstorming ideas they can come up with to “prove” the world is just not “getting it” with regard to why vertical-axis “are really” the answer. The same dynamic can be found in other fields, from architecture to engineering to economics, where there will always be someone insisting that the most disproven notions “are really” the “only” answer. At some point, the cartoon character of “Profethor Crackpot”, “thpraying thaliva ath he thpeakth”, cometh to mind - he ith not rethtricted to wind energy - he ith everywhere!. Look up “Mass MegaWatts” run by a friend of mine. Well-intentioned, and like Wind Harvest, good to know someone tried, but it just never went anywhere. :)))
Hi Doug: I try to see if some scheme can work. For example concerning Dabiri’s VAWT farm I already indicated (on the old forum) that even if the principle works, the multitude of small VAWT would be far more expensive than a regular farm of HAWT. Perhaps also you remember how I debunked the principle of active lift for VAWT as I pointed the incoherence of the sketches and the explains, beside the principle itself. Numerous schemes comprising VAWT inventions can be debunked on the paper. Hoping to gain a few percentages in order to approach HAWT efficiency is not a good idea.
On the other hand, the idea of the carousel deserves (in my opinion) to be dug, because it affects a weak point of HAWT: the lack of scalability (what are 15 or 20 MW beside GW scale of gas or nuclear power plants?) combined with the low density per km².
And what do you think of the evolution of AWE?
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.
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:
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:
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
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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…
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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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
Oh did I forget, “more people fixated on controlling what others say online, to move or delete any post addressing reality versus fantasy.”
Failing to have AWES in automatically controlled operation, we have at least a well controlled AWE forum. This is in addition to AWE recent successes …
I can’t access the ResearchGate discussion. I tried to archive it, with limited succes
Anyway, sources needed.
I’m not sure if I care all that much about his “true recycling”. I care about this:
You can say that about anything, until you can’t.
On second thought, that discussion is a complete waste of time. Climate change deniers with strong opinions going against people with better critical thinking skills who are also mostly not experts. I can’t trust anything anyone says there without doing my own research. I would have hoped ResearchGate had better standards. It could do with some moderation.
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Perhaps opening an account to have access to ResearchGate can be required (although your second link seems to open more the discussion). For that a peer-reviewed publication can be required. Have you that?
True, although the majority of contributors to ResearchGate have peer-reviewed publications, which is the first criterion of the quality of expert which takes on its full meaning when the field of expertise applies to the subject considered. I think your second link provides more access to the discussion.
I precise Alex Kralj (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ales-Kralj) favors IPCC reports and has a lot peer-reviewed publications and a high impact of 56.33.
The discussion is complex and the IPCC reports are not the first concerns.
Who is you? It is quotes; not directly what I say.
Offer them your services.
I take your advice into account and withdraw my post with the quotes.
No, ResearchGate thinks I’m a bot. I don’t care to prove them right or wrong.
The French preciser != the English precise. A better phrase here would be I’ll point out that…
I rarely use anything other than the generic you on this forum.
You have re-edited your post, mentioning the name of the author I quoted instead of my name.
You have to re-edit this post as well.
I have edited my comment, for your benefit, not re-edited it. I’m not following or don’t agree I should edit my last comment. It clarifies my writing style, and answers your question, again for your benefit.
The facts on plastics recycling here in the U.S. are:
- The real reason was litter control - the drink industry went from returnable glass bottles that were washed then re-used, to disposable plastic containers that could not be returned for re-use, so people threw them out the car windows, making an increasing mess on the sides of the road. That was when controlling litter was combined with supposed energy savings from recycling plastic to implement recycling programs with dedicated return sites that took up valuable real estate and labor to run. China was willing to take all our recycling “waste” because they had the cheap labor required to sort the stuff, and lower standards for their products so the lower-quality of recycled plastic was OK with them. Even so, it took time, money, and machinery to transport the waste to ports, load it on ships, burn fuel to sail to China, pay to unload it and ground-transport it to a point of use, labor to sort and use, energy to melt down…
- A few years ago, China decided they had had enough of our waste plastic - their labor costs had risen, and they were increasingly pressured to improve product quality, therefore they lost interest in our waste as a resource.
- Today, much if not most “recycled” plastic containers end up in landfills after all the paperwork and rebates are finished. Nobody wants them.
- It’s well-known among those who pay attention that consumer recycling does not really save resources, but in fact uses more resources, burning more fossil fuels to run the program than it saves. - again, the real driving force is removal of litter from roadsides. If a bottle on the side of the road is worth a few cents to return, there will be some down-and-out person who will collect them to earn a few dollars to get through the day, maybe buy some food or more drugs. Meanwhile the expenses of the recycling program, starting with the time taken, the cost of the recycling “bins”, the cost of the real estate for the recycling centers, the amount of gasoline and diesel burned to cart all this trash around town in multiple steps, the labor to have the recycling stations manned and responsive to every homeless person who shows up with a trash-bag full of bottles and cans that must be sorted, counted, and paid for, the fuel to bring the “recycled” plastic to the final destinations, which is usually a landfill - the funny thing is, it’s gone from “don’t be a litterbug” to “we’re saving the world from global warming”, but the facts don’t bear out the hype - the “recycled” bottles are seldom even recycled these days, just thrown away like most everything else, making the entire complicated “recycling” system a fraud, and a waste of time and money except for helping to keep the roadsides free of plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Silica (glass) and Aluminum are the first and second most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust, so they are very cheap to produce in bulk, whereby it is just not usually very economical to recycle every bottle and can, although large metal objects (scrap metal) are still economical to recycle,
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But we’re not trying to solve plastic recycling here. I think more concrete questions, that will yield more concrete answers, are: you’re using a lot of this UHMWPE rope, how can you use less of it (see Kitewinder’s and Ampyx’s testing for example), are there alternatives, and what can you do with it when it becomes unusable?
All this indicates that the flexible synthetic fabric wings, after short-term use, above all in crosswind operation, will go to the incinerator, as for UHMWPE rope but after a longer use.
It is therefore a burning problem (if I may say so) for the ecological aspect of the whole, and which must be considered.
Keep in mind that an AWES is not kitesurfing, as it involves a continuous use.
So a rigid wing, preferentially in recyclable material like aluminum, can be a solution for this issue.
Of course, all this only matters if one persists in aiming for commercialization.
This analysis of yours is too perfunctory to be of any use.
That is all your problem. Almost all the experts are on ResearchGate, which does not mean that all members of ResearchGate are necessarily experts.
On the other hand, we can be sure that those who are refused by ResearchGate are not and never will be experts, especially those who don’t care about their advice.
Did you consider SciHub? I am not really against pirating papers. Getting access to papers is like CD records in the nineties, SciHub is the Napster of academic publications
Me? Yes, I use SciHub, and LibGen, and… I’m very happy for their existence. I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing without them.
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I think the lesson here is real concerns for a clean planet are often outweighed by the clean & green fluff-hype, designed to overcome logic in well-meaning people through emotional appeal disguised as facts. It does indeed pay be somewhat skeptical of such claims and to do a little independent research, ask what may sometimes be uncomfortable questions, and possibly pull back the cover on feel-good fantasy, to get a glimpse of reality. It has often been observed that when “all” of the “experts” “agree” on some topic, that in itself can often be a negative indicator, preceding an unexpected paradigm shift.
This is like theater of the absurd. Cart ahead of the horse. As I’ve often said, AWE is like the proverbial 3 blind men trying to describe an elephant - except for one pesky detail - in this case there is no elephant (viable AWE system). Well over a decade of this endless busy-body activity “what if this?” and “what if that?”. The biggest psychological factor I see is people with too much time on their hands suffering from global warming derangement syndrome. Step one would be powering a single home, not these endless promises to power hundreds or thousands of homes “next year”. To me, it is a great comedy. Oh well you’ve gotta get SOMETHING out of it - at least we can maybe appreciate the humor.
The other consistently frustrating thing about most every article TRYING to discuss AWE is the “authors” know even less about AWE than the supposed practitioners. Half the articles I read still mention long-abandoned projects like Altaeros and Makani as though they are still in play! It’s all just one big echo chamber of ignorance! Less than worthless. 
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This reminjds me of when, as a lad, I asked my mom why they called it “drag racing”. Her reply: “Maybe because they have to drag their feet to stop?” I believe the real answer is they were racing on “the local drag” meaning a strip of street people “drag” up and down “trolling” for some fun on a Saturday night. I think the last person to use foot-dragging to stop was Fred Flintstone.
As I have pointed out more than once, the terms “lift mode” and “drag mode” have been in use for decades (or more) in wind energy. Kite-reeling would normally fall under the Savonius concept, except for using lift to artificially increase the area from which to extract “drag”. The tether is “dragged” from the drum. How do you know? Because it is dragged out at less than the speed of the wind itself (?)
The notion that newbies to wind energy decided in their innocent naivety to name the Makani concept using two levels of “lift” to generate electricity as a “drag machine” (because it “drags” its propellers through the air) is, I would say, about as astute and accurate as my young mom’s musings about “drag racing” being so-called because the driver drags his (or her) feet to stop - just not accurate.
Really, to my way of thinking, and I’m not saying it is correct, just my impression, all these “scientific” “papers” are meaningless until someone can demonstrate an economical energy solution. Right now in my neighborhood, people are swapping out rebuilt Bergey turbines for failed machines. Bergey turbines have enjoyed the reputation as “the best” or “most reliable” turbine in “small-wind” as long as I can remember. (Yet I can show you many pictures of missing blades, destroyed turbines, etc.)
They have been the choice for “scientists” for any project such as one that proved hydrogen as energy storage returns something like 3% of the energy put in, you know, learning about reality. One fatal flaw of the Bergey line has always been the furling cable breaks within the first few years of operation, so you can’t furl it in case you need to shut it down, or in preparation for an oncoming severe storm. Seems to happen to every single one of them. In all the years of NREL, Bergey, and a lot of installers helping to refine the Bergey design, no “engineer” or “scientist” had ever solved the furling cable failure issue. It was only recently that someone noticed the problem was the turbine trying to “push” the flexible cable into its “jacket” or conduit. As the old saying goes, “You can’t push a rope”. The cable would fold instead of going into its jacket every time the turbine furled on its own, and the constant bending of the steel strands would reliably cause the cable to fail, even if nobody ever used it. Well after 40 years of this scrutiny by the world’s leading “scientists”, the manufacturer, and everyone else, someone finally figured out you could add a spring or a weight, to keep tension on the cable from the ground, supposedly solving the problem. Looking back, this seems so obvious in retrospect, yet for years even the manufacturer’s tech support would tell you “Ahh, don’t worry about the furling cable - you don’t need it - they always break anyway - we just added it because at one point some municipality wouldn’t allow an installation unless it had a way to shut down the turbine” - that sort of thing.
So in all those years of scrutiny of the Bergey machines, nobody had stumbled across something that basic. And Bergey is about the only survivor in the small-wind “industry” since solar got so cheap. That is the reality of wind energy at least at a small scale, and I doubt if any scientific paper was involved in finding or even recognizing such a simple solution to what should have been an easily-identified cause of cable failure. There is an old saying in wind energy about the modern wind energy industry having been kick-started by a proverbial “farmer with a welder”. Seems to still be in play. In my experience, the role of “science” in wind energy seems to be more about analyzing and fine-tuning things made to work by practitioners in the field, rather than contributing actual solutions in terms of basic configurations. If AWE is still at the point of trying to figure out the difference between lift mode and drag mode, I don’t even know what to say.
Roddy I would not worry about what anyone “says”. Talk is cheap. If something works, it works. If not, then not. No idle bystander’s opinion will change that, no matter what their supposed credentials… Don’t let it worry you. It is not a true factor, and does not matter in the least.
This is true, but AWES were studied as aerial devices before being considered wind turbines. What do the means envisaged for kite-reeling and those implemented for the wind turbine have in common?
Hello Pierre
A kite-reeling system and a Savonius turbine have this in common:
A swept area that is “dragged” downwind. then must return upwind, using power to return upwind.
The downwind travel during the power stroke tends to reduce the power output by reducing the relative windspeed.
But the Savonius turbine has the advantage of steady, continuous output rather than intermittent, pulsating output.
When you see any new wind energy scheme, notice the tendency to think “this time it’s different!” The proponents of any new scheme tend to believe that none of the lessons learned in the last couple thousand years of wind energy apply to them.
For instance they tend to think that showing people a photo of 50 people, all drawing a hefty salary, should convince the public that they have a serious effort. And the general public may indeed be convinced by the group-selfie, but people who know wind energy know that there is only a single surviving manufacturer in “small wind”, and that survivor only survived by heavy government subsidies, heavy government regulation now at all levels that effectively outlaw all the competing companies, and a very lean workforce of just a very few people. Rather than trying to see how MANY mouths they can feed, they would be hard-pressed to hire even a single extra person, maintaining a skeleton crew, with no extra money to hire a single “extra” person. An average household uses maybe 1000 dollars of electricity per year, or maybe 2000 for heavy users of electricity. Any system that costs more than that could only be rationalized by artificial financial support, and would therefore not constitute an actual energy solution. There is no room for 50 people whose combined “talents” produce nothing useful for any purpose. No small wind company who expects to survive would be issuing press-releases about “renting office space”. Such a situation of needing to support that many “office workers” would in itself spell doom for any such startup company. Any small company that expects to grow needs to have a natural built-in potential profitability or at least a clear path to profitability. If they can’t power a single home with AWE, why would anyone believe they are about to power hundreds, thousands, or millions of homes? Well as I’ve observed over the years, the reason they would believe it is because their main source of information is the hype issued by the companies, presenting (so far anyway) a one-sided, unrealistic story. The “Dr. Pater Harrops” of the world (and it goes downhill from there), simply have no experience in wind energy to understand the repetitive and typical nature of the claims they are seeing, let alone recognizing claims even more absurd than any previous example. But, just as a thousand wannabes chasing the Savonius concept based on the attractiveness of its simplicity do not ruin the case for legitimate wind energy technology, the many failures of wannabe AWE practitioners in no way negates the viability of AWE as a concept.
OK now realizing that nuclear fusion is just a fancy way of boiling water, there are several fusion energy companies emerging, funded by the usual billionaires. One is called “Helion”. If fusion gets traction, AWE and many other clean energy efforts might be doomed. But don’t worry too much about Helion. How can we tell? They have a group selfie! You’ve seen the rest of that movie!
OK this is in “News Coverage” because even though it is positioned as “news”, actual news is about things that really happen:
Hydrogen Airships Promise Zero Emissions at One-Quarter the Price of Plane Cargo
LINK:
Note how this “story” checks all the boxes: “fight climate change” “hydrogen”,“zero emissions” “a quarter the cost”, “increased payload” - well if it were powered by AWE, it might be zero emissions. Anyway, maybe they should add “3-D printing”, “provides broadband”, ya know…
Now, I’ve always been a huge fan of huge blimps - or just blimps and airships in general, and this article sounds very exciting!
Except for one thing: I’ve been reading similar articles for over 50 years, and never seen one come true. There is an announcement like this every 3 or 4 years it seems. They’ve all sounded “very exciting” with no apparent reason why they won’t actually happen, but they never do. In our somewhat similar field, we are used to this. It’s always the same thing: big press-release, followed by… NOTHING.
I’d like to think this one will be different, but the pattern is 100%, and undeniable…
Oh well, it’s fun to dream. I hope this one comes true. (But I won’t hold my breath!)
Update: I checked out their website:
They do in fact check more trendy boxes:
- Providing wi-fi to Africa and underdeveloped regions
- delivering hydrogen fuel as cargo
- disaster relief - how could I have left out “disaster relief”?!?!
Seems like every press-release breakthrough has such obligatory “attributes”.
“Just in case” it is not useful for its intended purpose, they have a “plan B” (providing wi-fi - think “Altaeros” - after all that AWE hype, they now have one blimp, powered by an extension cord from the ground (diesel?), and purport to be the answer for bringing wi-fi to undeveloped regions…)
And “just in case” Plan B doesn’t work out, they can deliver hydrogen as cargo…
And “just in case” that falls flat on its face, they will be available for “disaster relief”! Did they miss anything? What about a group selfie? I haven’t checked.
Hi Doug,
Perhaps an AWE possibility with a design something like LTA Windpower? On the website the announced air speed is 280 km/h (78 m/s) , so likely leading to a high glide ratio, hence perhaps the possibility of a high angle of elevation, and a constant positioning in altitude to avoid takeoffs and landings, except in the event of a big storm.
That said the fastest speed for an airship is only 115 km/h (32 m/s), so far below 280 km/h.
Basically airship could be the simplest solution, above all if the risk of hydrogen use is strongly mitigated: a lighter than air with also aerodynamic lift (wings) carrying one or more conventional wind turbine(s) …
A “designer” solves wind energy… again…
Article includes a quote from Mike Barnard.
Know-nothings, “improving” an art about which they have not the slightest clue.
Some things never change.
Another M. Barnard’s article: Dodgy wind? Why “innovative” turbines are often anything but
The designer led to Robert Murray smith designing a whole bunch of experimental designs. The original didn’t work but his bodging effort are plain to see. Plenty of room for design exploration. He even made a wind wall with pc fans which I find to be awesome. There an obvious threshold to meet but with a little effort anything’s possible. Much like baking cakes or a good roast.
HYPE CYCLES & tech: Saw this opinion on hype cycles:
while reading this article by a helicopter developer about EVTOL “flying car” type vehicles.
The example they use is the Joby flying car effort. Joby was an early AWE player, but quickly gave up on that idea.
(No axe to grind here, just thought the articles were relevant and interesting for AWE.)
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When you live on a ranch in Southern California, you might be a former president, or you might be me. Instead of Santa Barbara, I’m in the high desert though… Well one thing you learn pretty quick is how many helium balloons there are out there, flying every day, because you will keep finding them on your land. Today I saw something white out in front of my house, walked over and picked it up, and it turned out to be a totally tattered-to-shreds balloon. Maybe it was it a high altitude wind experiment.
Can anyone guess why this balloon is SO tattered?
Well, I have a possible explanation:
I think it probably rose to an extremely high altitude, where the air pressure was very low, and so it expanded to several times its normal size, and possibly even FROZE, because it is winter AND it gets very cold at high altitudes, and at some point, it got SO big it just totally exploded like nothing ever seen by mankind, and was ripped to shreds!
After that, it fell to the comparatively low elevation of 3600 feet, coming to rest in my front yard.
So let that be a lesson to you crazy kids - any high-altitude balloon is a potential ticking time-bomb. It could explode at any moment, without warning, and totally shred itself (and maybe you) to absolute smithereens!
So AWE people, be careful with your high altitude balloons, and for God’s sake, stay away from the darn jet stream, before you really get hurt!
Oh also, as long as I’m posting photos, and speaking of totally shredding, here is a guitar I picked up recently:
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Happened to run across this. Thought someone might find it interesting.
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Seems redundant to celebrate merely flying a kite in a figure-8 after all these years of AWE attempts. I also note when I checked the website Kitekraft - About the “papers” use the term “drag” to describe a machine that uses lift in many ways. In wind energy, the term “drag” as applied to any device or design (such as a Savonius cup-anemometer-type machine), traditionally refers to working surfaces being “dragged” (or pushed by brute force) to travel downwind, to distinguish from the normal use of “lift” (airfoils) to produce power directly. I do understand how the newbies think “drag” refers to “dragging a propeller upwind through the air” but the term “drag” or “drag device” with regard to wind energy is already long-established. It means working surfaces traveling downwind, NOT upwind. A closer design space to a traditional “drag” machine is kite-reeling, where the lift of airfoils is nonetheless used to create a “drag” type of machine (working surfaces travel downwind). Reminds me of my mom’s attempted explanation of the term “drag-racing” - “because they drag their feet to stop?” Nice try Mom!
True, but the technology of AWES is different. Almost all the scientific publications are based on M. Loyd’s seminal paper: “Crosswind Kite Power”. So they qualify fly-gen crosswind AWES as drag devices, because the thrust of the turbines onboard adds drag, precisely 50% drag added to the drag of the kite and tether for an optimized device, the kite speed becoming 2/3 with turbines, as for reeling (yo-yo) AWES but for another cause which is tether downwind move at 1/3 wind speed for a more or less optimized device.
Yeah, well, I’ve never read that patent. Know why? Because everything in it is obvious, and always has been. Anyone in wind energy has always known that too. Only people unfamiliar with wind energy would be impressed with such a pedestrian observation as the idea that a kite could produce power flying across the wind. Meanwhile as I’ve been saying for 13 years, if you have to SAY “crosswind” it means you are not familiar with wind energy since all wind power has been crosswind for 1000 years or more. And by the standards of AWE, a regular lift-based wind turbine would qualify as “drag-based”, since the generator causes “drag”, slowing the blades to a fraction of their unloaded crosswind speed. All that shows is that Loyd was one more newbie to wind energy who knew nothing of the established terminology. Nothing more.
Every newbie to wind energy thinks their idea makes things “different”. Just like the stock market - there is a well-known saying in investments: “This time it’s different!”. It;s when newbie investors hit a lucky strike and are making so much money they think their investment can never go down. The veterans try to warn them, but the newbie will insist “this time it;s different”. I’ve explained all this about lift and drag many times now. It still seems like nobody even understands the first thing about wind energy here: A lift-based machine versus a drag-based machine, according to well-established terminology. I feel like I’ve done what I could to educate the enthusiastic perpetual newbies in AWE who have yet to power a single house after well over a billion dollars wasted so far and counting. At least people are having fun!
Maybe we should coin a new terminology for AWE?
I agree the naming is odd, though in AWE it is quite precise. My guess is that it is named after which direction relative to the lift and drag of the kite that the harvesting force is generated.
Maybe something like «Downwind AWE» and «Braking AWE» would indeed be better. Had we only said this in the 70s it might have stuck
I think saying Loyd is a noob is not very accurate. At least he put in words something that was not really common knowledge at the time, even for wind people
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Tallak: Here’s a photo of a 1500-year-old windfarm
LINK:
What is it, if not kites traveling crosswind?
The problem with AWE perpetual noobs, or at least the worst examples, is they are allergic to facts, ignorant of the art of wind energy and its multi-thousand-year path of development. Wanting to make up their own terminology at odds with established terminology in wind energy, without even being aware of that fact, is just one “canary-in-the-coalmine” of many. To then be in denial of such a simple fact when it is pointed out is another canary, but by that point it is expected. Noobs just act like noobs. Some things never change. I used to wonder the same thing as a kid - how could “lift” be pushing the blades forward? Shouldn’t it just push them back? Takes a while - you gotta get up to speed on what has been learned in these thousands of years. In wind energy most noobs dig in their heels and stay that way. It;s just the way it is, and has always been, as long as I’ve been paying attention anyway.
Hi Doug,
Wind turbines do not move (even considering that the blades rotate), unlike the crosswind AWES.
Wind turbine blades DO move: 100% crosswind, in a circular path. That has been in effect for well over a thousand years. Before that (Ancient Persia), they moved in a circular path downwind and upwind, which is known as a “drag” machine.
Just wanted to through this out there. As I know it has potential uses in Awe.
Be that VAWT, HAWT.
Newton’s third law.
Magnetic induction
Lenz law
Faraday law.
Magnetohydrodymanics
Electromagnetism
At 3:18 minutes in it has a spinning top with fluid inside.
Much like a previous idea I dropped in AWE with Generator using gravitational potential / kinetic energy, with falling mass of ball bearings or magnetic fluid
It must be possible to have spinning top version Working on centrifugal forces. Combined with the levitation. To come up with something almost Sifi esque in nature. I’m aware of maglev generator. Even one appear in the Thor movie intro at 2:42 minutes. It just a question of how AWE wishes to advance. You could end up with something look like.
See blue arrow for reference. Also
Newest Maglev - YouTube
I’m not sure if AWE has a magnetically coupled design. I’ve seen design of some VAWT turbines have levitation elements. As well as kinetic storage systems using maglev elements. So my question is is this something AWE could look at? Especially because of its sustainability factors, easy of manufacturing and assembly, scaling potentials, and so on.
I just like to throw this one In the ring and see what people think.
I think it is only tangentially related to AWE or not a well-developed idea and so shouldn’t be a topic on its own, to avoid cluttering the forum. You could post ideas like this in a mega-thread of all your ideas or in a topic like this slow chat. Feel free to discuss this if you think you have a better solution or if you disagree.
Nice videos.
Fair shout. I through it out there as more of a could we? Hopefully to ask someone more familiar with the concept. I recognised the potential. Wasn’t too sure of pitfalls and where safety concerns would arise. Well just going to leave this here and see what happens.
Link?
I presume it doesn’t matter what axis it happen in. The principles are the same. There are supercooled examples out here with superconducting elements. One example but there are many more World's Largest Superconducting Flywheel Power Storage System Test Machine Completed andTest Operation Started｜2015｜News Release｜Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd.
just for example. I know this is where I start to tread unknowns. but aware that it could be adapted some how? Thought it worth a shout.
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You seem to be talking about Magnetic bearing - Wikipedia
That is just another choice you have to make when you come to it, do the advantages and disadvantages of active magnetic bearings make them a better choice than other kinds of bearings? During prototyping and in airborne use probably no, as I can quickly and cheaply buy a bearing that will work.
tim hunkin - BEARINGS -The Secret Life of Components - a series of guides for makers and designers - Episode 8
Yes that was a good vid. I’m thinking more about lower maintenance cost.
Standard bearing will ware over time. If there’s only a single point of ware. It much easy to fix in the field Than running back a forth to a shop. I’m sure there a few hard waring rock in a field that might do that job. 1428 How To Make A Magnetic Low Friction Bearing - YouTube is just another example.
It also give you the opportunity of a high output from a low input. I know there will be limitations due to inductive forces and material stresses. Most of that is down to particle collisions with the magnetic field. Like a diesel engine but with magnets and conductors. The harder the magnetic field strikes a conductor the more heat will be produced due to induction. Which does lead to fried electronic. Obviously the risk of it melting in high wind increases without cooling. Low friction is alway a good way to go. Siemens have a generator that is totally based around this very idea. I believe that was in the megawatt range. SGen-100A/SGen-1000A | Generator 25-370 MVA | Siemens Global Website | Generators | Siemens Energy Global
If I read the specs right almost 99% efficient. I’m aware that it uses sensors to detect movement in the rotor and will send a corrective signal to the coils.
Even small scale definitely would be worth a play with. Can be a simple as a copper cylinder resting over a magnetic core. I’m not aware of awe using a design like this but I was aware it is being use in other places.
Ultimately my original question was see if AWE could take a small element of one technology and incorporate into a design. With a looming oil crisis, and import being delayed. thinking about others way to achieve the final product must be a plus. Even if that means a concrete at pad with coils embedded into it. with a vawt turbine on top with poly magnetic arrangements.
Hey Freeflying: Your online name reminds me of hang gliding, which falls under what is often referred to as free flight. Ever hang glide or paraglide?
I remember a Windpower trade show where some Asian team had paid for a booth where they demonstrated a vertical-axis turbine, about 4 feet tall, on a table, powered by a household electric fan. Little did they know their exhibit was referred to as “the comedy section” by all the real wind people attending the event. People would go check it out for fun when they got bored, It was not generating any electricity, just spinning. It was a Savonius type machine like the one in the first video. What it demonstrated was that clueless people with no sense of reality could raise enough money to fly across the Pacific and rent a booth at a trade-show. This sort of wind newbie typically makes all the beginner mistakes, but promotes them as breakthroughs. Everyone thought it was funny, - oh and I almost forgot to mention OF COURSE it had magnetic bearings! Why? because when people don’t know anything about making power, they are easily distracted by “shiny objects”, such as magnetic bearings. In reality, such a machine can use ball-bearings without excessive drag. They are choosing the least-powerful type of turbine to begin with, so if they were even tuned into the CONCEPT of actually generating any power, they would not be messing around with Savonius turbines. Savonius turbines are just (seemingly) easy to understand, easy to build, and so beginners and know-nothings in general are drawn to them. They like something they can comprehend, except what they DO NOT comprehend are the facts that:
- The moving wind reactive surfaces travel at half the wind speed DOWNWIND, reducing the incident wind speed by 1/2, which reduces force to 1/4 and power to 1/8.
- further losses are incurred by the blades traveling upwind, slowing the rotor even more.
Experienced people know these machines are almost never attached to a meter, and if they are, it is always a VOLTAGE meter. Why? Because it is easy to generate a voltage with a weak turbine since if you generate no current, there is no power being generated, so the beginner can pat themselves on the back that their little junk-pile actually SPINS, which they imagine is a huge accomplishment. By the time they see VOLTAGE on a meter, they imagine they have conquered global warming and won the lottery, all in one fell swoop
I’m going to try to say this nicely, but, from the viewpoint of wind veterans, only a complete idiot would waste their time and money applying an unnecessary maglev bearing to such a waste of time, but it is not uncommon. Why? Because “maglev” sounds “scientific”. In reality, it is “a solution in search of a problem”, and a true “no-brainer” suggestion often made by newbies and beginners for ALL types of wind turbines. Since they have never MADE any power, they have no idea what factors actually affect power output, so if it might consume 1 Watt to spin a bearing, and their terrible-design turbine would be lucky to generate 2 Watts, - wow, they doubled the output by using maglev bearings!
Again, I’m gonna try to be nice about this, but every time I see a post from you, it promotes another typicl beginner/newbie wrong idea, over and over. In a REAL wind energy forum, you would be shouted down over just about every post. This particular forum is similarly populated by people without much, if any, real experience in wind energy, and it is a place for new ideas, so nobody is shouting you down here, but it is mainly because of the general lack of experience here, just so you know. It would be nice for you, if you are truly interested in wind energy, to get up to speed on the subject before trying to inject all the beginner/newbie known-bad-ideas, because it is really a well-developed art, with thousands of years of history, and a LOT of accumulated knowledge. Like any well-developed art, a person who is not up to speed on the present state of the art is unlikely to improve upon the art just shooting from the hip with some first impressions. Just sayin’… Always good to be curious and want to advance a technology, but so far all I’m seeing is the most typical newbie/beginner nonsense. There is already enough nonsense in AWE. The only way it will ever succeed is if people who know something about wind energy get involved. It is really amusing yet disturbing to see this continue for 13 years now - all newbies all the time. What I was used to was wind energy forums where most of the participants either knew what they were talking about, or at least wanted to learn. In this forum, on the other hand (or any AWE forum) it is ME who is MUCH more likely to be shouted down (or just deleted) for even having ANY IDEA what I am talking about, which is alternately frowned upon, or simply verboten, in these circles. Just so you know, from an actual wind person. This message is powered by a 10 kW wind turbine on a 120-foot tower. Thank You for listening.
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Do you have a link?
I can’t quite tell if your bragging or not?
But hey oh what do you know? Fair enough I’m little greenhorn when it comes to wind energy. however when it come to assembling things. I live and breath that stuff. I wouldn’t have called it nonsense though I’m just viewing this much like Lego. To me don’t sound like a bad idea. Owing to the fact that like you say
I was trying to come from that place even if I wasn’t all to aware of the day to day. I’m only putting together what I’m aware of. It all a step along the way. Can sense be made of it sure. It never a mistake to explore ideas especially ones that you haven’t encountered or don’t know all that well. Sure things have plagued AWE. each and everyone here comes from many walks of life with various degrees of awareness and knowledge of the subject. I can fling a spanner along with the best of them. When my gear start to turn an I understand I usually can nudge things along. What you describe is a know thy enemy situation.
- Drag
- Friction
- Back emf
- Material fatigue
- Unknown hazards
- Issues with material supply
- Environmental stresses on products.
- Reach in wider population.
- Personal level of understanding
Approach is everything. I’m try to work with the core tenant and keep it simple enough. that in a apocalyptic situation you can tackle that junk pile and keep going. I’m fairly sure that, where I am we have 120 of the big buggers. Sat in an array of shore in the English Channel. You know it’s all a matter of perspective. So there a small chance some of the power it took tho write this came from there. Goal and focus. It all a learning curve. I’m just greatful I was able to achieve something however minor.
AWE need to be like the American war machine in ww2. Yes the Sherman tanks were not able to take a panzer hit. but there was so many of them that it didn’t matter because it was easier to produce. At various point during that war the American out stripped German production many times over…the same was true for soviet Russian and their main battle tank.
Btw I’ve come close to hand gliding on a few occasions as former air scout. I’d like to hand glide at some point as I’ve alway imagined what it would be like. We even see our local police paraglider the one with a prop strapped to it. It is a huge sport round here come summertime. Definitely would transfer neatly to awe applications. So thank you for the suggestions 
I must admit it been awhile since my last opportunity to take flight. Freeflying you could say it a bit of a dream.
The last amount of electricity I made was after I helped my brother fix his car after the clutch died. That was a while ago. There always car batteries to consider. Due to the deep cycling.
In the last 20 years thing have come on a long way. No one would have expect to get the amp hours out of a battery like we have today. Sure there are gaps in my knowledge but that is true for everybody. It all about find those bits you don’t know and learning from them. Glad for the pointer. If I had a few million to throw at it I wouldn’t be using duck tape. I would be using something far more clever. far more homogeneous in design. If I can’t bolt it together in an afternoon it simply not worth my time. Like I said before I’m taking what I have and running with it. If I get something 
if I don’t I had fun making it and exploring the concept. Sure it make some giggle themselves silly like a monty pythons sketch. Regardless if there a simple way and design. I’d like to find one.
Maybe a little, but it is not a turbine I built, just the best brand of small turbine, requiring more just to keep running than the electricity is worth, even if the entire installation is free, which mine was, considering it came with this ranch property, already installed. Well actually I had to buy a used one of the same model and replace the original which I can now rebuild due to installer error and faulty tech support, which burned out a generator. So now I have two - one to run and one to rebuild.
The main reason I sometimes add that tagline of being powered by wind energy is, over the 13 years+ of these AWE forums, I have yet to see any person or team ever utilizing wind energy as a power source. Not once, ever. Zero experience or even familiarity with wind energy in these circles, where “anything goes” but nothing ever takes hold. This includes all the BIG BIG BIG names, from the largest corporations like Google, highly-publicized efforts said to emanate from major technical universities like MIT, Delfts, etc., and highly-funded and highly-publicized “teams” that seem to regularly emerge, tell the world how many houses they “will” power “next year”, then disappear. Of the hundreds or thousands of homes promised to be powered by AWE, today there is not a single home powered by AWE. The point I’m making is that for most AWE wannabe’s, generating electricity from the wind is just a wish, a talking point, a fantasy, not a daily reality. I’m trying to remind people that wind energy is a real thing, not just a fantasy talking point.
When we had a yahoo group for “small wind”, the discussions were around how well systems people had built or bought were running, what went wrong, how they fixed it, etc. Also a lot of theory was discussed. Of course you would get the occasional newbie post about a Savonius turbine, maybe with maglev bearings, but they were about fantasy, not working systems anyone used. They were posts by outsiders who thought they were introducing real wind people to new ideas, not realizing they were just the typical and well-known “bad” ideas.
Wind energy has developed to such an extent that by now it provides a significant percentage of all electricity in the world. The machinery is so advanced you could compare it to the world’s best supercars.
Now I’ve explained this many times to all the AWE newbies, but I’ll say it one more time for your benefit: Would you show up at the Indianapolis 500 (auto racing) with a wheelbarrow and expect to qualify? What if your wheelbarrow used “maglev bearings”? How hard would people laugh? You’d be lucky if someone didn’t die from laughing so hard, unable to breathe, right? Well what do you think a little Savonius turbine on a plywood base is in wind energy? It is a wheelbarrow in a world of supercars, that’s what. The maglev bearings, sexy as they seem, are 100% irrelevant - a wheelbarrow is a wheelbarrow, and if maglev bearings for any wind turbine were a good idea, someone would probably be using them by now. Literally, the only reason newbies love maglev is their turbines are so crappy they are lucky to even spin at all, so maglev “seems” like “a great idea”. In reality wind turbines make so much power that the real problem is controlling it at the top end, not coaxing it to merely spin. The generator provides thousands of times the resistance to spinning as the bearings. But newbie turbines are lucky to even have a generator. If so they probably just sit there.
What about your car, does it use magnetic bearings? Why not go on an automotive website and “introduce” a push-cart with magnetic bearings? Would anyone care? Would they delete your account?
This is the second AWE discussion group, with a total of 13 years and counting of wannabe innovators posting random whacky notions that just pop into their heads. So far it has led nowhere.
Today the “big news” is the supposed purchase and shipping of AWE systems. I guess we’re up to about one per year. Still no news of them actually in use.
Really, from a wind energy perspective, it is all so silly that its hard to believe. So keep on thinking, I applaud the creativity and urge to make a difference, just so you know where the whole thing is really at.
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I think there so many potentials that its somewhere people get lost. Much like candy store. You walk into the candy store but your only allowed one option because you tight for cash. Yes your spoiled for choice but in away thats its major downside. I think many of the upstart get so far but fail because the can’t reach there target audience. I’m fairly sure that down to social or political interaction. Its like mass adhd where everyone is into different things and are not aware of there options. so finds it difficult to connect.
Im aware of people who have cobbled something together. Then had my drop wide open at some of the Dutch efforts with there wind farms. Plywood doesn’t make for the lightest of turbine. I definitely wouldn’t think anyone would like to change solid bearings every 3 months. depending the bearing?that can get expensive. should they ware out. Never mind the fact that I’ve seen on a few testing videos of them shattering completely. Once they become overclocked. That like being below decks with splinters flying everywhere. I know it takes a lot more to make a turbine. Even more to get it to market. Once safety check are signed off. Definitely something management would need to check over.
Would I turn up to the indie 500 with a wheel barrow? That would depend on solely on the criteria. Even if I could modify it? Definitely sound like an episode of extreme Viking to me. Would a double plenum design count? I know the indie 500 can get real messy. So a role cage is a must. I’ve seen plenty of memes with Aladdin at the indie 500 racing a magic carpet. I don’t see why a converted wheel barrow would be any different. Plenty of mech tippers to choose from. Would be much like wacky racers. I don’t believe there ever be a hovercraft entry to the indie 500 let alone one with eco credentials. Colin furze might even have a go. He’s even got a wind powered tumble dryer so who knows?
As for controls for over clocking. I’m aware that there are examples where they installed regenerative braking much like a Rev limiter. to stop the whole system gone into an induction induced nightmare. Where it all goes bang.Definitely seen a few self destruct vid for that. Definitely would pass on that. I certainly would not want the paperwork to land on my desk. Then have to decide how many pages are they going to need. That where I would delegate. To one with more experience. For me, paperwork, more over completing it. is a nightmare in itself. I’m luck if I can scan 50 pages without a headache. Definitely a small bite kind of guy there. I know what I can build some time with tooth picks. I know how far I can go with what I know. Then call in some who can check it over. Reality checks alway helps sign of those balances. It always comes Down to innovator vs inventor. I find myself trying to innovate with what is known to me from what I learn. An inventor knows things others don’t. I much prefer the tool box of simple things. than totally crazy where the bloody hell did that come from? Most is already known it just about mixing and matching. Then baking that cake. Especially with limited resources. I’m tempted to mention solvated electrons or isothermal coolant. but I will leave that for another day. I wouldn’t wand you all dying of laughter as I monty python my way to ooohh shiny.
Sorry, but every further word you type just digs you deeper into the hole you are digging yourself into. Knowing nothing about a given field is not a good preparation for improving it. I have yet to see anything meaningful. Bearings in wind turbines typically last 20 years or more. Overspeed (overclocking as you are calling it) is the main challenge in wind energy. Preventing it is not easy, but of course newbies always have some quick “all ya gotta do is” type answer. I would recommend you give it up now because I do not see you going anywhere in wind energy. And I have to seriously consider why I’m still wasting my time on these “open” forums since after 13 years all we have is new perpetual newbies acting just like the defunct old perpetual newbies. I keep telling myself to just stop posting or answering posts here. I try to give people the real story, but so many people are allergic to facts and think they know everything while not even having the slightest clue…
Yep I do that looking for answers. 13 years on forums make you a veteran.its worth picking your brains alittle. The point we are both make with the development of AWE is both of us are yet to encounter a lead with very real world applications. Hence when I mentioned candy store. As all engineering get bogged down in the details. There are people out there trying things out. Giving a go. Those ones have limited resources or even access to the kind of big things most do dream and fantasise about. There probably a million others try various things for example ……
I’d say there definitely efforts being made on every level. I get you have a despise for this kind of thing. Pet hates and bug bears which is fine. It doesn’t make it invalid in the slightest. Without those will to make inquires Awe will stagnate. So you Can’t find riches without digging a few holes somewhere. Is a say I’m reminded of. I’m like this because of fact based inquiry. If I don’t know something all too well. the only way I have to learn is to seek out those who know and speak with them. I’d admit it been a pretty long road. Up to here. I’m interested in how they do it and why? There will alway be a Goldilocks zone when it come to development. It part of that paradigm. Im loving the feed back.
I’m definitely hyper focused on how can you build the bloody damn thing. To Have that meaningful impact. I’m under no delusion how difficult this could be. Many have sacrificed themselves on that altar and achieve nothing or very little at all. Just raising awareness is a victory for some. If that lead on into the next move ant the next? That has got to be a good thing for everybody. It might just be a phase for me. I go through them. Who am I to Deny or disappoint you there? I be there first person to admit my limitations. I have reasons for doing that. I’m not afraid to let someone far more knowledgable take the lead. I commend you there. I will alway try to come from my knowledge base whenever i try to make or design anything. I don’t consider anything I do to be absolutely brand spanking new. Nope. In fact it’s quiet the opposite… I like to use a core of what is tried and tested. I’d bee happy just assembling them. We all seen roller coasters stopped with the power of lenz law. With magnetic braking. I doubt it would be any different out there in the field. 100 feet up on a mast. Ive listened an know, you know where things will overspeed and clock out… i hazard a guess you know where the material limits are? I get that many of the current turbine system are dialled in for that very reason. Otherwise turbine say no. Then there an awful mess to clean up. Most engineering’s I’ve encountered fear those days. Ive heard the major groan when they hear of it. It has alway been a running thing in the office of how many sheets of paper will it be this time? Health and safety accident reporting. I don’t think I’ve ever met engineer who doesn’t loathe the paperwork. Because i know many would like to kick back and fling spanners all day long. You answer because you believe that it the right thing to do. that I applauded you for having the patience of a saint. Just for that.
I’m going to leave it here as I fear I might just give you an aneurism.
So thank you. I hope you have a nice day.
Below are a short video helping to understand the basic operating elements of a Maglev Wind Turbine, then a website for building one.
Some features could perhaps be useful for some AWES architectures where classic ball bearings are not easily implementable.
Hi @dougselsam, what you call “the real world of wind energy” does not intend to do AWES. Current wind turbines do not fly. Currently the reeling yo-yo mode seems to have some advance (average 92 kW (figure 15) with 12 m/s wind speed). And as you often mention this mode of production would not be used for ground-based wind turbines. But AWES aim to be flying wind energy systems.
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There some really good links you have there. so thank you! I will read up to understand more. If you get the chance I have a look at ploy magnets. As far as I understand they can be printed directly into a material.
You also have
And
Just but a few examples. To refer to. Might have some use in AWES as well. As they are following in the same vain with the magnetics. It always got to know what is out there. So everyone able draw on the experience. to somewhat come up with a core of components that can be used. It how the managed to take the Bren gun from ww2 from a 100 odd parts to 49 parts if I recall correctly. Definitely magnetic bearings hold a great potential in awe applications.
While I think about it. you have magnetic tape option. Which could also be use especially with the yo yo mode style system. Especially if they looped around system of pulleys. Much like how the old Walkman cassette tapes used to work. That would only need a liner motor set up. Which can have coils top an bottom or in any orientation imaginable. I’ve fond memories of rewinding old tapes when they got chewed up. The same mechanism could be adapted for AWES. With a kite used to draw the tap though the coils much like I’ve seen in many of the postings on here. Where you have a ground station two Ankers points with pulleys. Just want to say AWES architect has potential due to it versatility and room for modification and up grades.
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OK I was about to say all these ideas are on the well-worn, official “Professor Crackpot” list, til I saw the magnetic gears which is something new on these forums and something I have been looking into for a while now. Bear in mind it is an idea with wide applications, so what are the problems with it? Don’t know, but there probably are some. Other than that, most of this stuff is “on the list”. It’s OK, just so you know. OK gotta go hit the slopes - later!
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An interesting question to open some perspective about repellant force:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_will_be_the_magnetic_repellant_force
What will be the magnetic repellant force ?
Question
- Asked November 2, 2021
Hello everyone,
I have a neodymium N42 grade 10mm thick 50mm diameter magnet with surface field of 2450 Gauss equal to 0.245 Tesla. Base on calculations, repellant force between two of them is about 72.3 lb at zero distance.
Now If instead of one magnet I put a same size coil with iron core over one magnet, how much force I can get with a pulse of 10 amperes of current pushing my neodymium magnet in stroke distance of 50 mm? Probably my coil should have over 1000 turns but the specification of coil is unknown to me.
What I need is the workable coil specs and the maximum repellant force I can get?
Thanks a lot
Hi Pierre:
This question should have a fairly straightforward answer. If the magnets are touching, the repulsive force should approximately equal the attractive force, depending on which way to magnet is turned or the current flows. The force will be very high at zero distance (if the magnets are touching or very close) and the force will be MUCH lower if they are 50 mm (about two inches) apart. You might find an online magnetic field calculator that would be able to get you some answers, and I think it would be pretty straightforward to calculate forces for two identical magnets, based on surface area, etc. I know I have a lot of H40 Neo magnets around here and some of the thicker ones, maybe 18 mm thick or so, and maybe like 1" x 2" are extremely difficult to pull apart once stuck together. I like to hand them to really strong guys to see if they can pull them apart (usually they cannot), then when they hand them back I pull them apart fairly easily, but only because I slowly learned the tricks of how to handle them after a lot of playing with them. Gotta twist them and slide them around to get them in a vulnerable position and use a little body English to tease them apart. Hard to explain, easier to just do, once you get the hang of it. Great day skiing by the way, perfect snow, nice and warm, no wind, no lift lines, and 77 degrees and sunny when I got home. Almost like summer, except not quite hot. I almost got in the lift with a couple of girls wearing bikinis. Another guy I ski with is 78 years old, skis in the mornings, drives back down to Santa Monica and goes surfing, then goes to work at 4:00 PM as a chiropractor. Nothing like Southern California. I can see the ski trails from my house, so it is always hard to resist going up!
Hi Doug,
Below is a calculator of both pull force and repelling. Pull force is a bit higher.
The question was not exactly about two identical magnets, but about one magnet and a same size coil with iron core over one magnet with a pulse of 10 amperes of current pushing my neodymium magnet in stroke distance of 50 mm.
You make a beautiful description of a day in California, an already very attractive country.
Usually the repellent force are equal to resistant forces.
He’s looking for resistance and distance. To calculate the forces you first must know the variables Which he doesn’t state clearly nor does he mention wire thickness… so this is completely Upto builders digression. Using lenz law along side faradays laws. Meaning for the 50*10 to wants to use. To find some known values.
14 awg wire will handle the load. Also depending on the core will influence the magnetic flux. As stated in this Wikipedia article Magnetic core - Wikipedia
It also why I remember my science teacher talking about the big electromagnets on scrap yards. Once Side read the other Side dead. When dealing with electromagnets. Magnet - Scrap Handling - Ohio Magnetics Now its just matter of scaling back.
POW-R-LITE™ Magnets Lowest is about 150lb which means about half of that is what the chaps looking for…72.3lb assuming he wishes to equal the neodymium equivalent. For the same size. Cores are normally 2/3rds of the magnetic setup. Meaning 50mm he would need the core to be 33.33mm. *10mm then it working out the turns from that. To make up the rest of the magnet. 5 turns per layer at 2mm. You have eight layers of coils which make up the magnet. It comes out a little under size but so it a toss up on what to do on sizing the magnet. 14 gauge is 2mm if you subtract 33.33mm from 50mm which give you the remainders of the space to play with. Once that punched in, you end up with 42- 45 turns in 14 gauge wire. But you only get 40 turns due to dimension. Which might just be the life the universe and everything. He might get 1000 turns if ultra thin nano wires. But in the end that is just a design choice. He could also use copper tape to wrap the cores in and it would work just as well. If he is looking for the equal to neodymium? Might even be a chance? he will have better values using the electromagnet than neodymium. Assembly brain. Neil deGrasse Tyson once proposed a similar question but with shadows from a tower to figure out it’s height. So there my hat into the ring. With my tool box. It classic professor question. Love it.
Also for reference
How do i get past the bot and communicate with humans. Every time i ask this question, the bot responds advising me to restate the question…I don’t have a BOT and BOT TO BOT COMMUNICATION IS A GRAND WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGY…I HAVE MANY QUESTIONS AND NEED ASSISTANCE. I believe you have info i need, but you have no way to communicate!
So i need Admin approval to ask a question of Admin?
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The only few issues I know about with mag gears depending the variety. is slipping, magnetic inversion (aka pole changes), magnetic reconnection. Content creators out YouTube explain this one better than I could. Especially when talking gear ratios. When working the low friction is a bonus. Which maximise the efficiency you can get out.
It occurred to me Roddy might like a new island to inhabit.
OK the article does not specifically mention AWE, but isn’t it obvious?
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Nice idea,
however Piel Island - Future Management Arrangement
Main contract details
Opportunity Id
DN592380
Title
Piel Island - Future Management Arrangement
Categories
151900 - Management
190000 - Facilities & Management Services
Description
Barrow Borough Council is looking to contract with a tenant to manage namely Piel Island and the Ship Inn pub. The ITT document within aims to provide an overview of the area, the Island, the Council along with the service level expectations of the Council. Unfortunately due to Covid Restrictions we are unable to provide a tour of the Ship Inn, however we will have a virtual tour ready to be uploaded once completed. (Expected date 20/01/2022)
Region(s) of supply
East Cumbria
Estimated value
N/A
Keywords
Pub Management, Facilities Management, Facility Management, Pub , Public House
Key dates
Estimated contract dates
Start date
01/04/2022
End date
09/02/2032
from
https://www.barrowbc.gov.uk/visitors/attractions/piel-island/
The offer was From 18/01/2022 08:00 to 04/02/2022 17:00.
Would have been nice to invite people to.
I don’t think I know anyone that wouldn’t jump at the chance.
It is to do with the pub. ancient rituals. I know a lot of re-enactment bods and wild campers that would bite your hands off for it. It very mans dream to run a pub and a castle. As I said nice idea, I fear that opportunity gone.
I just had to check if it was still available. Because who would want to be king in thier own right. Have beer poured over them. just to run a whole island. Sound like a messy night in a bar. There will be other islands for sure. I hear there are micro nations on abandoned oil rigs. Should one come up for grabs AWEs could bolt one down and call it it own. Might look alittle like kamino from Star Wars. If you get one. Like Giant golf tee placed in sea bed.
No need for me to move to England
Please
We have our very own sovereignty here in Shetland.
E.g
Last summer, a pal and I paddled to Forvik Island to mount a hostile takeover of the territory.
But when we got there, we found the king Stuart Hill (a man affectionately known to the press as captain calamity) to be a lovely fellow.
Reading his Wikipedia entry will brighten up any day.
Stuarts books and adventures through the courts regarding Shetland sovereignty are wow
He was very keen on having a kite turbine on the island.
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Just read the article,
Tried to out do the Viking raids by the looks of things. I understand it a bit if traditional up there. If all else fail the open blue waits. I say the king of island earn his title. Needing to be rescued. Wind energy might be just be a safer venture without need of a boat. I’d say you got a legend up that way. Better to keep hold of that.
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Explanations but waiting for a prototype…
Experimentation at 6:30.
https://www.jameco.com/jameco/workshop/howitworks/dysonairmultiplier.html
1 Like
Did not see the video, but it does seem individual cars with their own propulsion would be a logical next step for railroads. After all the train concept is mostly about one crew and propulsiive car being able to pull many cars. If the cars are automated, why do they have to be stuck together? Then again if you live near train tracks you will have cars going by all day long.
https://www.jetoptera.com/
Definitely coming along. Just another example.
1 Like
Integza attempt using combustion and 3D printed parts.
Sintering process could have very similar outcomes. Additive manufacturing is a huge leap forward for complex geometry involved. It wouldn’t take much to adapt. The bonus is a veritable levels of skill set could be used to achieve it. I’ve looked at sheet metal for a non combusting version. Not sure about carbon fibre though might be worth a go. It is just one way of increasing airflow from low volume airflow to high volume.
Yeah, another “press-release breakthrough”, which has yet to show true success.
This phenomenon is certainly interesting, but experience shows that merely being “interesting” does not translate into sure success in wind energy.
Success, ah that old chestnut.
Success levels,
- Can you build it?
- Did you get it to work?
- What kind of result did you get?
- What kind of reach do you have?
- can you get it to market?
- Do you have any takers?
Jetoptera are on number 4. It may not reach full potential. They successful built a working prototype. Many others are trying. I agree its fierce competition out there. It a question how far they will get? Sure there are practical elements. Choked airflow will definitely hinder performance. Along with pressure differentials. It normally causes stalling in jet engines and energy loss. Options Are there to explore the technology. Many far more ahead than me developing the technology. What it does promotes is ideas. Which they were successful at doing. Someone along that chain will come up with something that will have cause and effect. I’m no fool to believe that reach is infinite. Limited reach has be a curse for so many for so long. Raising awareness leads to some one succeeding. That is the feed back loop. That moves us all along. Inspiration is the beginning. Success is the results. If you learn that was no good great! you might fail 1000 times, but you might only need to succeed once. That is the important bit. Will it translate we are yet to see. I hope it does.
Yeah well the problem wannabe technology breakthrough people often have is unchanging: Do you really have a breakthrough. These days it is easy to find takers for bad technology. Take the ducted wind turbines (DAWT), which this reminds me of, as an example. Ogin was the name. The promoters take a regular, low-solidity (~2% rotor solidity) wind turbine, and seek to “improve” it by adding a 100% solidity duct around it. Obviously the duct itself, being larger diameter, and 50x the solidity of the rotor, will want to use far more material than the rotor itself. Then the extra wind speed will cause the rotor to get too loud, so they will have to increase the solidity of the previously 2% solidity rotor. Raising the solidity lowers efficiency. Obviously this assembly will use more material than simply increasing rotor diameter. About the best you can say for it is that it increases RPM, slightly reducing the need for gearing(?), but now you have to support and aim this large, solid diffuser ring. The idea had been long-debunked, but Kleiner Perkins still funded it. I had to fortunate opportunity to hang out with the Kleiner Perkins founders for a few days and filled them in on the previous failed diffuser augmented turbine fiasco where New Zealand had wasted $20 million on the idea. Unfortunately all I had accomplished was to let them know where to sell this project, which turned out to be New Zealand. No good deed goes unpunished.
Meanwhile, bad ideas and a whole lotta talk talk talk about them is not progress. It is just a bunch of wasted energy. All the new big-talkers think they are different, but no, it is just more of the same, except nowadays with smartphones and the internet, bad ideas go viral as easily as the few good ideas that get floated around.
I remember back in 2012 where there was a lot of hype all over Facebook. Some seamed very promising, then completely dematerialised by 2016. I can remember a few designs that stick in my mind. The barrage ballon approach was very promising. as well as one, what can only be described as something out of the teletubbies. Then you have a few duct designs based around a chinmeny for all intensive purposes. As seen below.
I remember reading somewhere Israel wanted to build something based around a cool tower design
I’m still waiting to see one for real.
Also there was a wind tower design that was designed to used the Bernoulli’s principle. To drive massive turbines, stacked up, One on top the other. I forget who they called. I know they were a Scandinavian company. Reminded me of a Francis turbine. They way the designed it.
Definitely a few out there I hope would come about. Some not so much.
So many disciplines I find it hard know where to start. I know there are options. Just don’t want to be unwittingly treading in toes. Aware there have been many a dumpster fire when it comes to design and development. I recall one chap here in Britain fitting a turbine to someone’s house claiming it would give ten time what it delivered. He got fined hard under trade description. fined 1m or so. Then barred from the profession. Got to love bbc watchdog for pointing such things out. Definitely littered with hopeful failures. There the ones I know about.
So If you could get airflow at the require pressure and density? Then Density of air - Wikipedia to match the density and flow of water at 997 kg/m³ a Francis turbine would be a good bet for a DAWT. 98% efficient as I recall. That much I do know. As for spin control. induction plates that move in and out or vary In thickness. might do the trick. without need to gear down to where the generator could handle the load. Passive Magnetic braking as so to speak. That only engages with at certain rpms. Due to centrifugal force. To slow the turbine where it needed. With back up immobilisers. Being 6 inch steel pins. That lock directly into the rotor. For excessive storm conditions. Might look a little like a grinder key. It will need to resist shear strength of steel that thick. To stop it acting like a guillotine. Then having it go into self destruct mode. I’m sure there More point to raise With design. even things that I’ve yet to consider. Being the spanner monkey I am. Success and failure definitely walk that invisible tightrope. You don’t know who will fall off or get cheese wired in the process. Definitely a minefield out there for the inexperienced trying to determine good ideas from the bad ones. Or even if the have any use at all? No doubt I’ve done a few funky cartwheels over a few of them. Live and learn physics until a brakethrough happens.
Well just keep posting links to anything you think is interesting and maybe like the proverbial “monkey at the typewriter”, after a few trillion years, you might randomly come across a solution. But by then will anyone recognize it? It is nice that you found a site to spill your brains, like that drunken “artist” who threw paint at canvas and sold paintings to the unwary. But just so you know, you;re just the latest in probably 20 years that I can remember of people posting whatever random thoughts enter their brain as potential wind energy solutions. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m always open to see such ideas. I love innovation, and it can come from unexpected places, but then again in wind energy it is such an old story to have people without a clue of wind energy nonetheless pretending every half-baked idea that courses through their feeble brain “must be” a breakthrough. So far it pretty much never has been. Wind people know this and are used to it. The people doing it think they are original. No they are not. They are just more of the same. Well-understood to have no real understanding of what they are even talking about, they just keep spewing the same ignorant nonsense over and over, usually thinking they are the first. And when they ARE the first to float a new idea in wind energy, it is usually wrong anyway, but they just don’t know any better. The last guys running an AWE forum (like “the inmates running the asylum”) could not, in 12 years, come up with anything that could even make measurable power, no matter what. Before they “quietly went away”, they were down to claiming the wind energy industry was too dependent on power meters, and that leaves wiggling on a tree, or the mere shade provided by a kite from the sun, were working examples of airborne wind energy. 3-D printing is an example of the tempting techno-candy that attracts AWE enthusiasts. All it’s gotta be is something that seems halfway new and unexpected, with maybe a scientific or techno flavor, and well-intentioned wannabes will propose it as a wind energy breakthrough. In the end, doing daily brain-dumps on a forum like this will probably get you nowhere in wind energy. It’s like you just walked into a darkened hall with a piece of paper that someone said would get you in the door to see your favorite band, and you think it is just you, until you walk in and see 70,000 other people in the stands who all thought they were there for a private audience. Nope, turns out it was a very common thing to think this and you are in the company of thousands of other people who thought the same thing. Just so you know. This is really just highly redundant. Probably a better path would be to develop your wind energy solution, take some data, then announce your “breakthrough”. No, every passing thought is not another breakthrough. It’s just an active mind bored and in need of focus. OK now I’ll take my own advice and get on with my hopefully somewhat productive day!
Just adding a random picture to explain why a lot of these ideas dont make much sense to me:
Source: http://www.urbanphysics.net/Dispersion%20Montreal%206.jpg
The wind at the top of the building is 10 m/s while the wind speed at the wall of the building is only 2-3 m/s. It just doesnt make sense to adda tubine to the base of the building to pass air through. The wind will find its way around obstacles.
If you could make the obstable super cheap you may have a winner if you put your windmill on top of the obstacle. This is not new. It is very common to put a windmill on top of a mountain.
I think it makes sense to start by thinking a windmill is something that is placed in the wind, as far as possible from other items. Then the windmill must be able to extract energy from the flow using a very low cost machine, that sweeps a huge area.
The last thing is very important. Because you will eventually be competing in price with a traditional windmill [HAWT]. And those are actually very good machines as of today. So anything looking remotely like anything you just described is just noe going to cut it.
My advice would be either to just focus on incremental improvements to HAWT or look at airborne wind systems. Right now these are the only two options I see as possible options, barring some fun technology that could extract energy from air at a distance, like a LIDAR but energy harvesting. Sure, its fun looking for that device, but not very likely to get there without a lot of ground work done first. For HAWT and AWE much of the ground work has been done, but then you need to actually go down that rabbit hole and figure out what exactly that is.
I agree that posting random images and thoughts here is not going to be very productive. @dougselsam is spot on in his reply.
Please dont take this in the wrong way. This is «tough love», I’d love to se you make progress in whatever you decide to do, I just dont think you are on to anything right now.
HAWT is operational at all scales, and significant electricity production have long existed in the commercial phase. AWE is eternally in the prototype phase and still produces little or nothing in the commercial phase. It is therefore not possible to compare them.
In a sense, @Freeflying is not wrong to invoke technologies that are very unlikely to succeed, in an AWE environment that is also very unlikely to succeed.
I dont think its exactly comparable. For AWE a lot of effort has been made to prove that it is not impossible. Then you have the gap between «not impossible» and «a good idea». AWE is somewhere between those extremes.
Many of these other things, one could simply say cost effectiveness is simply impossible
Finally making sense. That what I was looking for vortex shedding. Car spoilers do exactly that. For extra traction. It’s a simple as hiding behind a buttressed wall. Well aware there nothing new in this regards. Perhaps it won’t get as far as some of the other mentalist. as I don’t have the funds or resources let alone the reach. It how 7m/s gust round a building can be amplified. To 30-40m/s. I’m merely toying and experiment with concepts idea and principles because I can. Tai chi take what you have and make the most of it. Its why they claim they hardly touch you but throw you 10m backwards. No different for wind energy. Big brain bods like yourself with mountain more experience know things I don’t it. why I come here. I can learn from that. so thank you there! @PierreB @dougselsam sure there is economy of scale. From what I noticed and PierreB point out AWEs gets stuck in an infinite design loop for one reason or another. At some point you going to need to go into full scale production. If you don’t know what your looking for or even where to find it. You will be choked off. And won’t even get airborne. I was all way told it what is the goal? And build a picture from that. Now success broardens it’s metric. It the greatest sin of all design engineering’s to go “let reinvent the wheel”. That sure to deprive you of time money and effort. Because people forgot to keep it simple. It also help build a picture of good design practices. In most cases vortex shedding is a pain. But it not without it benefits if properly utilised. I recall James dyson holding a competition for designers to make use of vortex shedding. A design they came up with wall a polygonal tetrahedron. I know it possible it something.
I’m yet to try for myself. If I was to get brutally simple. It would be steel, plate biofoil coils. With magnetic induction. For easy of assembly… if I really wanted to be cheep throw in a few 7*2 and old washing machine drum. Then go “let have some fun” Appreciate the pointer and the demo of the pressure wave. Even a board placed at 57degress from horizontal would have the same effect. The point I’m making is when it come to easy of manufacturing. you will have people design something then, expect an assembly like to build it. The fewer step that has the quicker you will get that to market. The bigger your reach will be. By what I can make out many of you know the mechanics involved here… and from that, I get yes it could work. but good luck figuring it out. It been an argument throughout engineering. do you go with one single big unit. Or multiple smaller units. Looking at the drawbacks with each solution helps. I’m glad there are people that can fill me in. thats always a two way thing. I might suprise you one day with a working prototype. If a can pursade my folk to part with an old dryer drum.
As Doug aptly explains, “innovations” like DAWT have all failed for HAWT. You have to wonder why it would be better with AWES…
Well if you take dawt to mean pet or cuddle? Unlikely. I was going say something grandiose about the jet stream That would be the wrong answer. Most of the companies go big go bust. I have been looking into this a little more this morning, Wind Turbine Calculator [HAWT and VAWT]
Toyed with a few numbers for a small scale demonstration. got some numbers for example 123 watts I’m unsure if that daily, weekly or monthly. for a turbine thats only .5m across in 6.5m/s windspead. Which is average for the south coast in the English Channel. That would be 744rpm and a torque factor of 0.4373Nm. I looked at the average home electric use which was 242Kwh a month according to ovo energy. Average Electricity Usage in the UK: How Many kWh Does Your Home Use? | OVO Energy
I don’t think I’m going braking the bank anytime soon. Experimenting as I said. target production materials cost shouldn’t exceed £500, be lucky if it break £100 for a test run. provided I recycle parts I can get for free… I reckon it could be assembled in an afternoon and have answers by teatime. I’m not purely focused on DAWT devices. As It not the only option out there. What I hope to achieve is a meccano set of parts. that your everyday layman can bolt together in an afternoon. Plug and play with. I don’t mind outsourcing. To Those with expertise. If I can pull it off. It would be a major coup. For the energy sector as a whole as it would reduce carbon dependence massively.
Yes many have failed to raise the interest and capital and keep their heads. I know we all would like to see a jet turbine style wind turbine in operation. I’m not kidding myself to think I’m the one to do that. I Can’t just go by a junk pratt and whitney for a scrap mod. It is out of my league. With a million dollar price tag in some cases.
It might up just save failing aerospace production centres to switch over to wind energy. Even go through the production and modification process. There an 10 hectares site near me that I know of. Magellan aerospace former site at Bournemouth is one such site. If ever the uk wanted a new production centre specifically for wind energy. There is an opening if AWEs ever wanted one. Potential £100 million there if someone gets it right? Judging past efforts http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=637. cost, reach and understanding the operating environment. played a major role in their downfall. When when they got too big for their boots. It might work small scale? With batch production. but I don’t even see it being profitable large scale. As cost would far out strip demand. What the ducted guys proved is an idea, a test bed. For development. It is only a guesstimate but you may only get 0.0001% of total economic market share. Shiny products doing most the damage. Potential investors being too broke to invest. Obviously didn’t reach the intended audience or potential investment for future research and development. They also over stated their case. Before bringing it to market. Which must of had some effect.
It really need to be affordable for an average joe to fit one to his house. Coming up 8 billion People with energy needs. Not everyone will share The same goals and directions on energy. Ducts do give AWES sustainability if renewable are used over long periods of time. 20 years or more. Light weight and portable. Especially if it skin on frame construction. Casting would be easier to make but would have a penalty weight wise. Long game is need here. No more than 50kg maximum as an ordinary would be able to lift it. Optimally 10-15kg is what you would aim for. I get the, know the competition part. Why you find a niches when you don’t won’t rock the boat.
Or you go really big and have a megastructure made form concrete. With aperture of 1mile wide and several 100m tall. With multiple power units . Located in the structure. Theses work on volume. Much like a industrial grouting gun. Big fish little fish theroy. As a larger mass can influence a smaller one. Enough rambling i need some lunch.
@Freeflying, some topics like A "crackpot" design or A "Professor Crackpot" 3-D-printing wind "project"... could be more suitable. You can have fun with counter-rotating propellers or bladeless or both, DAWT and similar, Maglev wind turbines, Savonius-like and everything you want.
Also consider that certainly AWE is struggling, but the teams are doing serious scientific and technical work, even if the results are pending.
Consider also the basics of wind turbine, and in particular Betz’s law. True innovations are far from fancy “technologies” to wow newbies.
Actually in wind energy, a jet turbine style would not work out. Too many inline rotors - all you need is one rotor in line with the wind to capture the Betz coefficient from a given area. This is typical know-nothing-newbie talk: take a simple concept that works, and think all it needs is to be made really complicated, adding mostly unnecessary steps - yeah, sure.
Everyone who has ever tried mounting a wind turbine on a building has found it unworkable and removed it. This includes big companies and small, and buildings from small cottages to airports. As with most facts of wind energy, none of this is apparent to people from outside the field. There would seem to be no logical reason a wind turbine on a building should not work great, but they never do, so far, despite a lot of attempts. I had one mounted on the parapet walls of a commercial building til the owner made us take it down, but meanwhile, even this small turbine on a cinder-block-and-steel building made a lot of noise inside, despite rubber pads integrated into the mounting system. a couple of decades ago, when “the news” said the new world trade center building would have wind turbine built in, Paul Gipe and I immediately countered, exclaiming emphatically “NO IT WILL NOT!” How did we know? A little experience can go a long way. We recognized it as the typical know-nothing-newbie idiot talk it really was, whereas the average ordinary civilian bystander thought it sounded like a great idea. All those “really smart people” with their multi-million-dollar promises, and we little people with actual experience can outguess them 1000:1 every time. It gets pretty funny after a while. Regarding AWE, I declared from day one 14 years ago that nobody in the field knew what they were doing and success was unlikely in the near term on that basis. I got to the point I would just say “idiots, idiots, idiots” and then be censored with the reason “You can’t just say “idiots idiots idiots””. Well the problem is, what if it;s true? I just can’t say what my years of experience in wind energy tells me? Nope can’t say the truth on the internet, as long as “the really smart people” take control of the conversation and delete anything THEY can’t comprehend, true or not.
By all means Correct me. if my fair weather guess work goes interstellar. I must be realistic with known principles I know and thats Ok. I’m not expecting to smash the sound or light barrier any time soon. Elon musk stands a better chance than I do of that. The best I might achieve is a floating planter for some strawberries at this rate. I will Just fling a few spanner’s and have fun doing it. I’m ok doing that.
Its not all mr crackpot today. no! sure I find it mysterious and interesting. Some of the things I brought up have fairly solid roots in engineering some going as far back as the ancient Greeks. Knowing you guys understand that means. Someone stands a better chance of success. What you call “newbie talk” is just me enquiring. Why I mentioned the jet engine is purely down to the compressor… and the fact the armish use wind compressor all the time to run equipment. As far as I was aware compressed air/ low pressure system didn’t follow the betz coefficient. More like Venturi. Much like steam turbine do. With 20–30MPa being 90% efficient in some cases. A Francis turbine being 98% efficient.
Then you have things like tornados which have the lowest record isobar measurements of 5.72 inches. Which can toss a truck 5miles easy. The measurements are already done.on how much air flow that can create. Trying to converse in factoids. It why I mentioned water in previous posts. And trying to equal that in air pressure and density. using the wind to somehow achieve that. That is flow rates in M/s. Right? Or am I wrong? Which is Related directly to the air mass flowing over a turbine. No big trade secrets there.
As for noise, sound mirrors, there’s always sound mirrors. Stonehenge is an example of acoustic damping where soundwaves rarely can be heard outside the outer ring of stones the same would apply here. It is totally possible these days to have noise cancellation. Especially because whole surfaces can be made into speaker thing. I’m probably being a massive techno geek. But Surely that’s part of the wave function that can be utilised? to cut down on vibrations which cause most the noise in the first place.I know it can be done by inverting the noise in a feedback loop much like how the the posh headphones do it and earbuds do it. Meaning you could be stood right by it and you wouldn’t know.
I’m not trying to discredit 14 years of hard graft. no. quite the contrary. I wish you well. I hope you bloody achieve something. With the multi Mw turbine.
I just know what I’m happy considering due to my apocalyptic resources. Being as scant as they are.
Definitely give me lots to think about and chew on. I’ve had this many time over the course of my life, he never make it then they freak out when I do. It ain’t all bs. Nope it just the tool box that we have. With the materials available. It is impressive the work everyone does here. Keep it up. 
Just an example I found this morning,
I hadn’t realised when designing mine of other examples. On the drawing board: episode 86 trust wing tower. #wind turbine - YouTube glad to see I was in the same mind. As some.
It fails the test I described; sweep a lot of area and produce electricity at low cost. Also the combination of solar and wind is a telltale noob «optimization». This is just a beautiful/ugly sculpture, but has nothing to do with lowering energy price…
It did remind me of the angel of the north. Near Gateshead.
I hate to say it, but in most such cases I’ve seen, you might substitute “brainless” for “bladeless”. Such concepts as this one are so typical and redundant: Adding solar panels to even make it work at all, a complete disregard for the main thing a wind turbine needs (swept area), and a more-complicated-than-needed and far-less-efficient theory of operation. Ideas like this are so off-base they don’t even need to approach the “stuck in the muck” tar-pit stage. Instead, they represent a stillbirth, incapable of even seeing or getting to the tar pit. Besides the thousand somewhat legitimate attempts, there are the millions or even unlimited possible ways NOT to do wind energy
Wow palaeontology, neonatal midwifery and spanner’s I am impressed. Didn’t think wind energy frequented such places. It must be the mass formation phycosis talking. Covid must be having a bigger toll on openness and understanding. I almost get the sense you feel threatened. Or even embarrassed. I know we ain’t seen nothing yet. If a guy made this back in 1997 what else could be out there? Unseen. Unheard of. 25 years in engineering may as well get you to the other side of the galaxy.
With the millions spent on one thing or another. You be lucky if the tips of the swept area make 80% of total output. With the approaches as they are. Concentrated airflow always = high rpm. The approaches are valid which ever way you go. Be that low rpm with a large swept or high rpm and tight sweep. Dare I mention the power pod idea? I’d fear you have a full blown aneurism. It would be a shame to lose a man of that many talents. For all intensive purposes a garden podium at this stage. Somehow got you all eye twitching. Sure has it solar. it could also have any number of Awes attachments if the surface area is great enough. Bigger picture.
Even old factory ventilation fan would do the trick here. To further prove concepts. Augmenting systems with ancillary attachment would certainly help the cause. Think of the advertisement potential? Or even the ability to move air around using the wind. Much like a stack ventilation system. The central tower of the Houses of Parliament. And capital hill used the same systems before they were mechanical upgraded. So I’d be fairly confident it would work. The airflow in the central tower at the place of Westminster was measured once with Micheal portillio present. at 13m/s might of been higher. trusty, tried and tested. Servers hundred cubic feet/s + silent running.
Economy of scale as always comes in.
It’s a well know feature of civil architecture to mask a structure true purpose. There is a few I can recall from the London Underground alone. They were not tar pit ideas. Maybe I’m coming at this the wrong angle for you. Can’t really knock the effort though. Because that’s steam at its finest. One eye in on what been and the other looks and what can be done. All while in the present. The goal is to make cheep electric right? Nothing more Cheeper than free electricity for nominal expenses. When you are brass ass broke. You get extremely innovative with what you got. For me it been 4 years of trying in secret. For the most part. In every moment I can get. Most people spend 4K a year on energy bills. When they could just spent that once on an appropriate sized turbine to meet needs. Still would need regular safety check but that were the money will be. 3-5 years running then a check. Upgrades, extras much like combi boilers.usual product care ect….so brain dead I think not. That how it done. All well know buisness models and operating procedures.
@Freeflying, nice to have some fresh, new input here, but I’m getting weary of trying to read through your long-winded attempts at a pretense of making a difference in wind energy. Bad wind ideas get old after awhile. We’re really not here for just a bunch of nonsense. I don’t wanna throw the baby out with the bathwater, but really, you’re just coming in like a storm, but with nothing behind it but typical know-nothing-newbie assertions and pronouncements, mostly wrong. Your enthusiasm by far outweighs your knowledge. This is the kind of stuff that one could spend all day on, debunking sentence-by-sentence or even word-by-word, except your grammar, spelling, and sentence construction are so bad, it is difficult to even discern what you THINK you are talking about, let alone make sense of a lot of what you write here. I have tried to humor you as a well-meaning, curious and enthusiastic would-be contributor, and I would like be encouraging, but most of what I read is not even worded in such a way that I can make any sense of it whatsoever. Maybe try proofreading what you write, make sure your “sentences” are even actual sentences, and take full advantage of the red underlines marking all your misspelled words, then correct the spellings. Really, a lot of people look at such ramblings as an IQ test - “Can he even spell?” “Does he have the attention span to craft a full sentence?”, etc. Now I don’t expect any of us to have perfect English at every moment, and I will admit I see misspellings and grammatical errors in most “professionally”-written articles I read, but you take the cake. I hereby confer upon you an award for the worst English writing of any AWE chat group participant I’ve ever seen, in the current 14-years of hype. I originally assumed you were not a native English speaker and overlooked the faltering communication abilities, because I learned long ago that everyone has a different way of communicating and it is more productive to assess what the person is saying than how they say it, but in this case I am left wondering what it is you are even trying to say half the time. It is fun reading your ramblings, and maybe there is even a gem or two in there somewhere, but honestly, most of it is non-discernible to me as far as meaning. Try starting with the helpful red lines under your misspelled words. That is a good starting place. Beyond that I may have to start not responding to your posts because they are too difficult to wade through when trying to make any sense out of them. Spellcheck - a great advance! It won’t do everything for you, but at least it is a start.
Have a McDay!
No it was a Yahoo Group, which were all terminated, lest people be allowed to express opinions freely. In the early days, even NREL people were on it, til one day they were there no more. You could tell the bosses had decided it was a bad idea for their employees to just be out there saying stuff without it being official. The internet was free at one time. Those were the days!
Frankly English was never ever strong point for me. Only basic literacy. Predictive text added more layers of mystery. Should have made it easy, nope! When my brain runs at a million miles a second. Nice to know, I actually suck at communicating. no matter where I go. I’m probably better off using pictograms. Though, I fear that would be a puppet show, and a mime act roles into one.
The morning diet of YouTube for want of better things to do. the best I achieve under the layers of thought and discovery. Started today, with some interesting finds, some that are inline with the brainstorming. Others are old ideas but might help?
Started the day with
Followed by,
Which lead into
And ended with
Which left me wondering? Thinking awesome and how Can it be adapted? Air volume=> mass. increased flow rate. increases the volume air flow over contact surfaces. Which then means more power. Under e=mc2. never mind the similarity with singularities. due to (Black holes) vortex rings. They are depicted way back on art work. like the borre style ring chain decoration. Third from the top in plan view.
Found on a knife in Canterbury from the 10th century. But many other places as plenty on examples on google Pinterest and the like.
Tom Stanton has just shown vortex stacking is very real. And possibly the most intriguing find in fluid dynamics. Couple that with vortex shedding. Then you have a few clues for the tool box. For air multiplying. If the rotor could be the turbine. Much like a spinning top. Much like finials on a Christmas tree. It would be free-flying so to speak Couple that with some of that some of my other suggestions. AWES gets it bingo moments. A full Gw. Rolling on from that.
An interesting idea I got from them vortex shedding video was when looking at the whip tails. Then thinking to myself, what if they were Magnetic strip? the surface they on a conductor?
On The last video in the list .I think would work better if on a big tripod. So That could freely spin 360’ much like swing at the park but full 360’. Much like a crank setup. Powered in this case by vortex shedding, resonance And gravity.
My head exploded as per. Which got me here, feeling like an imposter. Recognising potential, I’m struggling to realise. I will probably go quiet. Head aches and all. Then go techno stealth ninja 
. It time for breakfast. a cup of tea. a breather for everyone.
Congratulations on ending at perhaps the silliest of the silliest wind energy wannabe device. If one were trying to construct a trap to lure idle wind energy wannabes, there is no better bait than this device that provides such a good laugh, year after year. Suitably, it is applied to an equally laughable wind resource: air movement from road traffic. You are proving to be very good at “checking all the boxes”.
OK is that a real sentence?
Don’t worry, exploding your head couldn’t make things any worse at this point…
But thank you very much for the link about magnetic gears a few days ago!
The last video link I shared. I know is only upscale version form of hard drive reader you find in pc. Robert Murray smith on YouTube went into some detail about such devices, being highly efficient. Silly 
as they might be. If you only need it ? to charge a mobile phone, run an induction hob, light high output lEDs ? Its not silly at all… I know many people with enough wire, 4*2, plywood an flat bar who could build one. Extreme apocalyptic builders. could build one. We all have probably seen a doctor who episode. where he builds the most advanced equipment out of unlikely household items.
The point I’m making. for the million attempts made. It only need one to succeed. It doesn’t matter too much, about how its made. Or achieved. Just that some bothered to try. Otherwise we will all become a little ignorant with each passing day. The biggest complaint that I’ve noticed is when you go looking. to find if the technology already exist? Or even if it exists at all? That Bound to take up 90% of total production time if your lucky. I know too may people, myself including who fall into that category. Mines hyper focused ocd driven on wanting to know. So it shotgun brainstorming. Its major weakness of all production engineering. Often not stopping to realised what has been. This is the core and foundation of engineering knowledge.
If it seam bad? that because it is! gone are the days, where the brits could turn out ships, ten to the dozen. Make anything on mass and flood the market. Green technology evolution has come along way since it roots. Pumping coal mine, grinding grain. Air conditioning. Cold storage wind and sails. We all know it has much further to come. Before it widely accepted like it used to be.
The issue is the target audience. I could make it worse? It is only a reflection of the reality of wind energy and the market as a whole. Now with a conflict over resources looming large. that is only going to get harder. I can’t make this anymore worse than it is. The landscape is ever changing. It is never a trap to explore ideas Doug, it is why we ended up. with a million renditions of meat loaf two out of three ain’t bad. Pub karaoke nights are a big example of that.
So in wind energy terms. we have a mountain of attempts. not all got up and made a difference. what it did comminuted was, a idea that it is out there! Should someone wish to pick up that mantle? and run with it!
Magnetic gears definitely are something I came across a few years back when thinking I don’t have a mill to make my own gear. could I use magnets? The computer said yes! which I was thrilled with. found out about poly magnetic at the same time. Something that I knew was Beneficial to the cause. High field strength, means output. Then you have soliton waves. which can be induced in the conductor to boost ouput. Aided by poly magnetics. I can go on and on. I Just haven’t had anyone with Sufficient knowledge to ask? till recently. Totally missing a phd quantum mechanics guy To ask. In all its knowledge that’s worth more than gold. With oil industry in decline. War on the door. it about time wind energy pulled up it bootstraps. got down trading in volts, amps and watts. Just to screw with the petrodollars. And these narcissistic warmongerings. Electricity will be the new coin. I’m fairly sure about that. the best thing is the little guy can get in on it. Spend and afternoon with the kids a few tools and all is good!
Instead of the dog💩 of global warfare. Yes you have a role in that peace making. Should you want the mantle? By default AWEs architecture has a role in global peacemaking.
Thats just how important it is! As long as AWEs has variety it will succeed! I’d bet £100 of the finest. that Elon musk would be on board with that! Should anyone dare ask?
The idea in that video has been long-debunked in these AWE chat groups. In a real wind group, “debunking” it would not be necessary. It debunks itself. Yes it is a trap, and it even has a name: It’s called the “Look, it wiggles!” approach to wind energy. I’m embarrassed to say I am the one who so identified it. We’ve had nutcases promoting it here before. It is a symptom of a common malady, which is thinking one can improve wind energy without knowing anything about it. There are unlimited ways NOT to do wind energy. Most people don’t know the difference.
The other two fallacies in this specific implementation are that:
- moving air from road traffic is worth chasing for energy extraction, AND
- that energy extracted would not slow down the cars, reducing or cancelling any net gain.
Obviously…
Below there is a video showing an interesting invention: a wind turbine. Basic explanations help to understand how it works.
Great vid. All wind energy is a mass of swirling convection currents created by solar energy.
If you ever wonder what went through my head when I saw the pendulum design? Colin furze doing this. Or even a
But with wind as it main driver. No cars needed.
I am aware of the the force on the blade of a standard turbine. are very similar mechanically. To the forces trebuchets use. A single blade is like the arm of a trebuchet. Got that part. I’m also not coming from a purely wind background.
I hope your familiar with involutes,
as even I know you don’t need are large sweep area to generate a lot of energy.
Aware, turbos can run in suck or blow. It just needs to circulate around a set point to work. As far as I’m aware it works for most fluid dynamics systems.
To explain further
A trick most engineering’s and one point or another have tried
1.225 kg/m3 At 15’c is atmospheric density. Air being variable density fluid.
And highly viscous. So increasing it density will certainly help generate more power from the wind. Even up to the betz limit. If it wasn’t for the boundary layer non of these turbines would be possible. That i do understand. As it exploits aerodynamic to best effect. 1.225 kg/m3 at 7m/s is what I’m looking at. If that can become compressed? it is a winner. Any pressure change that induces more wind? is a winner. Plain and simple, 5kg/m3 would carry far more energy to drive a turbine, produce high torque therefore more power. Right?
The issue with going big, its need more material to do so. More time in production cycles, and that Incurs cost. People loose interest. Much like magpies. Lift and drag rotors are the main types I know of. So I didn’t think I was too far out with my thinking when making suggestions. Spent most of Covid trying to learn about wind energy. I’m aware vortices can travel the length of the blade to provide lift. Or be turn inward to provide power for a drag rotor. I know how wind works wind blows blades spinning. Does in need to be more complicated? I don’t think so. As I said before, and mention again. “take what Mother Nature give you and make the most out of it.” Shake (hawt DAWT VAWT) your mother gave you. Currently trying to find the Cfd software to run on IOS. so I can get a better idea myself. That hasn’t been a joyous task. Nope no fun there.
been keeping an eye here because it’s interesting.
He got it to spin under 2m/s. t doesn’t have a large swept area. Which I thought was good. Didn’t know if you knew so here goes. I expect the usual professor crackpot Comments. but hey presto. I will find out later.
Reminds me of running away from girls as a kid, laughing and yelling that they had “cooties”
These kinds of “fluff” videos always have some “dumb” aspect.
Windmills have used shaped airfoils for 1000 years, for example, and are not restricted to “modern wind turbines”. (DaVinci, Wright Bros., etc. never noticed.)
And what they call “flat” blades on, I assume, farm windmills, are still usually curved (bent).
Their illustration of a “flat” windmill blade, straight with rounded edges, is way too thick. Not realistic. They are losing people who might actually be interested.
Then they use a quickie explanation of the discredited Bernoulli explanation of lift, saying it will force the blade “upward”, never explaining that the blades are pitched so a component of lift pushes them forward in a circle, nor that the suction on the “upper” surface extends to the leading edge. Again, they would have lost any truly interested person.
Someone who may have been interested in science will be turned off, thinking it makes no sense.
Funny they start out bragging how many homes a turbine can power “for a year”.
Outsiders, especially “journalists”, almost always say that! “For a year!” What happens when a year is over, the turbines stop working? Warranty expired? What happened to the 20-year+ design lifetime?
“Generating enough power every year to power 750 homes”. How about just an hour, or a day? Can they power 750 homes for a day? Or is it only for a year? Then what, after a year of wind power, the homes have to find a new source of electricity? “Sorry, your year is up. Show’s over. Nothing to see here, move along… What do you mean you want more power? Didn’t you watch those ladies’ video? It’s for a freakin’ year! Now get lost!”
OK here it is again: "A windfarm of 200 similarly sized turbines could power over 150,000 American homes - or twice as many European homes - for an entire year.
Did these girls not go to engineering school, to learn that “power” is already defined as energy per unit time? What does “year” have to do with anything? They just have to “say it”, because they heard someone else “say it”. It’s as though there is something about wind energy that makes people take leave of their senses - sucking the brains right out of their heads! Would they say your furnace could heat your home “for a year”? That your car can get 20 miles per gallon… “for a year”? That candy tastes good… “for a year”?
There it is again: “With a rotor diameter of 220 meters, just one of these turbines can meet the annual power needs of 16,000 European households.” Annual. Not monthly, not weekly, not just today, not just this moment - they need a whole year. Then it’s over.
“German physicist Albert Betz calculated that since some of the wind must remain to keep the blades spinning, a turbine can only ever capture 59.3% of the wind’s energy”
Wrong.
It is not because “some wind must remain”, it is because all wind must exit the area or more wind could not move in, and if all the energy were extracted, it would stop the flow.
Always funny to see people who are new to wind energy and do not understand it, try to explain it, but it happens all the time. At least they know SOMETHING though. I’ll bet they at least understand power is proportional to swept area, for example.
I’ve been toying with the maths.
After being verbally brutalised. I’ve just calculated rotor mass and need some one to check.
Air density travelling at speed. Which equal the amount of mass it can displace. For me I got 1.225kg/m3 traveling at 7m/s = 8.575 kg/m3 from there rotor size based on mass. E.g. Mass of air kg/m3 to mass of rotor kg/m3 1:1 ratio is 8.575kg/m3 3:1 = 2.858333333333kg/m3. I also calculated the energy for each kg/m3 at 7/ms= 84.092 J.
I did a voltage calculation for every kg/m3
At 10 coulombs and got 8.41v from 84.092 J.
Am I right to think that total mass of air flow before a rotor counts? If so? then the pressure of the total air flow acting on the rotor is important. Much like how if. A hole collapses. the total pressure of the soil pushes in on all sides. Is equal to the surroundings mass. Obviously air pressure and density with effect these number.
I just wanted a rough idea at ball park numbers.
I was trying to find a theoretical minimum rotor size. to get a theoretical maximum out. much how galileos bell experiment works. For scaling purposes. If my reckoning is right? would improve efficiency. Might even tweak the betz limit? I might have just calculated the joules its needed to turn the rotor. A smaller rotor compared to air flow would work much better. In this instance. RPMs will be much hight due to a gearing effect brought on by the difference in mass. Effectively 8.757kg/m3 can move 2.858333333kg/m3 with three time more energy due to e=mc2.
Losses can be negated some what. By adjusting for resistances and contact with airflow. It may only need 2% of the mass to provide 100% of the output. Much how a Francis turbine and Cross-flow turbine - Wikipedia works. Efficiency is proportional to ration between kinetic energy of a fluidic mass and turbine mass. - resistances. Be that drag, electromagnetic friction Or displacement losses. Displacement loses being the killer.
Remember you have a large volume. acting on a small volume. Which is your power creation and efficiency. It will have some correlation to total solar out put from the sun though I wouldn’t know the exact figure there. The ratio between large volume and small volume counts. Then it simple as an input output equation. If the betz limit is finite? Tweak the design to work within. So it can work to 100% capacity. I think if the known numbers are out there? then it’s becomes possible. Engineering loves datums. Base lines and the like. I ask myself the question what does it take to move the rotor? And what size does it need to be? I end up here. If someone could check my reckoning? I’d appreciate it. Thanks 
Just to let you know if I do not respond it is because, at a certain point, I just can’t read any more drivel. I was curious, but found myself unwilling to wade through more of what is most likely meaningless, to me anyway. Have a McDay!
If you are asking whether the Betz limit is the true limit, I guess most of us would just say, yes, even not knowing exactly why. If you want to prove Betz wrong, the burden of proof will be on you.
The Betz limit though is not maybe the most important thing. If you can extract energy at a low price that may be worthwhile, even if your windmill is not best in class in extracting wind from a certain swept area
But then again, if your windmill only extracts a small fraction of the available energy, the burden of proof is on you to explain why that could be worthwhile, when windmills exist already
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Another way I was thinking about it. pardon the Viking inference, is a boar snouts.
4:15s in, the crack team engaged the enemy. The larger mass displaced, the smaller mass with little to no resistance. This would be the wind vs rotor. Or how a rack a pinion engages. the rack, being the wind. the pinion the rotor. The measure of energy created would be the distance the rotor blade traveled. Once engaged and presented to with the wind. It’s an inequalities of scale if you will. Displacement being the key factor here. In the design of the rotor’s swept area and mass.
Rotor weight & diameter in kg/m3.
It would also depend on turbulence within the boundary layer itself. With the changing fluid dynamics densities within the airflow itself. If I’m on tack with my thinking there. Then it only a matter of a test rig to find out. To prove it!
Appreciated the pointers. Ultimate I’m trying to find out and understand. if the betz limit can be broken? Using the power of observation.
To improve rotor design.
If E=mc2 has any to do with it? Maybe?
supermassive black holes being my analogues for this.
We also get to learn if Vikings can do science. If they can? great! If I can grab moment. i Will try to have some real time data. Should my thinking be correct.
Going to let the results speak.
Nice demonstration of how to break the Betz limit with a sword…
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Another example of this is a peak flow meter used by asthmatics. To message lung capacity. As breath is very good at creating wind like conditions.
I grew up around family members who were asthmatics and used these all the time. In this example the rotor would be the measuring indicator. Just to give an idea of scale. Got a fair idea how it would work. Peak flow will help determine the amount of available energy. In any given area.
In old steam money, that’s stroke length. that’s directly related to volume of energy imput. In kg/m3/m/s2 should give the total energy value for Any give gust.
If I recall my science right a car hits a stationary object 50mph will fair better than two car hitting head on. Obviously you have a high energy penalty to start with. To turn the rotor. but once going it don’t take much to keep it going much how flywheels work. If the rotor is for eg. A third the mass with the wind mass acting upon it. It should need less energy to get going. Which is your basic power bell curve. The peak of that is your energy requirement to move the mass of the rotor in kg/m3 With regards to inertial transfer.
Should look a bit like this peek flow graph. Wind speed, air volume vs rotor size. 1:1 relation should be where it maxes out. In my case 8.575kg/m3 for 7m/s windspeed. Based on air density in motion for any size rotor. I know that this will vary in variable wind conditions. Depending on a compressing and decompressing wave fronts.
Rpms should follow a similar curve. According to rotor size. Low rpms at 1:1 scale and high rpms small scales.
Choke flow must be accounted for. If the boundary layer separates. Which might Be the Leading cause rotor stalls. Depending of class of rotor. Ww2 pilots know a little about that phenomenon. Where props failed to bite.
So like many greats hit it with a sword and hope for the best. It how Alexander the Great beat the Gordian knot. So could be how today’s science guys bet the betz limit? With something pointy.
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It is impressive what the Danes have achieved. I remember a report of them exporting energy to the rest of Europe.The uk is not all that far behind them. Coming a close 6th place globally. still plenty of room for improvement. the English Channel is ripe for wind energy.
I know where i am. there was a massive dispute over where they wanted to place the wind farm. Between the needles and old Harry rocks. It was in the local news and the Bournemouth echo. Didn’t help that we then had a mobile drill rig turn up. which was here for weeks.our local council had something to do with that. Furzey islands oil/ gas field see further exploration. there is competing interests locally. We have one of the largest solar farms in the uk. Right next door to the airport. Over 100 acres or more it just keeps growing. The farmer has many a side buisness. Like camping and wwoofing. It is link to the major estate holders in the area. I’m fairly sure if you tickle them pink. they jump at the chance of extra revenue streams. It very long winded. Parley court I believe is responsible for the up keep of the solar farm. Though don’t quote me on that. North of the airport it extends further.
Well, actually, you do NOT “recall your science right”, and the word is “fare”, not fair, and it’s “two cars”, not “two car”. “Science” says two cars hitting head-on is the same as one car hitting a stationary object. And next, like every newbie who has never made a single Watt, you, in your infinite wisdom, are going to disprove the Betz coefficient on paper. But you don’t seem to be able to even write a single sentence without multiple errors of every kind!
I swear, I could debunk every single sentence you write. Just decided to do a quick check of this group to see how retarded it has quickly become. I wish you would just stop.
Im meant to have a scribe, as one not available. can’t afford to pay for one. Or know where I can find one. I blue screed long ago. From my list into eternity. Of things I don’t find easy. Debunk my thought train if you will. I know my grammar. got dragged through the hedge backwards. Still trying to convey something. however gobble it is? Sure it a jumbled mess but FYI im autistic. I have acknowledged I could be very wrong . Being as curious as I am.
What your seeing is insanity level on C.o.D. To think it was going to be easy? Nope! Yes I would have flunked a lot. without help! Might not be chancing my luck here. Might not of even known you existed. Total feel like a Roman try to learn Latin. Remember Einstein, he had my kind of problems. But came up with e=mc2, Or Stephen hawking. Who had nought better to do. than ponder about the universe and dream about black holes. Forgive my broken English, ive had a life time of this. From my bros. And others. It very isolating. Just so you know! If I know anything? hawking, never stopped trying! nor will I! I’m might not be the best. but I’m still trying! As people used to say, they do love someone who try’s.
Btw what are batteries? I’m fairly certain. I can make a few watts out of that! With Jumper cables and car batteries. For a kid that grew up with meccano, and most of the tactical toys. a 80s, 90s kid would have. Plus the odd trip to the science museum. I disagree. “With never made a watt in my life”. Statement. I hope you know what a wimshurst generator is? Used to love playing with them at the electricity museum. In my local town when it was there. Even loved the plasma orbs as well. Sure I can’t compete with the big boy yet!
Some of the worlds biggest “retards”, advanced the world so much! we owe them a debt of gratitude! Going as far back as it can go! If it were not for then? no LHC. No warp theroy. No getting of this rock. No room to grow. If not for their hyperfixations and willingness to explore ideas. or reuse the ones we have differently. we would, be done for! Forgive my messy thoughts. it just they way I am! I know I will be corrected for something. Hence can you check my thinking? We all need those datums. the rest just follows on from there. That is the spirt of STEAM fields like ours. Ive said more than once. just a guy with the spanner’.
Correct me where I’m confused. Oh thanks for straightening me out. On the car thing. My thinking at the time. was car meets car and the forces added together. Happy to clarify the best I can. Be on your square, and have a nice day!
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So there is hope.
Ey, there some. As long a science greatest curse stays way.
OK when two identical cars traveling the same speed crash head-on, the point of impact does not move. Same as a car hitting a completely (theoretical) unmovable object, usually said to be “a wall” when this question is entertained. Contrast this with two cars of varying mass or speed, where the point of impact moves, and one car or the other has an “advantage”. I did not read that whole post - too much to read - just noticed one sentence that jumped out at me as incorrect and difficult to comprehend.
Now this may sound harsh, but you have to understand, as I’ve explained many times in the last 14 years of AWE popularity, my experience in debunking “windsanity” goes back much longer than that. How? Well, please pay attention to this because I’ve had to spell it out several times in that 14 years:
- Wind Energy has always been a magnet for crackpots, because the wind is invisible, so people can (and do!) imagine it behaving however they want. But wind doesn’t necessarily do what you want. It does what IT wants…
- Airborne Wind Energy is a Neodymium Supermagnet for crackpots. Why? Because with the introduction of a true unknown, seemingly “anything goes” - in many peoples’ minds, “there are no rules” and a certain highly-insistent personality type believes this lack of standards makes their prolific-yet-unorganized thoughts suddenly valid and accurate, without any actual validation. Typically, believing they are undiscovered geniuses of the highest order, these people tend to repeatedly bring up “Einstein”, “The Wright Brothers”, and really ANY and EVERY passing “genius” thought coursing through their highly-active-yet-even-more-highly-disorganized brains.
OK I am not the one running this site. But if it were a building, with a sign on the front, that sign would say “Airborne Wind Energy”. What it would NOT say is “Welcome to the Happy Valley Mental Hospital.”
There is a saying: “It is good to have an open mind, just not so open that everything falls out”.
Now before you say the analogy of a mental hospital is farfetched, please consider, This “discussion” has been going on since 2008. In that time, we’ve had many companies come along declaring that they “will” develop airborne wind energy, often giving dates by which they “will” power X hundred or thousand homes, usually in a remote place. The people running these companies give all sorts of details about how wonderful their wind energy systems “will” be, but in the end, none of it comes true.
Similarly, take a guy walking down the street talking to himself. OK not unusual, you might say, we all occasionally talk to ourselves. But this guy is actually talking to imaginary people. And not just to rehearse a speech or something, he actually THINKS the “people” he is “talking to” are really there! He is “out of touch with reality”… Some people would just say “crazy”.
Now take a guy who convinces a large group of people he can re-imagine and improve the art of wind energy with his proposed flying contraption. Is what he is saying for real? Or is it imaginary? And if it proves to be imaginary, not real, aren’t the key personnel almost as “crazy” as the guy walking down the street talking to imaginary people?
In both cases, it is delusional people with a wrong idea in their heads, acting as though the wrong ideas are right, when they are not.
People with experience in wind energy, especially those of us who have seen the pattern over a couple of decades of all the typical things the newbies think and say, can immediately flag most of these people as legitimately “crazy”, yet, like the guy walking down the street gibbering to himself, they can’t understand the reality we see. They just say we are “closed-minded” or “mean”, etc.
We know, they don’t.
It is that simple.
We’re familiar with the “mental disorder” from which they suffer, having seen all the “symptoms” many times over, long before “airborne” entered the fray of “improved approaches to wind energy”. We know all the symptoms, we’ve heard all the “arguments”. We know what they are going to say before they say it.
They “are the next Einstein”,
They “will disprove the Betz coefficient”…
etc.
Now why would someone enter the world of wind energy and immediately declare their first order of business is to invalidate the main, longstanding rule of the Betz coefficient? As though they are already making SO MUCH POWER that exceeding the amount of power possible to extract from a continuous flow is all they have left? Why? Because they are out of touch with reality. They don’t know how to make ANY power, yet they think Betz is what is “holding them back”
But they “are like Einstein”, so they will “rewrite the rules”. At no point do they ever just make lots of power within the Betz coefficient. No, that would make too much sense. Remember, they are “crazy”, so don’t expect them to suddenly start making sense! If you tell them they have never made a Watt, they will try to come up with a wise-ass answer, like they once connected a car battery, flicked on a light switch, or turned a generator by hand.
No, we are talking within the context of wind energy, but in the end, the crazy people just want an excuse to go on with more crazy talk. The last big example we had in AWE was one of the people running “the old forum”. Ironically, that in itself seems to occasionally be one more “symptom” of “the craziness”. A way to “feel like” they are at the cutting edge of wind energy, without having to prove it.
His strategy worked in that case, because it allowed him to keep going on ad infinitum, and when anyone protested he could just have the “correct” post deleted, and pretend his “incorrect” posts were the new way of thinking, even though he never really ever got anything worthwhile running at all, let alone enough to make a difference.
When I say someone “has never made a Watt” in a wind energy discussion, I am talking about a Watt in wind energy.
Meanwhile all Betz says is you have to leave enough energy in the wind for it to exit the area, or you won’t be able to have any new wind enter the area. Now that sounds pretty logical, doesn’t it? New air has to enter, therefore old air has to leave, therefore old air needs to still have kinetic energy left, for it to move out. Actually it is extremely simple, and not arguable, yet people still do. Why? Because from that standpoint, they are verifiably “crazy”. We know it. They don’t.
If one person says “We are developing airborne wind energy and will power X-hundred homes in location Y by date Z.” (which is usually “next year”) we can say they were “mistaken” when it doesn’t happen.
But then when ANOTHER guy comes along and says THE EXACT SAME THING, we might start to notice “Hey, didn’t the last guy, who turned out to be crazy, say that exact same thing?”.
By the time you have hundreds of people ALL saying they WILL power X hundred homes at location Y by date Z, (next year) you MIGHT see it as a bona-fide mental illness, with specific symptoms, just like the guy walking down the street angrily arguing with imaginary people.
At some point you can see this is “a syndrome” with long-recognized and well-defined “symptoms”, which never seem to change much. This was going on in wind energy before Airborne Wind Energy became a popular topic, and continues on in spite of the accumulating evidence that it actually amounts to a common mental disorder, always with the same symptoms.
So I would just say, noting that there IS NO sign here saying “Welcome to Happy Valley Mental Hospital”, if someone has a contribution or question related to the serious topic of airborne wind energy, which is now PROVEN to exist, this is the place for it. If, on the other hand, their mind is so open that “everything is falling out”, maybe they should consider actually DEVELOPING an AWE solution THEN hitting us with it, rather than just using this place as a dumping ground for all the stuff “falling out” of their “open mind”.
It is a much more simple common delusion than you suggest Doug
It’s belief in the worth of money.
To get any financial support for a project you have to promise exactly what you just described to folks who may not have a clue
saying they WILL power X hundred homes at location Y by date Z, (next year)
is basically compulsory in an energy systems business pitch
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
The statements are false.
The people making them are either lying or delusional (crazy) - take your pick.
Einstein always did really well in school, and worked really hard to come to where he did. And he was standing on the shoulders of giants, having deep knowledge of physics knowledge that came before him. I think for people to compare themselves with Einstein looks simply bad.
Just comparing as someone who does not seem to know a lot about the Betz limit saying thay it can be broken.
I do invite you to join the discussion. But the way you are going about it does not come across as very sympathetic. Maybe focus less on changing the world and more on baby steps?
That’s against human nature. Learning you need to separate a big problem into many small parts and you need to set achievable goals - take baby steps - comes from learning from not doing that and failing. Everyone starts out trying to shoot for the stars, that’s fun to imagine.
But I agree. One giant baby step would be for example to build your own small wind turbine from plans. You learn a lot and you get free electricity at the end hopefully.
Another small step would be to go here: Khan Academy
Yes, this is true. Learning is little by little. I know I have the parts I need to a working mock with my skill level. Its funny you should mention building one. As I was wondering which bits of scrap to sacrifice for the efforts. Helps sitting on a junk pile, of useful bits and bobs. Even if going to look like a scrappy scratch build.
My parts list,
Bicycle wheels.
Belts
Universal motor
5*2 joists
Drainage gutters.
Prefabricated metal sheets.
I’m good for a ground based test run.
Even if I had wait awhile for some bits to become available.
Shouldn’t be bigger than the width of a washing machine.
Thanks for the sign posting. To relevant information that was far more helpful. Also very informative.
2014 I started this journey into renewables. Hours of vids later. Here i am talking to to the brains of the industry.
I never thought I’d find my way here. Or anyone with some degree of knowledge. Knowing it wasn’t a task I can take on alone. Not without guidance from those who know. YouTube is helpful. without it I’d be non the wiser. Or even know what to look for. To begin to understand. YouTube has its limits. So learner guides are much better.
Further more If we have motors and technology? that is rated to be 90% or higher in efficiency. It stand to reason the betz limit. can be at some point surpassed. Based off what I know is out there even if. I’m not the guy to do that. Its just one big meccano set. Just waiting to be bolted together. I know that’s possible. If nothing else. So many thanks to all here.
When you go through the dsm diagonosis process Einsteins name crops up. Along with a ton of other famous people with autism. It’s is a feature they all share. Yes many of us can do quite well. And are quite bright. But were social awkward. I know I’m not going to be solving the theory of everything anytime soon. However much I like too. Nor am I at Einstein level of mathematics prowess. Biological he had a higher brain density. that allowed him to do maths at the level he did. His autopsy proved that! Generally Einstein had a few messy relationships among his pier group and family members. This is well Documented and survived to present day. Just ask anyone with autism about Einstein.
I always try to be realistic with goals and focus. Sure I get confused and muddled along the way. I try going the general knowledge route the best I can. I’m sorry if I don’t come off the way I’d hoped. It is a pain in my backside. No doubt about it! I don’t mean to be unsympathetic.
Like most keen eyed people. I observed for wind energy to work. it must displace one mass, with another. that easy numbers. Didn’t think that was anything new. Just par for the course. Take that as you will?
Spent last night thinking about leaving the forum. going it alone for a time. Questioned my worth and sanity for even trying.
If hydroelectric power can get to 98% efficiency? It must be therefore possible? under fluid dynamics. to achieve the similar for wind. I’m not walking a conventional path by any stretch of the imagination. Or going about it in a normal fashion. It must be possible to tweak the physics. Be that, compression of the airflow? So it has a higher density.
Changing the airflows velocity? Change the volume of air flow? Reducing friction? so on… and soo on…I didn’t think that was ungrounded. Considering that is how steam turbines work.
Going to sign out. And watch from a far.
Hi @dougselsam : good news abounds. We have @Freeflying , Einstein’s equal. Soon Dave Santos will be back, he who is the equal of the Wright brothers. If they work together, all the problems of AWE will eventually be solved: in yo-yo mode the rigid wings will finally produce energy greater than the energy consumed during the reel-in phase; the flexible wings of SkySails and KitePower, which already produce positive energy, are going to be marketed everywhere; SuperTurbine™ and similar rotating devices will finally fly over 10 m high, and so on.
Have your laughs for now boys! I bet you last punching bag got tired and left the group. https://cat.org.uk/ Is something you might want to consider? I don’t know Dave Santos. Or why you rib him mercilessly? I don’t suppose he mentioned torsion spring as part of the winding mechanism? Much like a tape measure?
Oh, I never said I’m Einstein equal. Just had his sort of problems. I thought I was the one who had the problems. in the end It don’t matter. It’s unfortunate that when informed of someone difficulties. you go all out do denigrate and degrade them. Correct me sure. Degrade me no. Thats no way to do business. I suspect there are many from all walks, and all backgrounds on here. That would not be impressive to to this. I’ve said before it one of my many hobbies. My mistake is believing it would get any better. Instead of working with them you berated. Some who might have Allied allied themselves with the cause. I know there is a fine line between a joke and damn right taking the p out of someone for idiosyncrasies.
I question the delusions argument. It not about money for me. its energy independence. Money don’t interest me, I rather have the materials to make things than money. It that simple. The more I can get out of what I can find near by the better. That is part of the challenge. Sure to find who is a biggest girls blouse? Somewhat later.
If we talk engineering? talk engineering .even if it is turn of last centre stuff. If there a step to take? it is that! Freeing ourselves of hydrocarbons addiction. is not going to be easy! especially because of how ingrained it is. This ain’t the first rodeo! I doubt it will be my last. Reality is a messy ball of string. I’m met bigger and uglier peoples along my road. Lived to tell the tale. As I know we are going in different direction. Just some days walk along side. others no where in sight. Live with differing experience levels.
If you conquer the world I’m happy for you.
I just think there room for micro generation in awe. I’m happy to give it a try.
Good luck!
I make it clear that I have esteem for the accomplishments of Dave Santos and his theoretical views on AWE.
Mothra is a Santos’ giant kite from tarps:
Seems like everyone I know in clean energy claims to have some challenge:
ADHD, OCD, “anal”, “dyslexic”, “the spectrum”, “lazy” “not in the right circles”, “broke”, “no time”, “unorganized”, “no tools”, “no funding”, “too busy”, “stuck in neutral” - sometimes our worst enemy is ourselves - welcome to normal.
I’m still waiting for someone to simply claim: “I am half-crazed and there is no reasoning with me”.
When I met this crew for at their HAWP conference in 2009, my impression was they were all really crazy, unlikely to ever make any power, ever, and that their main interest was really simply flying kites. Seems like that was accurate. They started out bragging about how easily AWE would surpass what they called “windtowers” (meaning wind turbines, which used towers). By the end, they were relegated to merely claiming that “just flying a kite” was AWE, since it took energy to keep the kite in the air.
I thought that version of an arch kite was interesting, but a bit overdone, overstated, and overrated, considering it never generated power.
I don’t know if it was an original idea, but the arch kite is a known kite festival feature:
https://intothewind.com/heavens-gate-arch.html
The thing is, nobody ever showed how to generate any power using an arch kite. It was basically an incomplete demonstration, with a celebration ahead of any results. Should have built a smaller demo with a way to generate power. Mostly it seemed to me just an excuse for a bunch of people to go to the beach and eat some mushrooms.
I think the closest they came to making any power was using sand to hold it down, then when it dumped the sand off during launch, claiming that sand dump as “making power”.
As I recall, after about ten years of endless gibberish with no meaningful power generated, the story became that the industry was “too dependent on power meters” or something like that.
This was like saying you have a new way to tie your shoes, but when you are finished, your shoes are still untied.
Also something to note: Whenever the occasional new person to wind energy comes in “like a hurricane” indicating their intent to revolutionize the field, mentioning as a side note, for example, how they plan to overcome the Betz coefficient, what they do not realize is how exactly they fit the pre-existing pattern. It’s like, once they’ve invoked “Einstein”, they are compelled to declare Betz as probably invalid, and when knowledgeable people finally stand up and say “enough!”, they almost HAVE to claim to be a victim, calling the experienced people trying to clue them in “mean”, or whatever. We’re used to being called names, and at some point we can no longer let it overly bother us. In the end, they inevitably degenerate to name-calling and blaming the victim (levelheaded people who resist the bullshit). This is par for the course. In one case, it went on for years. If there is anyone close to “Einstein” in wind energy, it is Betz himself. He derived the Betz coefficient on paper, 100 years ago, purely theoretically, using logic and a little arithmetic, and it has turned out to be right ever since. Anyone can follow his reasoning, and if it were invalid, anyone would be free to show it as invalid. On paper, or in real life, the name of the game in wind energy is “Talk is cheap” and “Prove it”. Excuses are everywhere. We all live in a sea of endless excuses. In wind energy, excuses don’t matter. It is results that matter.
Everyone does that. And not everyone is going after you, that’s Doug mostly. He likes to do that. Don’t mind him too much. He is sometimes right, but mostly a broken record.
If you think a comment goes over the line you can flag it - by clicking on the three dots next to the reply button and clicking the flag - , and one of the moderators can take a look at it. Several of Doug’s comments crossed the line, but we don’t always get around to dealing with them. In your user settings you can also “ignore” users so you don’t see their comments anymore.
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This could be good practice for analyzing press-release breakthroughs.
Saw this article about solar thermal steam injected into oil wells for energy storage (below)
Anyone care to hazard a guess as to the outcome?
Flagging wasn’t working for me recently.
I saw a few posts crossing into just plain mean abusive and tried to flag them.
Seems to be working again now
Ta
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Hell no. But then spotting a loser is not hard. Spotting the unicorn is.
- oil production will end before these have a meaningful market share
- most people in oil would rather use gas to avoid investment costs and intermittency of power
- drilling is pretty expensive
- we dont need energy storage this bad. Its going to be too costly for a pure renewable solution
- losses in converting heat energy in the ground into something useful
- heat will spread to where you cant get it back efficiently
I think a lot of these ideas just boil down to people using the most low tech solutions they find (storing energy as heat in rocks) because they are clueless about the current technological status quo (electricity and batteries).
my take on this. I hope for their sake Imissed something
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@Windy_Skies @Rodread
Thanks you
Taking what I had about me. I’ve have done my own demo.
Taking what I know to be true. Applied the screwdriver trick to logical conclusion. Built this mock up
Im fully aware it can be rigged to almost anything.
Scalable to the extreme. Not bad start for soil pipe sellotape and cardboard
Hairdryer test. To check principles.
Using an involute and six blades rotor. Freeflying for sure. Ripe for improvements. Cross flow type improvements. It reminds a-little of a sport whistle.
and the ancient symbol of othela due to air flow patterns.
As well as the sign of the fish.
Speaking with a 3D printers. So I can get a rapid soild prototype made for further testing.
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They’ll want to to have .STL files. Do you know any CAD software? And at what size would you like to have it? You could buy your own 3d printer also.
It looks like you could recreate this with 2 circles with slots in them for the blades. You could design that in a 2d (vector) drawing program if you wanted to get that laser cut. Or you could print it out on thick paper and use an exacto knife to cut out the slots and blades.
Stl file sent to the printers. Saturday 5/3/22 I’m waiting on reply. as of yet, haven’t heard anything. What I’ve designed this on Tinkercad.
Go turbine generator.stl (246.1 KB) I know it will need a few mods. might look like Pac-Man turbine once done.
It will need its on stand but that just a few wedges. If I recall correctly? this is 220mm tall model 80mm 16 blade rotor
Love to have my own 3D printer. Just out of my reach for now. Not even going to try bringing the folks on board. for all the drama that will ensue. Would love to set up in my folks coal shed. As i know I could get it going as a toy. To raise the funds to go bigger. Steel and concrete bigger. I know it can be made from wood or bamboo. It a bit of Catch 22 atm, trying not to get trouble. So any help is welcome? I’m completely open source.
I’m also aware if the rotor? is fully made from steel it will act as the flywheel. It will also take magnetic imprinted nicely. depending on steel composition. The coils can be bedded in to the involuted structure. Or inside the rotor itself. Which would make it more like an induction motor.
I’m aware you can set it out as an lazer print. Though it was one bit where, my attention slipped while trying to learn that side. Thankfully I have a YouTube creator. who works in the field I can learn from in my subscription and touch up. I also have Eagle labs near me. Should the Printer not get back to me. I am able in an afternoon, to get the rotor parts from 3d to 2d net. If you want to see that? Had just imagined it to be resin printed. Just for easy of manufacturing. Definitely think it could be mass produced. Contracted out, to give good coverage. I will Update once I know more.
Nice to see the file.
Most online 3D printers will now quote based on the volume, materials, and infill profile of the uploaded stl
A good enough FDM 3d printer will probably cost about the same as the print they quote you. Quality of 3d printing for blades however… will be rough
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Just looked the cheapest I could find was £150 with postage. definitely something to consider though. even if it a sizeable investment. Might make a shout out on SM. to some friends I know ,who may be able to help out? Then see if I got some takers. Thanks for the heads up!
“A comment goes over the line” - yeah sure, whenever someone speaks truth, you are “the victim”. They are “bad”, you are "good. Sure, know-nothings. Over a decade ago I flagged most every wannabe AWE effort out there as "idiots, idiots, idiots. I clearly stated ALL of the multi-million-dollar “efforts” out there were spewing complete nonsense and had no idea about wind energy nor what the heck they were even doing, and that NONE of the claims of any of the highest-profile, most publicized claims of powering “X-hundred homes in Location Y by date Z” were correct. Well, a billion dollars later, was I correct? Yes. How could one person dare to stand up to a thousand people spewing a billion dollars worth of lies? The problem was, and still is, naive people by the hundreds, not even understanding the most basic aspects of the field they have inadvertently attempted to enter: wind energy, not comprehending what was already known in the art. It seems that in most cases, they are surprised there are even any standards whatsoever that should be applied to them. They really thought that adding “airborne” to wind energy made it so the basic reality of providing reliable power at a competitive cost did not apply to what they felt was a legitimate “fantasy-world” that, like some drug, could “rescue” them from reality - insulate them from any standards, from any results. This strange phenomenon is NOT restricted to AWE AT ALL, but has always been a part of wind energy - complete know-nothings declaring in no uncertain terms that some “new” (usually old, unknown to them) idea is going to “change everything”. Paul Gipe and I are only two of the wind people who have bothered to stand up to the nonsense. There are many many of us, but just a few who bother to “run the gauntlet” of directly confronting the endless parade of “idiots idiots idiots” who pretend to have mastered a well-developed art which they have no clue about. But to the teeming, ignorant throngs of wannabe wind energy inventors, especially when assembled into an actual group of mostly just such highly-insistent “idiots”, we reasonable people can seem like a lonely lot, by far outnumbered by the “idiots” who think they know more than us, while knowing little-to-nothing. Yes it has been a well-established pattern, for as long as I can remember. A MAJOR aspect of “the pattern” has always been the EXTREME ABUSE we are subject to by the most extreme of the highly-insistent know-nothings. We are called every name in the book, and when in a forum controlled by such “idiots”, the usual response is to delete or censor the valid information we kindly bother to provide. But we can take the abuse. We are happy to help clarify the existing knowledge for those actually looking for real, accurate guidance or factual input in a sea of lies and meaningless statements of future success that in most cases is unlikely, and in many cases (like Magenn) couldn’t possibly happen, in which, no matter how many times the delusional “idiots” watch every wrong statement of “future success” evaporate, they still willingly repeat the next lie. Sorry but it really is that stark. We are completely used to taking the brunt of the resulting frustration when wind energy schemes fail to come to fruition, because we know from long experience that it is far easier to simply “blame the messenger” of truth than to admit fault. Well, Makani failed, but I don’t see them “blaming” me and Paul Gipe, do you? Hmmm, why not? I think a major part of it is people thinking their battle is with “correcting” the information freely provided by seasoned, knowledgeable people trying to clue them in, rather than taming mother nature and becoming a winner in the battle to capture the wind’s energy. It is far easier to sit at a computer typing how some helpful truth-teller is “bad”, as “the answer” to taming the capricious wind. They say they “will” tame the wind, but their real first move is a chicken-shit attempt to denigrate the people who actually know what the heck they are talking about. Today it all happens on the internet, but it is not new. So, have at it, dummies. Call us as many names as you want, and every time some new idiot comes along, humor them and tell them we truth-tellers are just plain bad people. Act like it is knowledgeable people holding you back, and whatever you do, don’t EVER admit we have been 100% right and everyone else has been 100% wrong the whole time. We are used to it. Have fun pretending. We are here for the few reasonable people who need good information, and demands that we should just stop standing up for the truth to “spare the feelings” of the endless parade of highly-insistent know-nothings are just part of the landscape of wind ignorance that we resist as part of having learned just a little bit about wind energy from years of hard work and elbow grease. If someone thinks they know what they are doing, show us. It really is that simple.
Doug, you are right, but you take too seriously what is said on this forum, starting with the AWE field.
Much the same could be said for your verbose off topic rants about everyone being idiots @dougselsam. To be honest I dont read much of it. Id rather hear about your opinions on AWE rather than other people on the forum
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Hi Pierre: Well the way I see it, they have their new Dave Santos, with, as you’ve noted, so many similarities, and whose friends had said seemed to possibly suffer from a similar malady. Today we have a very Santo-esque new video, lasting a few brief seconds, showing no power generated, just like Santos’ “blink-and-you-missed-it” videos. I think this group should therefore declare him “head of the class”, or maybe “the second coming”. and put him in charge of this entire operation. That way they can just “cut out the middleman” and let him directly censor anything he doesn’t agree with. (I tried to be nice but it doesn’t help.)
Last night I awoke to find Youtube still running, spoon-feeding us videos, and was amazed to see footage of an accomplished pianist, singer, and conductor who had suffered an infection of the brain which destroyed his ability to form new memories. The result was a life of reliving the same 30 seconds over and over, always thinking he “just woke up”, writing down what time it was, with a comment about having just awakened.
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_HfSnQqeyY
(Start watching it just before 53 minutes in)
The video shows his reaction to his wife entering the room. where he expresses great joy at seeing her, thinking it has been a long time since he has seen her. He always thinks the same thing, no matter how many times he sees her, or how much time she spends with him. He not only can’t form new memories, but can’t believe when people try to explain it to him, and gets real angry at one point. Well we can hardly blame him - what would any of us do? It makes me realize how lucky any of us are to have a brain that works anywhere close to “normal”.
Anyway, it was the middle of the night when I saw this, but it really woke me up, because it seemed so familiar. Lots of people I talk to point to world events and ask "How can people be so stupid as to believe what is being said - don’t they remember all the previous times the same sort of stuff was said and it never times out to be true? Why do they keep repeating this nonsense? Why do they keep falling for it? What could be wrong with their brains? One such guy asks this talking about his own brother for whom we in general have the most respect and admiration. Yet in a similar way, so many people seem to have “a screw loose” in their heads!
Of course it reminded me of the string of AWE efforts claiming to (in the future) power X hundred homes at location Y by date Z, or the claims of companies repeatedly claiming to have AWE systems “developed”, “on the market”, “shipping” etc.
Like this poor gentleman always thinking it is the first time he sees his wife, when she is there on a regular basis, people here seem to fall for the same line over and over, like they’ve never heard it before. It just really reminds me of the willingness of people to believe people who have lied to them over and over again, as though they have no memory of the previous outcomes, or indeed people who think the whole world is brand new, with no valid standards, no rationale for the long-held beliefs of others, or indeed long-proven truths. I’m really interested to see the rest of this video. It seems to offer insights to how the world can sometimes seem so crazy. A lot of it seems to come down to basic memory, and ability to reason.
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They do not even understand what a lift-based or drag-based wind energy system is.
It was already the most basic categorical delineation in wind energy when I first began my research in the 1970’s. Anyone can look up the difference between a lift-based wind energy device and a drag-based wind energy device. This is one of the many glaring holes in basic, established terminology and knowledge, where AWE people can always be counted on to show their seemingly perpetual and incurable ignorance.
Or just accept that the terminology used for AWE differs from other wind?
The problem is that AWE is an other wind…
That IS the topic, and we can see the results! A whole lotta nothing! The problem has been, most AWE people do not even understand, they ARE the topic!
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Hi Doug, AWE players are not idiots. They are clever and skilled. But AWE can be a dead-end. This is what its evolution tends to show, and the inversion of drag and lift features in regard to that of current wind power does not change anything.
Sorry Pierre, I was once again using long-established terminology from wind energy, where it is understood that there are always people insisting they can outperform the existing wind energy industry, and so far, they have always been wrong. We just call them “idiots”.
Just because someone is smart and talented doesn’t mean they can’t occasionally act like an idiot. I probably slap myself almost every day over some thing I do where I say OMG what an IDIOT I AM!!! So please don’t take it personally, and it doesn’t apply to everyone.
For example I don;t think it applies to you, because you haven’t been insisting that some clearly whacky, poorly-performing configuration is the answer to wind energy. You have not made ridiculous promises that never come true, nor have you ripped off investors for millions of dollars pretending you have an answer. You merely explore some ideas, build occasional prototypes to try out these ideas, and contribute to the thought process that might someday lead to a successful AWE technology. So it is not you, or every AWE person, I am talking about.
But really, when you are familiar with what DOES work well in wind energy, the constant parade of newcomers insisting that today’s practitioners don’t know what they are doing can only be called “idiots” from the viewpoint of actual practitioners of the well-refined art of wind energy. That is just what we call them. What else do you want us to call them? How about just “crazy”? Or maybe “Highly insistent pathological nutcases suffering from the delusion that every wrong thing they say is a breakthrough”? Too complicated. “Idiots” is the actual word used. And sometimes “crazy”. They’ve always been there. They never stop. Before AWE, it was usually vertical-axis wind turbines or some Santo-esque strip of plastic that wiggles, a pole that shakes, or whatever - just IDIOTIC CRAP, usually long-disproven.
Nonetheless, when you add up:
- the number of projects
- the number of people involved
- the amount of money spent
- the promises made
and contrast that with the lack of meaningful results
especially now that the whole AWE story seems to be collapsing
or at least getting to be kind of an old (yawn) “story”
you’d have to admit there must be a lot of idiots involved somewhere!
Since I have been castigated by many “true-believers” for confidently using that term from day-one, I feel validated at this point.
Before it was “How can he say that?”
Now it’s more like “Well, yeah, maybe he has a point…”
You have to understand, as I’ve been explaining all along, the stupid things the AWE promoters have been saying from the very beginning were mostly ALREADY KNOWN TO BE REALLY MISGUIDED AND WRONG IN WIND ENERGY.
NO PERSON IN WIND ENERGY EVER QUESTIONED MY USE OF THE TERM “IDIOTS”.
WIND ENERGY HAS ALWAYS ATTRACTED NUTCASES!!!
As I’ve long explained (ad infinitum?)
Wind energy is a magnet for crackpots
Airborne wind energy is a NEODYMIUM SUPERMAGNET!!!
And the reason is simple:
WIND IS INVISIBLE!!!
Since wind is invisible, people can imagine the wind doing exactly what they want.
But the wind does NOT do “what they want”.
The wind acts as the wind acts.
And how to harness it is a long and hard-won art amounting to thousands of years of accumulated knowledge. The newbies know nothing of any of this.
Here’s what they think:
- I am really smart
- Wind energy is easy and the people doing it are stupid
- I am so smart I can think of a better way without even knowing anything about how it works
- My first shoot-from-the-hip initial impressions are more valid than 2000 years of accumulated knowledge
- Because I am such a genius, my unstudied ideas will take over the market
And they are almost always wrong!
Their “shoot from the hip” initial impressions are just the exact same, typical, 100% wrong first impressions we ALL had coming in, except some of us are capable of learning!
They are not capable of learning. Or they have no desire to learn.
So, when you have people who are either incapable of learning, or unwilling to learn, pretending they know what they are doing and saying the actual experts do not know what they are doing, wasting millions of dollars on stuff that keeps failing over and over, what else could you possibly call them?
Idiots.
It really is that simple!
As long as you’re not expecting any different results from your rant @dougselsam
Good to see the bilious nature of the message becoming ever more focused and distilled
Keep it short
Starting a toy business might be a way to get experience in business. There are easier businesses to start though, and also becoming an inventor or launching a toy is much much more likely to lose you money than gain it.
If you’d like to sell toys you could look at toys you’d like to sell that you think you might be able to sell and sell those.
I think the idea needs more development to make it appealing as a toy. I’d start perhaps making it a self-assembly kit made from thick paper so it’s cheap to send over the mail. Even if that goes nowhere it’s probably a nice learning experience.
Not every idea has to work. You can just start and while you develop it get a better understanding of it and see if it makes sense to take it further, ideally before you spend thousands on it.
Hi Doug, how do you explain that none of the wind companies granted interest for AWE? It’s not just a matter of terminology. These companies quickly understood that there was no meaningful future for AWE.
Where is AWE?
As for me I think that although the chances are low, there might be some possibilities but not with the methods generally discussed, unless they fit in as sub-systems of a probably aerostatic whole with a high angle of elevation allowing taking up little space on the ground.
Thankfully I know a guy who done that sort of thing. He work once for phones 4 you. has been a manager and own a 3D printer. Often referred as a hole,by some. but he’s good at what he’s does. Even if it is a quips some thing awful. I should know some point next week as he’s busy right now. I’ve also knocked up a stl file for a 6 blade rotor though will need conversion to svg. For lazer cutting. might need some work.to save on waste margins. Definitely k.I.s.s approach
Rotor blade…stl (130.6 KB)
Tinkercad. I believe I’ve a lazer cutter near by I can send it to. Though have no idea of cost. 4mm material. use what you got . could be just a case of printing / cutting the side wall. insert lolly sticks and glue with whatever you got. The last I knew a pack of lolly sticks was £1 for 250 lolly sticks. 4mm plywood or cardboards rather cheep. £15 m2 the last time I checked. If lazer cut on mass the a lot of end bits. Sold as a package deal self assembly kit. with a section of ducted pipe as a stand an easy £5 and up all day long. Which should cover the cutting or printing expenses if sold on mass. Depending complexity. the design cost margins may vary.
I thought the toy route far more practical. safe bet for sure.
As long as you’re not expecting any different results from “ascending” to a “position” of gleefully and judgementally deleting other peoples’ posts, have fun pretending it is advancing the cause.
OK Pierre, just so you know, if there was a K-12 school for wind energy, the difference between a lift machine and a drag machine would be taught in Kindergarten. It is the most basic starting point for learning ANYTHING about wind energy.
Let’s transpose this same ignorance of basic terminology into an art you are well accomplished in: playing piano. Pretend thousands of people came along and declared they were going to supersede today’s well-developed art of piano playing by playing with their feet. The stated advantage would be eliminating the legs on the piano, claiming they take up too much material.
And say these same people claimed they would be able to play better than anyone in the world soon, and kept promising they would be playing Carnegie Hall or Julliard “next year”.
Well, your first reaction would probably be that legs on a piano were worth it, because they formed a stable support allowing consistent playing using the proven “hands” instead of unproven “feet”, and that these people might have good intentions, but might also be very misguided.
Clue 1: feet instead of hands
Then you note that out of the thousands of people making up this movement, NOT A SINGLE ONE EVEN KNEW HOW TO PLAY PIANO.
Clue 2: no knowledge of the art whatsoever
Next you notice that they call a treble clef (G clef) a bass clef (F clef), and they call a bass clef (F clef) a treble clef (G clef). When you ask why, they point to some really lame patent from the 1980’s that some guy with zero knowledge of piano had filed, that erroneously called a treble clef a bass clef, and called a bass clef a treble clef.
Clue 3: no knowledge of established terminology
Now let’s say you were the ONLY actual piano player who decided to engage these thousands of people in discussion, and you were horrified to see that they were SO IGNORANT of music in general, let alone piano playing, that they DID NOT EVEN KNOW A TREBLE CLEF from a BASS CLEF!
Then let’s say when you tried to explain the well-established treble and bass clef, they WANTED TO ARGUE WITH YOU and somehow say “Well, when you are playing a piano with no legs , using your feet, the terminology is different”
How stupid would you then see these people as being? Unbelievably stupid? So stupid that the word “stupid” was not even sufficient to describe them? What would you call them? I think “idiots” would be on the milder side. You’d probably want to strangle them, and the only thing stopping you would be you might injure your hands.
Please stop bullshitting. You don’t know. And we can see from a mile away that you don’t know. This forum tries to be about applied science and trying new things. No one knows the answers. It helps if you have experience and are educated in related fields, which you are neither – although to be fair many of us are also not.
Anyone trying new things needs to accept that there are many things they don’t know and will get many things wrong. You progress by trying to learn new things and trying things and failing and trying again.
Yes it is interesting that, as far as I know, for the whole 14 years of AWE, I do not know of any other “player” besides me with actual experience in wind energy. That should be a BIG CLUE. Just like the thousands of piano-with-no-legs people with not a single one who knows how to play piano or even read music at all.
I don’t think the existing wind companies are set against AWE to the point of saying there is no future to it. I think it is more that they are very busy providing 10% of our electricity (and growing) as it is, and meanwhile, if an AWE system came a long that was compelling, they would embrace it, but right now they are just busy implementing today’s technology.
I am not aware of a single wind energy person involved with any AWE project. (Maybe I’m forgetting about someone) Even the idea that any AWE effort ever contracted with an aerodynamicist with wind energy experience is just a “maybe” as far as I know. Of course, just because I don’t know about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I cannot recall ever hearing of any real wind person involved with AWE.
You know what’s funny? The spell-check on this thing doesn’t even understand the word “aerodynamicist”. At least it understands “treble clef”.
My apologies if that’s the way I came off. It’s Noted. Wasn’t my intention to come off with a side serving of bs. Followed by a faceplant in the muck.
I appreciate we are learners here. Without meaning to be insincere. If something seem logical to me. because it follows a pattern. so sure as hells sure. Seemed like a good idea. I’d say so. That is all. I speak as if Its a journey of discovery for all! myself included. If I know something I will put it plainly. For all to see. Didn’t think I was talking bs. just simple mechanics, And manufacturing methods. Or was I mistaken?
So thank you for letting me know. That I poked a bear and somehow completely missed the point.
If seam achievable, the materials to my knowledge are accessible. I will mention it or reference. If I need to be more precise? I will make an effort. Hopefully I will be able to show something for it…
One of these “idiots”, as you say, produced an average of 92 kW, far ahead of many other players.
That doesn’t make it a viable device, though.
In a classic Research-gate energy forum, I don’t even dare to talk about AWE.
You made some claims (definitely, sure thing, etc). You would need to support them.
Here are two videos:
Then why did Vestas send a large group to the AWE conference?
What you say is not true. Only if the people working in wind companies are also idiots. I can attest these people exist. For example, Vestas made many patents AWE related. Who wrote these?
I say again, its easy to predict failure in an emerging technology just because there will be many failures in AWE and maybe just a few successes. As happened in wind I would think, and in computing and anything new.
Again I urge you to spend your time on developing your ideas rather than focusing on spotting who is going to fail. Its a bit interesting, but its the easiest thing to do.
More interesting is spotting possible winners and even more hard, to predict what the winning tech may be
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OK then, show us a working Vestas airborne wind energy system.
Show us where Vestas promised to power X hundred homes using AWE in Location Y by date Z.
Filing a patent is not the same as being involved in an actual AWE project.
And what I said IS exactly true: that I’m not aware of any wind energy person involved in any AWE project. I didn’t say they don’t exist. But maybe they don’t. Out of thousands of kids in the group selfies, maybe there is a wind energy person somewhere. I just don’t happen to know about them. Certainly it would be more the exception than the rule. If wind energy people were involved, they wouldn’t be reversing the most basic definition in wind energy: lift machines versus drag machines.
What took away a lot of credibility from AWE was not Makani’s failure per se, but the fact that the entire official AWE community was supporting this project without seeing the prohibitive factors that other projects also share.
The criticisms came from Mike Barnard, rather than from within. What about the Power to space use ratio, instead of the misleading measure by the kite area without taking account of the tether length?
Sure.
In reference to previous comments. For example 4 Sets Wooden Water Wheel Toys DIY Children Technology DIY Assembly Home Use | eBay
When I was speaking about design. the basic principles are transferable. Demonstration of cost effective manufacturing.
guerillia mechanics 101
25mm & 20mm Cold Water Blue MDPE Plastic Mains Pipe Commercial & Domestic use | eBay
Simple coils wound at 1.2 mm wire 250 turns is fairly standard. That is usually in-line with know voltages amps.
Cellulose Plastics - ScienceDirect
HempFlax Felt - HempFlax - Solutions from nature!
Pva glue being a favourite fibre seal. It is used heavily use in reenactment shields to hold things together and make it more durable. It would stiffen the hemp fibres. also fire proof them much like starlite. Google that if you don’t believe me?
https://e-magnetsuk.com magnets are pre rated.
If this dip stick can figure that out. From a mental picture. It don’t take much to rig that to a kite softwing or hard wing verities. Id love to find a chart of projected voltage and amperage. Per coil. As I know it will be in that. But here one way to find out.
CALCULATING COILS FOR HF by SM0VPO
You know the math that follows. I wouldn’t want to take that opportunity way to find out for yourself. Creative license be what it is.
If access you can get the materials. then it fairly simple from then on to find out. That is a sure thing for a start. Definitely worth considering. As it doesn’t brake the bank to find out.
I hopefully cleared that one up. Anymore questions don’t be afraid to ask? Maybe I can paint a picture if that helps? Maybe of a looping kite? With devices attached. Nice to know my vocabulary got me into trouble. Check my thinking. I reckon it is do able. And fairly cheaply.
Just to make sure nobody but “idiots” were in attendance? OK I am kidding.
Wait, is this a joke, like “Why did the chicken cross the road”? (Still kidding.)
I’m sure geographic proximity played a role, as well as simple curiosity and not wanting to miss out on any important developments in wind energy, should they occur.
The issue is not whether the concept of AWE is interesting to techies - of course it is!
But it also seems to attract people who think “Well this is weird, and so am I, and I don’t really fit in anywhere else, so maybe this is for me.” Nice they found a place, but that is not exactly a compelling resume.
Then there are all the kids looking for a job, thinking the people who would hire them really understand their projects. The kids think “Well, kites are fun, windsurfing is fun, and I sure like having fun, and these people seem pretty confident we will solve global warming “by next year”, so this job is for me.”
So you really can’t blame the kids.
But at some point, when you see how the Makani aircraft actually flew (not very well), someone there at a pretty high level was not doing their job very well.
Also, it seemed like poor judgement to have put that much time, effort, and capital into such a large-scale single prototype, to where if it failed they just gave up. They could have built ten smaller ones for the same money. But even that is not the main point.
The main point is this: From majoring in physics and engineering, I know there are ways to predict performance, on paper, that would amaze most people. And it doesn’t even require computers - the Boeing fleet was designed mostly using slide rules while smoking cigarettes and pipes, before they even had decent calculators, let alone personal computers. The 737 Max crashes and scandal were because Boeing no longer felt capable of designing a new jetliner. Kind of amazing - the decline of western civilization?
So from all the AWE hype, I figured Makani should know what they were doing.
But when you saw their kite barely able to climb through the upward half of its circular path, the whole story fell apart. Some people have more money than brains I guess, right?
I had flagged what I think was a main problem, with a fairly straightforward solution, but even then, not sure you could rescue the concept, even solving that issue.
But anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that in aeronautics, especially with the advantage of computers and a big budget, and the ability to run scale models to verify predicted performance, I do not see how the expected and required level of expertise could have been in place for that project. And yes, especially since we are all now so accustomed to Google having “all the answers”, all day every day, for that company specifically to fail in such a disappointing way after all that hype, well…
Oh great and wise Doug… Do the IEA or NREL count as having any expertise in wind?
Probably not as you are not participating in advising them.
Yeah, a little wisdom goes along way. Roddy you are changing the subject. We’re talking about the people involved in AWE projects to develop AWE systems.
Of course eventually NREL etc. had to at least acknowledge the mere existence of AWE efforts, due to the profuse publicity. They had to take a look at it, if for no other reason than to be able to answer the question that many, including congress, were asking, which was whether AWE constituted anything significant to consider at this time or in the foreseeable future, from what they could determine.
I’m sure they did not use the term “idiots” in their assessment, but I know that is what they were thinking. I’m well acquainted with quite a few of them, and I know how they think. They think like knowledgeable wind people (oh no!), and they are used to debunking the “Professor Crackpots” of the world. Usually it is another “drag” machine…
Now just because NREL etc. don’t jump on the hype bandwagon and start gleefully promoting it out of proportion doesn’t rule out AWE progress. And knowing these NREL people as I do, they are not going to shut the door on the entire idea. They will always leave a window of hope open, since there is nothing about the idea of AWE that violates the rules of physics.
But as far as I know, they are not working to develop any AWE technology per se. I don’t think they have any AWE project or even a favorite technology.
So I would say, don’t be a wise-ass. It’s like what the two guys running the previous forum liked to do, start a conversation then slowly try to shift the meanings of words or the topic itself to try to “win” whatever served as one more “crackpot” “argument” in their minds.
I had quite a back-and-forth with Santos over some ladies running a project at GE wind to develop blades with a metal frame covered with fabric. If think it had some government funding. I was very skeptical, and of course Santos was always pushing cloth as a working surface, so he would try to leverage the project to bolster his “fabric working surface” position.
Then, coincidentally, I happened to attend the AWEA Windpower convention in nearby Las Vegas that year, and there was GE with a display of the ladies’ cloth-covered blade project.
Coincidentally (what luck!) I met GE Wind’s Director of International Research right then and there, and asked him about it. He did not take it the least bit seriously and dismissed it as a nothing-burger. Of course my directly conferring with their top research guy and relaying the information back meant nothing to Santos (allergic to facts), and did not even slow him down in his endless nonsense.
More recently, we know Santos had finally gotten “in touch” with the NREL personnel charged with looking into the whole AWE subject, and I’m sure he found himself in the exact same position as talking to me, hearing all the same exact stuff he heard from me for so many years, and I think that is why we don’t hear from those guys anymore.
Santos was always very impressed by “authority figures”, and I suspect the NREL people “shut him down”. Like I kept saying about the “crackpots”, eventually, they “quietly go away”.
Ding Ding Ding - wait - new information alert:
I just now had a phone call from an old friend, an actual wind person, who developed and manufactured a real, well-known brand of small wind turbine, the Lakota. I let him live here on the ranch, rent free for a year, after he came back from China, because we wind people stick together.
It is hard to believe these coincidences, but the first thing he asked me was whether I had ever heard of a company called Skysails. I said yes, explaining their two concepts of kite-reeling and ship-towing, including their bankruptcy, subsequent relaunch, and ensuing announcements about “a factory” and “first AWE system shipped”, but how that was over a year ago and we haven’t heard anything new since then.
NOW THE BIGGER COINCIDENCE:
He went on to tell me he had talked with a mutual friend of ours, a former wind engineer at NREL (female by the way), now independent, who told him that NREL had been inundated by “300 companies” pursuing “AWE”, and that they were totally disgusted at how stupid they all were, and that half of the concepts were “drag machines”.
I interpret that to mean half were “kite-reeling” (which, of course, the unwashed “idiots” call "lift machines). Anyway, the word I got was that the NREL people were basically disgusted at having to field so many “crackpot” inquiries. So there you have it, once again, actual inside information from real wind people. The song remains the same. I hope that helps. 
Indeed Dave Santos is one of the experts who produced the NREL report.
Hi Doug, Loyd’s formula gives the same power for both flygen and kite-reeling. Flygen are slowed down by 1/3 due to the drag of the turbines aloft, Betz limit being 16/27 as for any wind turbine. Kite-reeling are slowed down also by 1/3 due to the swept area going downwind at 1/3 wind speed, Betz limit being only 4/27 as for drag turbines like Savonius. But even the value of 4/27 is far from being reached during crosswind operations, because in both cases the kite travels unnecessarily (except for flight considerations) very large trajectories.
And also:
The finalization of a test campaign for a future project. Sounds like the promise of a promise…
How many blades? Well ………
Though this interesting enough to share.
Turgo turbines do a pretty good job.
He say 10-28 blade for a multi bladed turbine.
30-40% efficient though I bet with a few tweaks that could be higher 60% or above.
If it could be like
But airborne.
I been trying to imagine what a involute would look like for such a system. If anyone would like to chime in? I’d welcome the input.
OK, back to windergarten
14 years of AWE hype, enough time to go to undergrad college, get a masters degree, and then get a PhD in wind energy (if there is such a thing) - TWICE, and yet we’re still explaining basic things like what type of wind turbine is good for what use, on this “most advanced in the world” wind energy discussion.
This guy in the first video DOES NOT REALLY KNOW WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT.
You can forget most of what he said.
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The reason so many blades are used to create a high-solidity rotor is because of the use. Height has pretty-much nothing to do with it. So the guy’s main theme is wrong. The use is pumping enough water to keep cattle from dying of thirst. Therefore, consistent pumping is the priority. Efficiency is not the main driver. The ability to pump water from deep underground, even if only light winds occur for long periods, is the design driver. Running such a pump requires torque, not speed. The high solidity of the rotor, combined with the steep pitch of the blades, make the turbine able to run such a low-speed reciprocating pump even in light winds. These turbines can never be expected to reach even half of the efficiency of a regular wind turbine. But they are not expected to. They are expected to keep cattle from dying of thirst. They need to pump no matter what the weather, so they are made to work in light winds.
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Modern water-pumping wind energy systems often DO use regular modern wind turbines to drive an ELECTRIC PUMP. Yes wind turbines produce better in the higher, smoother winds at higher heights, but plenty of small turbines operate quite satisfactorily at much lower heights than most people would imagine. I’ve had SuperTwins with 2 blades per rotor producing great consistent power at a 14-foot height for years. Right now we have a Firefly with dual 2-blade rotors running at about an 8-foot height - works fine.
AND out of several attempts to use farm windmills for generating electricity, I’m not aware of any in use today. They usually use a fan belt to achieve ratio gearing to run a generator and the whole thing is inefficient and problematic regarding the fan belt. Why require 22 blades and gearing when you could use 2 or 3 blades to directly-drive a generator. -
NO wind turbine works well in a “built environment”. Why? Well, I hate to bring it up again, but (ready for this one?) Wind energy requires wind! I know, it sounds crazy, but it is true. And if your wind turbine will be blocked by all the houses around you, trees, buildings, hills, barns, billboards, etc. Wind energy requires being placed in a consistently-strong wind resource, ideally smooth wind undisturbed by any obstacles. So you need either a tower tall enough to get at least 30 feet above obstacles, or a lot of open space upwind for a low-height installation. The “30 feet” is a standard rule of thumb for small turbines, since turbulence of any kind is bad for your turbine and bad for performance. OK kids, windergarten is over for the moment. Time to go have your milk and cookies and take a nap.
In short, it really helps anyone with a desire to pursue wind energy in any capacity to learn the basics before trying to improve upon what already is. Most, like this guy in the video, come in knowing nothing, and assuming nobody else knows anything either, so they can “explain” everything THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND, thinking the whole time they are “educating” the unwashed masses. But of course they miss the point that it is they themselves who ARE the know-nothing unwashed masses.
I will not bother telling this crowd exactly WHY the farm windmill rotor is less efficient. Learn something about the art of wind energy and you might figure it out. But I doubt it. We have to save SOME knowledge for people who are willing to get up to speed on the simple kindergarten basics of wind energy on their own. We can’t just tell all the know-nothing idiots everything - that would be spoiling an important national resource: people who know nothing! Oh well, there is always college. Or read a pamphlet or two on wind energy…
Oh, and as for using high-solidity, steep-pitch water-type rotors for wind energy, no, they can’t work anywhere near as efficiently for an open flow (wind) turbine - the air will just go around the whole thing, and what does go thru will generate with lower efficiency, and I’m not going to explain it all cuz this is supposed to be a place where advanced ideas are discussed. Kindergarten should have been over 14 years ago.
This situation of wind know-nothings somehow thinking they have any idea what they are talking about, just throwing out whatever occurs to them with zero knowledge of the art, never changes. Never has, never will I’m sure. Have fun, that’s the most important thing!
Oh, and whatever you do, make sure you never learn anything about wind energy! That would spoil all your fantasies!
I’m not asking anyone to explain efficiency, if a farm style turbine.
If I was In a more humoured mood windergarten could mean many things.
Win the garden, win derg atum, more invoking of divine powers/ divine inspiration?
All this boils down to is a gas that flows around an object and creates power.
Wasn’t it viktor schauberger studies in to fluid dynamics that advance the field? I seem to recall some saying standing in the shoulders of giant.
As I don’t often have the time of mind to reinvent the wheel. Its worth considering and enquiring down all avenues. I’m obviously to stupid to comprehend by your standards.or even comprehend why you sometimes disparage engineering as a whole? must mean I’m on to a winner somewhere? With keep it simple stupid. Remember me and the mother of all other monkeys. will end up being the one that have builds it some day. I don’t thing that they will want to if it to hard to understand or access. FYI my Buisness design meeting went well last night. So I will have something to show for the efforts. It not size that matters it how you use it! Put the post up as a curiosity. I don’t think I’ve seen you back up your sources? I wasn’t around 14 years ago. To know how it all went down! We have established we are all at various different stages understanding. So what if I’m a beginner? eating fish dinners. The point here is I’m having a go. For more of a see for myself. It would be more beneficial for me to know the technicals. than a surman from the great Doug himself. You know they guy at the end of the pews. thats me! I fell a sleep long while ago. I got bored. Mind you, I was very hopeful the good lord would provide. So Milk and cookies would be nice 
if your offering, how do you serve it? I’m fresh out of biscuits. What milks on offer? I’m sure this will cause a few laughs! But hey oh there we go………
Might help to learn to spell “business”…
You seem to always put the “i” in the wrong place.
When I first started responding to this post I mistook the symbol for Roddy.
But then I started noticing, Roddy wouldn’t be saying this stuff
Then I realized who it was. Oh course.
Anyway I was not responding to you personally, per se.
I was responding to what was written, regardless of who posted it.
What you came up with is just the same typical know-it-all/know-nothinhg wind-kindergarten crap that people like me and Paul Gipe have been debunking for the 14 years of AWE hype, and also many years before that. None of this stuff is new. It’s just new to you. It’s ancient to us.
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A few more blades and we have the main rotor printed, got to love mate who can help. Nearly off the printer. Let the fun being!
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Nice bit of printing
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Thank you very much🙏 16blades of loveliness. It might have the main rotor was taken 14hrs the audition extra for holding magnets perhaps another 4hr. .2mm layer hight
Look like we are going to have a unit coming under £50. if I’m incredibly lucky not much more than £20. well worth the money. as I can use it in multiple projects. Got a few more bit to add but we’re off to a flying start. Sometime asking the odd friend comes in really handy. What really great about the design it could work on variable density fluids. Though I don’t think it would withstand a custard assault. Being non Newtonian.
It been made like Lego for easy of construction and print. It a good testing platform. Can’t wait to have fun with it.
I saw the picture and immediately knew who it was…
Finnished print. With the printer that did it. Pac man eat you heart out! It brakes down into constituent parts. So is fully adaptable. Brakes Down to end cap blade holders and 16blades. Going to be munching them ghosts in the Misty mornings.
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You yourself wrote: the more rotors, the more power.
So why not: the more blades, the more power? 
There a few articles on google scholar about mutibladed turbines.
Can’t say how well it work? on the larger scale. but if what he’s built is anything to go by? Anyone feel those wind of change? Larger scale sintering process and additive manufacturing is showing real promise. If anyone can get something airborne its you guys. Be it Finials, shuttlecocks or a variety of fancy creations. Having seen the kind of thing you get up to thought it worthy note to add.
The more idiots and the more group-selfies, the more “hundreds of homes” powered by AWE systems “next year”.
BTW, the guy in the video is off on a tangent.
He doesn’t really “get it”.
He must be bad
He called his turbine Daisy 
Classic warning 
sign
Red flag 
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Got to admit if you were in a pinch, realised your had the tools and materials. You would be able to get something. Fairly sure calling it a daisy turbine, is just what it looks like to him. For a back yard bodge , and £50 at your disposal. I think it an excellent in ya face. Opt to carge your mobile phone. Sure the 
flags are there for the guys peeking around the corner. Thinking eh oh what’s he up too? Frankly it is a minefield for the unknowing. His is just a Turn of phrase speaks, and what come to mind. Not quite the pipe and slipper engineer. There is Liberal use, of the fair use clause. Stone sour, through the glass. comes to mind here. We’re all look through that glass. Like peering through a shop window. Remind me of a story I got told at when I camped at Corfe castle. once a kid witness a roast sucking pig we had at show. and ended up calling it an elephant. Potato patato thing. Honestly quite amusing. 
It’s called harvesting wind energy by the teaspoon.
Very clever Pierre! On the one hand, I’ll give the guy points for an interesting use of a cheap pack of plastic spoons. On the other hand, such a rotor would be more attuned to a directed-flow water (hydro) turbine than an open-flow wind turbine. Reminds me of a sideways version of a pelton wheel, which work best in high-head directed flow hydroelectric turbine applications. Probably a switch to stainless steel spoons would be in order. In windergarten we learn directed flow wind turbines constitute a poor use of material and so have never caught on. Oh well, people who skip class in windergarten often produce such complete windsanity. But hey, all you need are some leftover plastic spoons! Just keep it in the dark, so the UV from sunlight doesn’t turn them to dust.
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He already made one and mentioned it was a sod to balance. He been doing a series of thing since things. ever since the Covid outbrake.
He was just showing people how cheaply and easy it could be done. The polycarbonate only needs electrostatic plating and your all good for a few years. It is common practice to plate plastic with a thin layer of metal. I had a torch once I thought was metal. but it had been plated. Would be great for batch production. He also been looking at triboelectric TENG. Combining them and you have a good optimisation. Triboelectric Nanogenerators - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics The good thing about the TENG is power output increases with surface area. Simple as conductive ink and clear coat. I have been wanting to run the idea by you and the others on awes. Seeing the size of the kites and fix wings thought it might come in handy.
I wonder how that is done, how thick the plating is, and how durable it is.
You can buy them already “plated” to look like metal.
High-class plastic "silver"ware…
Not an answer to the question. And my mild interest is of course also not in spoons but in plating parts I make myself.
How to Electroplate 3D Prints … (the shiny way)
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Heavy ion deposition or pulsed lazer deposition is a method widely use. From what I remember thickness is related to the amount of time it’s been place in the ion chamber.
The parts are then give a static charge before a high voltage arc or lasers. are use to evaporate the metal to plate the parts. It heavily use in aerospace industry. Often it’s used on mass to plate 1000s of parts in an instant. I’ve heard 0.4mm being bounded about. The torch I had sat in my pocket solidly for 5 years. about 3 of them it resisted the daily abuse. Before showing signs of ware. For an active chap like myself that was impressive.I had no idea it even was plated till the plastic started to show through. Never had a go myself nor would I know how much it cost but it’s is a very neat process.
See for example
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And now, back to our regularly-scheduled show…
The website windsanity.com is still available I am soooo tempted
Ill go for windergarden.io then
Speaking of spoons, somehow Youtube just spoon-fed me this:
Harmony Turbines
Hmmm, somebody didn’t go to Windergarden!
(Especially the investors! - ouch!)
Doesn’t exactly make power yet - well they’ve only been “working on it” for 4 years.
Typical - vertical-axis people often wait years before someone forces them to attach a generator - they hate that step. They are happiest in the “Look, it spins!” phase.
But they raised a couple hundred thousand bucks, and now have a shop with machine tools, and have apparently hired a few people.
They show a unit being truck-tested - wow, sure spins slow for how fast the truck is going!
How fortunate they had a 3-D printer or they might never have gotten started!
The miracle of 3-D printing! How can they possibly fail?
Thank God for them or the Earth might fry.
I will stop here and let you guys debunk it!
To begin: This machine is
- a lift machine
- a drag machine
Like Magenn, a rotary AWES based on drag like Savonius type, but with the difference that the turbine placed on a horizontal axis also generates lift by Magnus effect, which allows it to float in the air, also taking into account the additional lift by helium inflation.
Cool Video, Pierre!
Wow, looks like they’ll be shipping their 4 kW product in 2007.
I’m excited.
For newbies or people not yet born back then, Magenn was the original “poster-child” for AWE, appearing on endless magazine covers and websites. Even NASA was using Magenn images to promote… something.
Of course, I was there protesting that it was just “idiots, idiots, idiots”, but who listens to me?
A true work of art!
It does however show how one may go about executing and funding a development phase of a wind turbine
Oh no that’s another massive red flag… Who would do a truck test @dougselsam ?
The bodgineering on this guys daisy turbine is going well
it keeps the same output 10v over a wide range of alignment to the wind. So the speed is constant.
In other words - the blades can’t run as fast as they want to because of high solidity.
Who knows
That property of reliable speed across a range of alignments might well suit an AWES.
More likely an auxiliary power supply on a system where a tangential alignment is not optimal.
O the joy of a future where electricity is provided by a huge multiple of plastic teaspoons in my garden. The future can’t come soon enough
Anyone have a lifecycle analysis of these units?
He does seem serious though. I dont see why, when you could have proper renewable energy delivered at all outlets in your house, at a really affordable price…
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@PierreB @tallakt @tallakt @Windy_Skies @Rodread @dougselsam
Do I see a design war kicking off?
If so?
Considering steam bending a is thing. Hazel or willow are good resources.
So if you do have a windy garden. This might also do the trick.
Also
Is this a contest to find the most inefficient wind turbines possible?
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I’m not sure. I think the gist was the quickest and easiest to build. With reliable results.
Well raising money is a “be careful what you wish for” thing.
Soon they find themselves unable to make payments.
The debt piles up.
The investors start getting nervous.
Then they demand a bankruptcy so at least they come out with something.
They end up with the worthless IP.
That’s the only thing they did right.
And from what I saw, it didn’t spin very fast.
If they were paying any attention, they would realize their truck testing is showing them the design will not work out. So the testing is a success, but they are ignoring the resulting data. They just want to keep bilking investors.
They could build an equivalent regular turbine for next to nothing. It would be much smaller and require almost no material in comparison. But reality is not how these people operate. They are like on an acid trip.
What I think they should do is offer a version without their main invention, the overspeed control, since it seems to be what is holding things from going forward.
(“Hey Professor Crackpot, great invention , except for its main feature!”)
But they probably couldn’t even pull that off.
I’m not aware of the need for overspeed protection for a Savonius, never seen it, and I think there would be a passive way to accomplish the same result, rather than the way they do it. Or look up how previous Savonius machines handled high winds. Maybe just cut off the power if the voltage gets too high and let it spin - it won’t go any faster than the wind anyway.
You can see in the truck testing how slow the rotor is going, even though the truck is moving right along. The whole thing is silly, pursuing a mostly-disproven idea and adding a deal-killer unnecessary cumbersome automated electric feature as though it is a breakthrough.
They are bring the typical “wheelbarrow to the Formula-one race” except their wheelbarrow has a really expensive way to slow it down, and they think maybe they can get it all working within ten years… ten years? OMG, well the “Professor Crackpots” of the world are just a never-ending feature of the landscape.
Hyperbolic cones.
Double output.
Viktor schauberger inspired.
Double the output from only 5x the material use
Oh
Yep, its an interesting result.
Because of
There is a paper out there saying you can get 30% more out than what went in.
Im not sure how this can be applied in a practical sense. But it is an interesting result non the less.
The wannabe professor crackpots always show “voltage” as though it is power or “output”.
(Wheee! Look at our Voltage!!!")
Any little device can produce an idle potential of thousands of volts, even if it can generate almost zero power, depending on how many turns of really thin wire they use. Voltage in itself means absolutely nothing.
This guy in the video is the blind leading the deaf, the helpless inspiring the hopeless.
This is true. Turns of wire and diameter do influence voltage.
Just thought it impressive that was a pc fan that did it.
Which can be anything from 50 turns to 250 turns. Per coil. As not all fans are made equal. The specs are on a previous vid where he converted the pc fans. I’m going to say it you bog standard fan from a pc before 2018.as there’s plenty on eBay. The point he’s making is some power. is better than no power at all! Just 50% increase is something that not to be sniffed at. One to keep the eyes open for. He knows something which is better than nothing. Different walk, different talk. But hey oh. Bare in mind he converted the fan for power generation. he was doing to show hobbyist how to do the same. He’s making to with the scrap pile. With the bare minimum of tools. Blind he maybe? But with each day of enquiries it get a little less dark.
OK so I just watched the video (at 1.5x speed so I could stand to sit there for 2 minutes of nothingness)
Professor Crackpot doesn’t seem to realize that wind is normally approximated as an incompressible flow, just like water.
And in Windergarden, we learn the unsurprising fact that while a funnel can increase output, it pushes the rotor to a high-than-ideal Mach number, which increases noise and lowers efficiency, pushing the designers to increase blade pitch and rotor solidity, which further lowers efficiency. And as Roddy pointed out, the funnel uses too much material compared to how much power it adds. Anyway, nothing new in adding a funnel to the front, back, or both. Picture a 600-foot diameter turbine with an added funnel a quarter-mile wide that must be built to withstand 120 mph winds. What material are you going to use, reinforced concrete? What would it cost, a billion dollars? And of course “what would the neighbors think?” Blotting out the sun with concrete? Decommissioning cost? CO2 emissions? One turbine costing more than an entire windfarm? This guy is not showing anything new, other than he is “discovering” what people with the slightest familiarity with wind energy already knew long ago.
A keep pointing made about realities scaling. I understand that too high a Mach number. will act like a pressure cutter on steel. It is why? You see the ablative damage on the blades of many wind farms. Which can lead to structural failure. He considering small scale rather than larger scales. I’ve been fortunate enough for the information to cross my path. When the original wind farm where made. It was noted how much attention was paid dust and other abrasives in the atmosphere. Many argue, that they should have seen that one coming. Considering most of the cutting technology out there. On the other point made. I agree it would be impractical if made solely from concrete. What I had in mind was more like tent like structure. Much like your pop up tents. It a shame a lot of the old mill chimney are now demolished in the industrial heartlands. as they would make for fantastic bases for a turbine like this. On the small scale you could use cob construction up to 20m on a parabolic arch. Which make the decommissioning a that bit easier. High pressure water cannons can be employed to wash it away. Cob is a good material and can last for centuries.
Local to me, we have a cob barn that stood on the site since the 1600s. Even up where you are you have rammed earth structures. That are far older than anything we have in Britain. Curtesy of the original natives inhabitants. What I think his target ranges for scale would be about 30m. Maximum or 100ft across. I doubt it would be wise going any bigger. Structure loading from the wind sheer alone is enough to cause terminal damage. On the point what will the local think? depending how you sell it too them? You might get away calling a kinetic sculpture? oooh look at the pretty petals. Even invite them in to paint all kinds of pretty colours. Helps if the feel like they have some ownership. It Schauberger inspired. Was his main reason for trying. It alway fun to see someone discover for themselves. Sure it been around a while. It has seen some use in various different place. I doubt your average joe knows or even cares to know. Definitely would be grand to see it in more regular use. Though I agree a balance must be struck if this was going to have any meaning full impact. I believe he’s looking at it for his wind wall. Because of the expanded surface area in play. We are yet to see?
Well I have a building here that greatly enhances the wind flow in certain locations.
And I’m all for enhancing the flow wherever it could be advantageous. So far nobody has succeeded with funnels, and a lot of highly-funded attempts have gone absolutely nowhere.
But people will always keep talking about it. The thing about the idle musings on the internet is it’s mostly people who have not experienced what it takes to keep even the simplest, most ruggedly-built wind energy system operating. The wind will rip shit apart beyond your wildest expectations. Meanwhile you will always have people with no experience playing with computer fans - so what? Talk is cheap. Anyone can sit around typing on the internet about stuff they don’t really have any knowledge or experience in. Sure, build a rammed earth structure and wash it off with high pressure water cannons - what could possibly go wrong? Or start an insane asylum where people running around with butterfly nets can paint pretty flowers on wind sculptures and get everyone to pretend it is creating power. Create an economically-compelling energy solution and the world will beat a path to your door. On the other hand, when a strong wind hits and it all folds up and ends up ripped apart hanging in a tree a mile away, you might start to learn. Or lay off all the people in your group selfies and go bankrupt like so many, or more likely just keep sitting there typing like the rest.
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The guy with the spoons turbine should not have called it Daisy
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Nice! Much better idea looks the part as well.
To all whom might be interested? @Windy_Skies @Rodread @PierreB @dougselsam @tallakt @tallakt
Go turbine test rig.
Including meccano parts. As the stand.
Interesting that, with all of today’s tools, Boeing decided they could not design a new jetliner, and instead determined the best they could do was create flawed band-aid software to adjust the flying characteristics of a modified version of a design created by talented guys with pencils and slide rules 60 years ago. :O…
Is it a stretch to say that CFD has had a huge inpact on eg. cars, windmills, ships, sails, AWE, etc etc. The amount of data you get almost for free is astonishing.
Wrt Boeing, its a matter of; static environments don’t attract the best talent. Boeing is geared towards safely producing almost the same product over and over. The people who do this are not the creative in depth knowledge people. You can read about innovation in large companies many places. Its known to be difficult.
Well the fact that there is no AWE progress, and Boeing can’t design a new plane is also astonishing. With all that free data! The thing is, if you have a decent concept, you should be able to do a decent job of making a decent prototype with decent performance without having to do backflips on a computer. Don’t forget the most powerful supercomputer is in our heads!
As your always up for suggestions AWEs.
Especially the YouTube verity.
Today’s daily servings.
I’ve just discovered these guys are working on a similar idea to myself. kind of beating myself too it. You know your on the right path when you find reassuring new like this. I’m not sure if this is adaptable for awes but it is encouraging. Micro scale power generation. Is within reach. There also responsible for the wind wall idea. Robert Murray-Smith investigated.
Can you see the max wind speed for the RB1 Residential? Im having trouble with the web page.
With this number, the local wind, and the price of electricity and the unit, you could calculate how long an installation needs to return its own investment.
A heat exhange heater will provide investment parity after 5 years and lasts approx 15 years (in Norway).
As most houses have grid electricity, that windmill must calculate as beneficial or close to that…
I emailed them. Asking for more deals. No reply so far. However
It covered by many on YouTube and this is just one example.
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I thimk 2 kW for five of these says a lot. They must surely be €1000 a piece, and five of them would be a considerable investment…
Uk electricity bills a have skyrocketed. My folks tend to pay 2500k on electricity each year. If it is a once of payment thats value for money. If running cost like bearing, rotors and coils maintenance. are taken into account. It still be cheaper in the long run. I’m not sure if it come with a maintenance package? Covered under warranty for x amount of years while in operation. 15 years is about normal for these kinds of things. 20-30 years would be a fantastic deal.
But it would depend on materials stresses. At some point the rotor vains will become too thin to be safe. Ablative erosion being the main factor. Over the operating lifecycle. Then you have insurance to consider. if that’s something you will want?
€1000 per unit isn’t all that bad. if you consider the extras? that will have to be in place due to consumer laws. If you spend 5k and save yourself 100000k in the long run it is a good deal. I agree it high outlay investment. it is where you place your money that counts! After all We are to that which we give. Its one of the better examples of home power generation I’ve seen in awhile. 2kw on your roof seam like a good deal to me. Considering the average home uses 2500kwh per annum.
Electricity prices are likely to not remain so high as long as cheaper options readily exist
Yes this is true. As long as there are cheaper option, we could see a paradigm shift if energy production. Then it what am I using it for? Main appliance in the home fridge, washing machine, cookers. Heaters. Communication. Thats the bare minimum. Then it is the hot water, which is about a third of all the bill. I know some might like the idea of going native. having a hot water coil in a rocket stove… but you still have the cost of biomass fuels to deal with. It is why Britain only has about 1/4 of it original forest. Due to charcoal production. If you can grow your own hazel and willow. then you may have a chance of slashing that bill to mere 100s. it a opportunity one that dare not be missed. Provided production cost dont impede access to the population. preventing access to a larger market.and sales. If Cost could be slashed by 2/3rds? it only leaving intial cost to begin with. Most folk I know might jump at that. Considering money is tight.
I’ve always agreed that the ridge would focus wind energy, but I can tell you from years of experience, this is going nowhere, and yes, you are correct that your ideas are at a similar level of ineffectiveness. I wouldn’t get too excited.
I see it more as a sign post. Sure there’s much to be desired. Not all roofs face the same direction. Just a mere hopeful in a litany of designs. In some cases guide rails will be needed. To direct prevailing winds. In to the rotor blades. One the better designs I’ve seen in a long time. Though after messaging them and getting no response. It might be more of a sun dance and a wish fart away. Its hopefull contender, I just pray they got some substance. Rather than flashy neon signs saying please stop here. Excited sure! but also wary that it might not pan out.
Yeah a sign post saying “wrong way - turn back”.
I agree, it “looks” like a compelling design. Checks a lot of the right boxes. Unfortunately it also checks a few of the wrong boxes:
- The “vertical-axis-type” (in this case we can call it “cross-axis”) turbines,
- The rooftop mounting…
To wind newbies, rooftop mounting “seems” like a no-brainer.
Rooftop mounting indeed appears quite attractive.
People, especially wind newbies, almost always like rooftop-mounting.
Seasoned potatoes - er um I mean wind people, on the other hand, usually try to steer people away from rooftop mounting. As much of a slam-dunk as rooftop mounting seems like it should be, find one successful example.
Just imagine - every newbie wants to use rooftop mounting, yet you can’t find a single successful example… Hmmmm…
Well, it’s possible they all just ruin it with a cross-axis turbine, right?
(Professor Crackpot always ruins any good invention by adding bad features - why? He’s nuts!)
Then again look at the rooftop turbines installed at Logan Airport in Boston.
Regular horizontal-axis rotors. Still didn’t work out.
I think they were removed long ago.
twenty years ago the big story was the new world trade center building would feature wind turbines. Paul Gipe and I both said “No it won’t”. Who was right?
I had a rooftop turbine installed on a concrete block industrial building with steel framing.
Worked OK, but even though it was mounted on rubber pads, the noise still permeated the building. Then the building owner made us take it down. A wood-frame house is like a giant acoustic guitar body. A wind turbine is like the strings. Any attempt to put a turbine on a house gets “wifed”. That’s when the wife says “take it down!”.
I’ll wait to hear back after you’ve found the rooftop wind energy installation that is operating on a daily basis that everyone is happy with… Out of 7 billion people, there has to be one, right? Right???..
Fair point. No one wants a sleep deprived psychotic wife. That’s like being strung up by your nutsack. No guy wants that in his life. Quickest road to divorce and race to the bottom. Directed noise cancelling sound proofing still going to hard to sell. Even to the most determined of enthusiasts. If airports and former WTC decide nope. I wonder what spoiled it? Oh it noisy. It transfers too much vibration to the superstructure. like you said its a long list. Just a shame it don’t tick more boxes. As it would be more widely used. Or widely recommend. It has it challenges. If it can avoid being nuked by the wife’s of suburbia. The Viability goes up. By a factor of 4. Round where I am the neighbours would be the main problem. Envy or jealousy might do it in, in the end. It only take one of the to turn on you and problems. Over coming those hurdle would be the hardest part. Noise complaint and you have you local authority breathing down your neck. They are none too kind. Got some reading up to do if I find something i let you know.
SuperTurbine ™ has all the characteristics required to be installed on a roof. Multiple units can allow each unit to self-compensate for vibration.
Yes, it’s true. Just pointing out, rooftop mounting sounds like a slam-dunk, but so far has not worked out. In the case of the SuperTwin™ we installed, it worked OK, but the owner made us take it down before we got to the point of taking any data. I do not recall if it ever received any strong winds before we had to remove it. I think it was during the off-season.
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I had preached the false to know the true.
What I see here is one more case of “paralysis by analysis”, where people would rather sit around trying to figure out how to make everything into some complex math problem, often without really taking into account some of the most basic aspects of wind energy. Yes laddermill should have somewhere near zero tether drag compared to kite-reeling. I don’t see where that requires any math to figure out. Just one more reason why I’ve been disappointed that nobody ever built a laddermill after all that fanfare. I mean, if laddermill was not a good idea, then why did we celebrate Ockels in the first place? Just to keep the name laddermill for something else? I seems to me that immediate;ly degenerating into math-land rather than just building a crappy laddermill, then a better one, then a still better one, was the first mistake. Oh sure, rather than 100 wings going in a continuous loop, let’s just use one wing - it will be easier. Meanwhile we can sit around scratching our heads doing math problems to rationalize never building that first laddermill. As I’ve said from day-one, this field is pathetic in that nobody has ever even tried some of the simplest configurations. Oh well, some people would rather sit around at their computers trying to apply various mathematical formulas than get into a shop and build things. I’ve designed, built, and sold, many wind turbines, and a few AWE experiments, including generators and airfoils, and I don’t think my math has ever gone beyond simple arithmetic and knowing a few basic facts. You quickly get to the point where all you need is for things to “look right” and they work. I say “step away from the computer”. Cleanse your brain of all that debilitating math, get creative, use your hands, and get something running. You can do all the math you want, and you will miss one thing, and your machine will fly apart. That is when you start actually figuring things out.
Well doing mind experiments is way more effective use of time than building stuff. The analysis I just did gave some indications of where we would like to be heading.
You can improve incrementally, but if the physics are not sound, you can not prevail in the end.
No comparison to myself, but I read today that Betz did not produce a single physical device, still was hugely influential.
Paralysis exists, but this is not it. Also did I mention my day job involves building and flying AWE rigs? That does not prevent me from thinking about AWE physics, nor does it slow me/us down
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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 
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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OK well everyone agrees that “storage” would not only allow “more windmills”, but intermittency has always been the show-stopper/deal-breaker for wind and solar in general.
Yes my “analysis” is oversimplistic.
But is it accurate? So far, I’d say it is pretty close to being accurate.
And what Roddy is saying about “arbitrage” is also accurate, but Roddy, you just made my point - thanks.
The fact is, such “arbitrage” has always been possible, since regular power plants like to run at a constant output and never shut down. Electricity is cheap in the middle of the night. Especially when you get to nuke plants, they want to just keep them running 24/7/365.
So time-of-use arbitrage has ALWAYS been a compelling business possibility, IF there was an efficient, affordable MEANS of large-scale energy storage.
None of this is new, as far as the DESIRE for energy storage. It’s just that with wind and solar, storage is NEEDED for further grid penetration, not just desired.
The REASON energy storage of grid-scale has never been implemented is, as I said, you have 3 times the task. First you have to create the energy. Then un-create it. Then create it again! That is the REALITY. There really IS NO actual STORAGE of the actual ELECTRICITY. It is a conversion FROM usable electricity into something else, THEN you have to “generate” that electricity (in some way) ALL OVER AGAIN.
What a lot of people suffer from is the “all ya gotta do is” type of reasoning.
As though if it is easy for them to say “all ya gotta do is X”, then somehow, X is magically easy to accomplish.
But storing energy at utility-scale is not easy, never has been easy, and is not going to suddenly become easy just because of a “wish”.
A lot of the talk about cars going all electric in just a few years, etc. is not realistic.
There’s nowhere near enough lithium being produced for more than about 5% of cars to be electric alone at this time. And now we’re going to produce enough batteries for the grid to be battery-powered too? So your electric car battery is going to be charged by a battery-powered grid? So your power has to go in and out of two (2) sets of batteries? Losing 10% of it each time, so we lose 20% minimum? Where do we suddenly get all that power? All that lithium? Not to mention Cobalt?
I’ve heard analyses on the financial channels that include things like people hold onto their cars for 12 years on average. Heck, my Suburban is 22 years old and just getting broken in! And how many thousand vehicles can any manufacturing plant produce in a year, and what is the actual market size, so how many new plants would need to be built every year?
And if the electric grid is challenged today and suddenly we’re having regular power outages like some leftist third-world dictator country, how is that same weak grid going to provide enough energy for everyones’ cars too?
To me the answer is for workplace parking lots to have solar-powered charging stations, so when you get to work, you plug in your car to be charged up locally, not even using the grid, or maybe grid-tied but not taking much juice off the grid per se, just producing most of what your car needs onsite.
Even stores could offer onsite solar charging. Our local Super-Walmart has large solar arrays above part of the parking lot, and in the summer everyone tries to get a spot in the shade under the solar panels. If they could plug in and charge up while shopping, it mitigates the need for grid storage.
But all in all, there is a lot of dreaming and unclear thinking in the clean energy space, due to, and I am serious when I say this “global warming derangement syndrome”. You can start with just the whole tagline of “green energy”. It is a misnomer. Coal is the “greenest” form of energy (supports greening of the entire planet). Even NASA has now explained how the amount of Earth’s surface is covered with vegetation is expanding due to increased CO2.
But the whole situation requires reasoning far beyond what will fit on a bumper-sticker. First of all we are in an “ice age” right now. An ice-age is when we have permanent ice on the polar caps. We are currently in an “inter-glacial” cycle of our ongoing “ice age”. Glacial cycles are associated with a lot of deserts on Earth, which keeps the air dry, which keeps too much snow from accumulating at the poles. If we want “green”, we might be wishing for a “snowball Earth”.
One mystery is why our current “interglacial” has lasted so long this time(?) Some hypothesize it is due to domestication of grazing animals denuding the landscape. Or people cutting down forests for firewood. Anyway the whole thing is immensely more complicated than any slogan. I just hope we don’t “degenerate” into feeling lucky when the power is even on, as they do in some backward countries. Get it? “degenerate”? Into not generating? There’s a pun there…
There we go again. However your [deranged?] view on this, the truth is that people are moving away from fossile fuel energy. This will enable some of the technologies that we are talking about. Its just about what we believe the future will bring.
For sure, as long as we have coal and natural gas, there’s little market for wind and solar
Lithium and cobalt
BS
There’s stax of it. And the cobalt is burnt in your low sulphur fuel. Or didn’t you know?
Time you were introduced to Auke Hoekatra
https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra?t=p0HCrwf2M38mZwjKVoP6XQ&s=09
Follow, Read up and get your facts on autos right Doug.
Could all that early lead poisoning have retarded your ability to learn about other reading resources than bumper stickers?
V2G EV cars themselves can be batteries for grid balancing. X 20M cars is a lot of battery.
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I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what is common knowledge in industry. While it is true that lithium is not rare per se, the infrastructure is not in place to expand output fast enough to instantly convert all cars, and the grid itself, to battery operation. Otherwise you would not see the current parade of “Professor Crackpot” energy storage debacles being promoted on a daily basis.
And most people involved in electric vehicles etc. have flagged Cobalt as highly-problematic due to its sourcing from an undeveloped area using child labor to mine it. In fact there is a huge effort to try to replace cobalt, to avoid this problem.
No I did not know about cobalt being burnt in low-sulphur fuel. Maybe you should explain that to all the people concerned about Cobalt production and let them know you have the answer. I’m sure they will be very excited and grateful to hear your solution.
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Classic
Artisinal mines with child slave labourers
That argument sticks an image right into your head doesn’t it
What heartless b@$tard could argue with you now Doug
Nonsense
Mining in the DRC is now regulated really well. The phone or laptop battery you’re likely holding has much higher concentration of cobalt.
Let’s not even start with the “make remake” energy chat
Are you on default spokesperson duty for the argument dept this month?
Let’s find some animal motion verbs, before we get distracted by some interesting references from the Wikipedia pages.
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985JThBi.117...47R
Bounding and undulating flight
The Magic of Bird Flight with David Lentink
I’ll leave that honor for you Roddy.
Personally I was chagrined as a kid that I was not allowed to get a job until age 14.
I was stuck delivering all the morning newspapers in the neighborhood for a measly $10 a week, but at least I was “running a business” and had some spending money at age 11. I was already accustomed to going to work when it was still dark out, every single day, and demanding money from adults while I was still in elementary school. Therefore I don’t personally see a problem with kids who probably have nothing better to do anyway, earning a little money. But it does not sound like a very well developed mining operation.
I’m just sharing what I have read on that topic, but the fact that producing, then “storing” electricity involves 3 steps: create, un-create, re-create, is my own original contribution to the conversation. You’re suddenly sounding like quite the omni-topic expert, so maybe you can tell the rest of the class any electricity “storage” method (besides pumped hydro) that doesn’t cost twice as much as the original cost of generating the electricity. (?)
Discussed also here:
I’m expert on nothing
But, As nominated officer responsible for responsible arguing
It’s appropriate to point out that this deranged argument thread started with pointing out an energy storage system comparable to pumped hydro, which was has the useful function of providing rapid timescale peak shaving and arbitrage energy value market propositions.
Long sentences are great for closing nonsense arguments
Well I don’t know about that - wind and solar are increasing pretty fast.
But there is increasing concern over wind and solar saturation. It used to be easy to “accomodate” wind and solar, but it’s getting harder as the percentage of clean energy production increases to the point that it’s obvious we have a problem when the sun goes down and winds calm.
What they used to scare us with was to tell us that we had used up all the oil and gas. Even the oil companies were in on it, because they need oil to seem scarce to maintain its perceived value.
But now instead of saying we’re running out, since we’re always producing more, they have global warming to keep a lid on drilling (prevent competition), and oil spills conveniently timed to match recessions when demand falls anyway, resulting in drilling restrictions to favor existing big players, etc.
It’s funny to go back in time and see how whatever “urgent” thing that seemed so important decades ago is now forgotten, like “we’re running out of food and the whole world is about to starve to death!” Whatever happened to that? CO2 helping crops?
All the cardiologists are embarrassed that they told us all to use margarine instead of butter and eat carbs instead of proteins and fats and it all turned out 100% wrong (opposite) to reality. Of course they were causing the heart attacks - job security. Guess who never fell for it? Me. Nope, I was one of those stubborn ignorant people who said it was all lies, and kept eating butter. Who was right? The normal-thinking people with common sense and good taste, just like today. Today the cardiologists not still making money doing bypasses and stents have given up surgery and instead just get people eating right (ignoring all the government guidelines) and the heart problems and most other medical problems disappear. Turned out the government guidelines were a result of lobbying by big agriculture and the mega-food conglomerates to allow them to produce food as cheaply as possible to maximize profits. That meant promoting sugar, carbs, and seed-oils, not fresh vegetables, healthy meats and animal fats. Look at any group picture taken before 1980. No fat people. Look at modern group pictures, or just walk down the street, and you often see most people overweight.
When I was a kid, we’d have one or two fat kids in a whole school.
Today the whole school is almost all fat kids. Unbelievable!
Question authority. That used to be a popular saying.
It’s good to question things that people in power insist you believe.
For the production of electricity, in Germany as in other countries, and with the notable exception of Denmark (until some level) due to both Baltic Sea wind resource and energy agreements with neighboring countries, intermittent energies such as solar and wind are coupled to gas which remains both one of the main energies and a backup for the intermittent. In these countries the production of CO2 is more important because of this coupling, while in France it remains much less thanks to nuclear power. Here is a link to the CO2 emissions linked to the production of electricity in live:
Now,120 g for France, and 428 g Germany (gCO₂eq/kWh).
That said hydroelectricity is still better because it is both clean and controllable, without the risks of nuclear: see for examples Quebec or Norway. But hydro is limited by geography. We cannot build mountains everywhere.
This is contradicted a few lines further on:
Does this mean that today people listen more to the “authorities” and “elites” than before, contrary to what you seemed to assert just before?
I do not believe in the fable of the good people and the bad elites, nor do I believe in the opposite, the good elites and the bad people. In reality, all this is much more intertwined than we imagine.
Concerning global warming, even the IPCC forecasts are on a very wide range. It is better to take this into account without falling into catastrophism.
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@dougselsam that rant was so far off from what I percieve as correct. Provide links.
Famine is threatening huge populations of the earth right now.
You can be sure those affected will question our gluttenous authority over the resources and political calls which have caused this.
Scarcity is real. Human ingenuity is real. Too often we use it to exploit resources beyond sustainable levels or twist truths to suit our narratives.
@PierreB love a bit of live GIS data map wizzardry.
The page you posted has the UK all lumped together as one (but oddly only the Orkney Islands separately… (2nd best globally))
Here’s some more granular data on the state of the UK
Come on England and Wales yous dirty slackers. Pull your socks up. Pull the finger out. And other odd motivation based idioms.
Unlike in sailing where you can only go left or right while jibing, in tethered jibing flight you can also go up and down, which allows the kites to fly in a figure of eight when line twist needs to be limited or in a circle when it doesn’t. When the length of the tethers is not fixed because the pull of the kites is unwinding the tethers from a drum to turn a generator, the flight path of the kites resembles that of a corkscrew or […]. When the tethers do not unwind from a drum to turn a generator, torque must be directly transferred to the ground via the tether tension, or additional energy harvesting devices must be placed on the kite, typically secondary wind turbines that generate electricity that then is transmitted to the ground via conducting tethers.
All three modes of energy generation [unwinding a drum, torque transfer, adding additional energy harvesting devices] add […] and […]. In […]. In […]. In […].
In single tether single kite systems, tether drag and limited tether tension limits […] at the cost of usually more complex kite control more kites can be added. […] branching from central line […] swarming […] echelon flight to […]. […] further developments include moving away from standard airplane fuselage + wing + tail design to […].
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Hi Pierre: The fact that even in undeveloped countries, everyone has been getting to be overweight the last few decades, is well known. The “problem” might just be a comparative abundance of food, but more likely the types of food being provided: Diets based on powdered grass-seed (grains), seed oils and hydrogenated seed oils, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. These are where most of the calories in the world now come from and the result is obesity. Just like oil is controlled by a few huge international conglomerates, so is food.
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Hi Roddy:
Before the recent artificially-provoked war in the breadbasket of Europe, it is common knowledge that the previous problem of starvation in undeveloped countries had been replaced by ubiquitous obesity. It’s all controlled by huge international conglomerates.
Of course if you have a war in Ukraine and Russia, which had become the defacto food suppliers for much of the third world, a short-term food crisis can result, and people are suddenly, for the first time in decades, worried about starvation. But that artificially created supply crisis does not change the fact that the world has been getting fatter and fatter by consuming the wrong foods. I’m somewhat of a healthy eating fanatic. i do a lot of juicing of carrots, kale, berries and fruits, to get good vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, and other good nutrition from plants, and also good meats, butter, whole milk, all the stuff the corporate-controlled government advice warned against. The American Heart Association originally got its funding from Procter and Gamble after they had invented Crisco, a partially-hydrogenated seed oil, which could be substituted for lard, which is what everyone used back then. Their money drove the American Heart Association to recommend everyone replace lard with Crisco, and butter with margarine. Why? Lower cost. So the food conglomerates lobbied congress to influence the “food pyramid” and other “official” dietary recommendations, to the point that even scientists and doctors just assumed it must be true information and even heart surgeons didn’t realized their dietary advice was 100% wrong. Some cardiologists are now rebelling. The American Hear Association has been caught redhanded and has begin changing their advice. Animal fats are no longer taboo.
As real information begins to trickle in, the public is beginning to realize we’ve been bamboozled. But the theme is not restricted to food. It extends to energy, and a lot of other fields. The information is controlled by international conglomerates, and you have a choice to believe everything they say, or to be a bit skeptical.
Now you have been contending that most everything I say lately is BS. You said I was wrong about a previous discussion about energy storage. Well, due to the high frequency of conversations being moved to a different “topic” I could not go back and see which “Professor Crackpot” energy storage method started the conversation, but you might notice a similarity between, say, kite-reeling and that dumb idea of cranes stacking then un-stacking concrete weights to store energy. That company has already switched horses in midstream in response to so many level-headed debunkers (like me) saying how completely idiotic their scheme was. But notice the similarities to current AWE efforts: The “future of energy” being all about wrapping cables around drums, pulling and reeling our way into a future energy utopia. The problem is a lack of clear thinking, and what amounts to “a cover-up” of the lack of workability of these themes. Yes, a coverup. On this forum, for example, the “really smart people” are quick to announce some supposed sale and delivery of an AWE system, announce new “factories” to produce kite-reeling systems, yet never follow up on the story. How are the “AWE systems” that were delivered working? Or is it just one AWE system that was delieved? Well, how is it working? Nobody knows. It is a coverup. How many AWE systems is the factory now producing and delivering, years later? How are they working? silence… crickets… It is a coverup. Based on moeny. How can these companies keep raising more money if they admit they are just telling stories that lead nowhere?
Just as the poster-child AWE companies promise how many hundred homes they are just about to begin powering with their unworkable contraptions, the energy storage promoters are lost in “rendering-land” and in reality couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag.
As you pointed out, time of use arbitrage would be the first place to implement energy storage. That has been true for what, maybe a century or more? Almost forgotten until recently? You’re saying I’m full-of-it with regard to the three (3) steps to stored energy - produce, unproduce, reproduce. And so I challenged you to show us a means of energy storage that doesn’t cost twice as much as the original energy cost. You have not provided any example. So who is really “full-of-it”?
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Thanks for the challenge @dougselsam
And you’re an OK dude in my book, dinna stress.
Regarding food, you’re right that globally individual diets have been getting richer and slightly more diverse but globally as a collective diets have become far less diverse and fed by cheap, just in time supply chains. And that’s not a safe nor healthy result.
Back to energy
And yes there’s always a wider picture to consider.
Especially as the electrical grid can be considered as the biggest machine humans have ever made.
This interconnection means we can consider a huge range of market demands and forces.
Straight to YouTube for the latest link on batteries and solar… I’m served a calculation on why it makes sense for UK domestic circumstances.
Batteries make sense where the market for them makes sense whether or not the energy they supply costs more than your initial source. It always will.
Even in the off grid case human energy demands peak and trough and don’t smoothly match production.
So some manner of smoothing the supply will be valuable.
Unproduce energy
Hmmmmm
Now, that, I do take great exception to.
I might even resort to using a condescending tone and your Sunday name Douglas
Energy is converted not destroyed Doug
Energy Conversion - was the only class in uni I had to resit
Roddy you are confirming that you cannot meet my challenge to find a form of “energy storage” (electricity storage in our case) that does not cost twice what the original electricity cost to generate. (Meaning your end result will multiply the cost of electricity by a total of 3x). Heck if you want to add in the markup for the provider to make a profit, the price to the end user could be multiplied by 5x!
Trying to talk your way out of it now by nitpicking word definitions is only digging yourself in deeper. The problem is real. Just wishing it will go away isn’t going to work.
But as you know, AWES, especially kite-reeling, can produce for almost nothing, using only 1/10 or 1/100 material of regular wind turbines, in the future of course. With storage, three times almost nothing, it doesn’t cost much. 
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There is no cost to the owner after buying the battery.
They get the convenience.
They make money from having these devices available for grid smoothing in scale cases.
I’m on a ferry right now. Low bandwidth and it was rough. Pulling into Kirkwall, Orkney.
I’ll get you some details soon enough
Roddy, maybe take a course in economics 101, or a business course, or maybe accounting 101. The idea that you can just talk about any investment and say it’s free once its paid for is not reflective of real life, or real economics. In most cases storage would require credit which would have to be repaid over time. And if someone could fully pay ahead of time, there is what is called “lost opportunity cost”. In other words there is a cost for using money. If this is the level of the conversaion here, it is childish. Just goes to show once again, why waste my time here?
Let’s bypass hypotheticals for a moment, and look at off-grid living today: I have friends who live off-grid in Tehachapi, California, ground-zero for wind energy, with plenty of sunshine as well.
It’s well-understood by these off-gridders that their largest electricity expense, by far, is buying, then maintaining, batteries. They usually have a special room or storage shed for the batteries. The initial purchase price is huge, then they slowly go bad, losing capacity with their limited number of charging cycles. In ten years they need all new batteries. It is never free. It is always a huge expense. And the word is, if you have grid power, it is always cheaper than your own self-produced renewable electricity, especially if you are talking about battery storage versus real-time use.
What you are suggesting is one more example of “All ya gotta do is” thinking:
“All ya gotta do is pay for it then it’s free!” Wheee! Maybe you can find a way to steal the money from someone else! At gunpoint! Everything can be “free”! Yeah, that’s it!
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Wow Doug, don’t you just ask mum to pay for everything so it doesn’t count? Of course you have to pay up front and divi the lifetime energy cost. Just as any other renewables device. And opportunity cost yep that’s a real thing too. You’re argument isn’t based on anything real though.
Renewables in the UK come waaay cheaper than grid energy. I believe you get a free pint of gasoline delivered with each kWh (probably some arcane unit of measure) in the US.
As for your double accounting on the cost of energy from a battery - it’s nonsense
You have to think about the system in the whole.
The battery is complementary to the system.
The only reason to charge batteries is when you have overcapacity of energy supply or cheaper grid energy available than when you will use it. This oversupply energy is going to waste otherwise. Essentially its money you can store which you don’t have to pay a grid supply company for.
Here, the economics make sense and the systems pay for themselves in around 5 years.
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AWEIA International holds that an independent technical body such as
Fraunhofer Society engineers Alumni
a European world-leading applied research organization should moderate an AWE competitive fly-off. I consider this option better than having an industry association like AWEurope with competing industry members sit as judges in a yet emerging industry wherein the privileged most funded teams have failed to deliver on their own promises while less privileged teams that opposed the failed concepts much earlier languish and are excluded from the industry association leveraged opportunities.
Association forums should accommodate all comers and let individual members judge for themselves the merit or otherwise of proffered information. This also implies that members must be respectful of others’ opinions no matter how ‘foolish’, ‘non-feasible’, or even ‘irrelevant’.
There’s nothing new here.except obviously DaveS posts appearing under John O’s name.
John mentions religion and issues the occasional “lift”-based slogan. From DaveS we have the usual references to “Einstein”, “Wright Brothers”, UHMPE, graphene, things that “wiggle”, and idle threats of imminent TeraWatts, against a backdrop of excuses why his projects should not have to ever show any actual power on a meter, but instead serve as theoretical guidance whereby others should prove the great genius of the ideas revealed. Contrast the threats of greater power generation than anyone has ever contemplated, let alone accomplished, with zero actual power generated in 14 years of big talk. Basically. there is nothing new here, just the same empty. leading nowhere talk, 14 years ago in Oroville.
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W&I have been working on designing Giant Kite structures and the most massive component of those kite structures which will ever be used has now been completed, The component has been developed in stealth mode. Most remarkably you have probably already seen a part of it used in a test without even noticing.
Here at W&I we have been working on the most massive kite structure that will ever be made, on Earth.
Enough cheesy marketing - The giant component - That’s the Earth itself.
The vital 6,371 km radius part holding the bottom of kite lines against aerodynamic forces. Without that component - nothing. No kitey.
But we are missing some tricks here.
The earth isn’t just one massively oversized 5.972 × 10²⁴ kg anchor point to one kite. It’s all the anchor mass to all kites.
If we need to anchor a giant network of kites, with multiple anchors across a field, or across a whole farm or even across a district… That anchor mass is already there. Waiting to be used, doing not much but sustaining an eco system as best it can.
This giant anchor mass holds individual anchors fixed rigidly in place relative to the other anchor points.
Not only that, but it is massive and rigid enough to hold all of these anchors against any movement in any direction away from the point where they are fixed.
2 anchors pulling toward each other - they are stuck fixed.
2 anchors pulling away from each other -stuck fixed.
200 random anchors - stuck fixed.
Do not negate the significance of the massive component available to your kite designs.
It gives AWES designers a lot of freedom to design using the Earth as a component.
Thank you for reminding us planet Earth exists, Rod.
Just as long as everyone knows I invented it.
Seriously though - it’s an important point.
Earth 
exists, and
It’s massive, and
What happens on one side can influence what happens the other side.
Why don’t >90% of AWES designs use that idea?
A house doesn’t suddenly move 1km West when the wind changes. Neither should a whole village. Nor a wind turbine. Neither should an AWES. We just ain’t that special folks.
ps. I didn’t actually invent the world.
I realise the comic framing isn’t going to be to everyone’s liking…
But I think the concept is big enough to deserve its own thread. Not get buried here in slow chat.
Please feel free to suggest a new way to frame the importance of spread anchor system, fixed operating zone, low deviation AWES
Maybe the easiest way would have been to shift the post to the topic of Network Kites instead @Windy_Skies
Or maybe just ask around before shifting folks posts.
We are a community
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I don’t have a database of where people’s posts should go so it goes here most often. Too much trouble and time to ask beforehand. We need more and more patient moderators for that.
Then try again. Use a descriptive title, which this didn’t have, and try to lay out the benefits [1] of what you want to discuss, which you didn’t seem to do. It looks like a thing that has been talked about before so maybe there are previous threads or studies you can find to link to, or attach the new post to.
[1] Ideally also drawbacks as a balanced discussion is better and has less chance of looking like propaganda.
Wow slow chat exploded! Venn diagram eat your heart out. Gone for a day or two. And it went mad. Any oh!
Was going to ask if awes had its own version of heliostats?
With a ground based focal point? More a pint of curiosity Than anything else. I’ve been hearing lot about molten driving steam production. wondering if anyone had heard something similar? Considering mirrors prism and lenses have been around for generations. most the optics is fairly advanced. Even fibre optics could come into somewhere? Didn’t know if that was something being explored in awes? I know by my reckoning it would be zero emissions. Once installed. But have no idea how it would get there? Just going to throw it out there and see what comes back with the boomerang.
I don’t know if you allude to Advanced Kite Networks, but this method is based on multi-anchored rig, where earth works like a spar and could allow to scale more, by stiffening the AWES but at ground level, without having to bear a heavy weight at altitude.
I have in reserve some patterns using the earth and multi-anchoring.
I suggest you remake this interesting topic by beginning with Earth (with the funny shape you given), pursuing with earth (without capital letter) to go towards technical features.
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Yes this whole topic sounds like daveS, once again revealing his genius for the elucidation of the rest of us unthinking peons… Nobody had previously ever thought of multiple anchors. Nobody knew the Earth existed. Amazing how the level of thinking in AWE has evolved over 15 years. Gosh - Earth… makes me want to just go out and take a walk!
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I just saw “People will die if AWE R&D continues to delay optimal research design by not planning a Technically Knowledgable Experts-moderated “Fraunhofer” Fly-Off.” on a closed topic.
OK so now of we don;t have “a flyoff”, people are going to die.
Nevermind that I’ve been saying for 14 years of this “flyoff” talk that we ALREADY HAVE A FLYOFF that has been going on for 14 years and all you have to do is show us your device on video with a power meter and you can enter the flyoff! But the same person who has insisted on a flyoff for 14 years refuses to produce or measure any electrical output or output of any measurable kind. So this is just more posturing, more pretending to have a power-producing device, more nonsense.
That is precisely where you miss it, @dougselsam
In a competition, there must be some level playing ground, rules, and competent, impartial referees or jurors. Funding is a key advantage in proving the merits or demerits of any chosen course. We have seen funded concepts fail miserably while those who had opposed those concepts and even walked away from them out of conviction never got funded. AWE today is looking at the MW scale to be certain and it will be nice to know of any willing funder of some contest of sorts amongst competing firms. For example how much would a 5MW AWE Power Station cost or should cost for maximum efficiency and safety? Can this be guaranteed for entrants or eventual winners and what percentage would be availed prior to the contest as a minimum participating allowance itself to help fund preparations?
Who prepares the broad terms of reference and specific terms for different archetypes?
Hi John: A biblical reference, and a slogan about “lift” - par for the course.
Remember, in AWE, all achievements are in the future - and always will be!
We’ll be watching for the electrical output numbers - a week huh? Let’s all hold our breath!
Dear @dougselsam
I took some literature lessons in high school. There’s something called figurative speech if my memory serves me right. Not all speeches are literal, nor writings either.
Thanks, DougS; for your warm welcome in a truly peculiar style.
Ever read Daniel9:27 - "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make [it] desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. "(KJV)
@PierreB, @Windy_Skies
Is it possible for an author to edit an old post of his?
Thanks.
On the bottom right of every comment there is the reply button. If you look at a comment of yourself, next to that is a pencil icon. Click on that to edit a comment. There is a time limit to that of, I think, several months. If you would like to edit the title of a topic, click on the pencil next to the title.
John: As far as I am aware, this group is mostly about wind energy. If you or Santos ever has anything relevant to wind energy, I’ll be waiting to hear all about it. No, more bible verses won’t suffice. Send us some video with power output on a meter.
Not just wind energy but AIrborneWind Energy. Tethered Aviation or Applied Aeronautics but not plain mechanics or mere electronics.
Thanks, I just checked. My post of a few days now seems to have lost the edit tab.
Comments of today still do.
You should be able to now.
John with all respect to both of you, in wind energy, whether airborne or otherwise, the standard is measuring output. No need for more empty talk of a “fly-off”. How about just fly it and show the world what you’ve got. The flyoff theme is just one more diversion - one more attempt to derail the conversation into excuse-land with more empty bragging and false promises of future “TeraWatts”…
A scatter-plot of output vs wind speed, with a power curve, is an example. That’s pretty much the standard. Measured cumulative energy output over time is another key piece of data. Even a single measurement of peak power, or just a simple video, showing your rig in operation, and showing a power-meter, or separate meters showing voltage and amps, is what any valid assessment would require, just as a start. Showing us some pieces of cloth laying on the ground and picking out bible verses is about as far from any sort of wind energy as it gets.
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Hi Doug, in wind energy, the only gear that has proven itself in the industry and the market is 3-bladed HAWT like on:
Now this forum is about airborne wind energy. I have a question: what would be the kite area needed to support an utility-scale HAWT into the air? To give you an idea it takes 4 m² to lift a Kiwee turbine producing 200 W at 10 m/s wind speed. And this turbine is ultra-light (less than 1 kg), much lighter than the equally small wind turbines on the market. It is likely that a kite with the same surface area would produce much more in reeling mode.
Hi Pierre: Are you saying all the hype around factories manufacturing and shipping out AWE systems, and the same companies supposedly operating these systems (I guess operation of the systems comes free with purchase?) is not true? That it isn’t really happening? What about all the vertical-axis turbines we keep hearing about? They’re no good? Would people really put millions of dollars to work where it can do no good? Are the “Professor Crackpots” of the world, and the people who listen to them, just plain wrong? Geez, what can we do about it? try to expose them?
HAWT for now, maybe AWES in the future and for higher winds. Doug, I know you don’t like the word “future” but, as far as AWE is concerned, you can perhaps appreciate if we compare it with the present. AWE future cannot be worse than its present.
Thanks, @PierreB
Suffice to inform @dougselsam here that he is far behind in understanding the state of affairs in AWE today. AWE has gone past 100KW generation output. It is not as if Makani and others did not produce any power at all. What is up now is the need to step up to Grid-scale, beginning at MW levels.
The path followed by earlier successes had been the point of contention and the ‘opposition’ seems proven right by the turn of events.
I repeat: this is AWE, DougS; not typical wind energy.
Thank you.
Pierre, we’ve heard that one before from Santos.
“Shooting us down” for not being “high enough”.
All I can say is at least we show substantial power output on meters.
The systems were flying.
Once output from flying contraptions is verified, further development becomes possible.
Yes, yes, we keep hearing about Skysails.
Recent news includes a bankruptcy, and abandonment of their main effort - pulling ships.
Their stories are weak on details and actual data.
One would think if they had impressive data, they would be publicizing it.
One would think if their systems were in regular operation anywhere, we’d see more coverage of such operation. Personally, I’m not convinced. Too many examples of “clean energy breakthrough” vaporware.
Given the small scale and home-built aspects, it’s a decent showing of power output, proving that our concepts at least work.
Demonstrating our craftsmanship at a small scale is a way of avoiding spending too much and declaring bankruptcy. “Professor Crackpot” follows the rule that “We have to build it really big, or people won;t take us seriously!” That paradigm offers multiple excuses, for some, to not build a working demo at all, and for others, when their too-large demo has a single crash, the entire company can be relieved that they can stop pretending and just go bankrupt.
Ochd @dougselsam
Lazy default to dismissal.
You can also use the computer to research.
Actually doing pumping yo-yo
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Thanks, @Rodread for sharing this. Perhaps @dougselsam will now get it.
Hi Doug, please read the information on the comments. Concerning SkySails data tests were published and were reported at least two times in this forum: "Autonomous Airborne Wind Energy systems: accomplishments and challenges" and Metrics or equations? Power curves or simulations? - #5 by PierreB…
I put again and again the references of the published curves: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-control-042820-124658, pre-print on
Figure 15 page 19: average power 92 kW, 12 m/s wind speed. And at hundreds of meters high, not few meters.
My comment: it is by far, and hopefully temporarily, the best AWE MEASURED and PUBLISHED DATA. A flexible kite was used, and reeling (yoyo) method was applied.
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@PierreB if some of the above comments on SkySails contain new info maybe you can repost that in a relevant topic, or move the comments? You have a regular badge so you might be able to.
@Windy_Skies, there is no new information. Simply I must periodically remind the facts to @dougselsam about SkySails, quoting the same document.
I will still quote this document in Skysails Power System installed topic.
100 kW average, 400 kW peak? ouch… but good results regardless, as a stepping stone to something better
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Certainly not as shown in figure 18 on page 22 of the same paper, except perhaps when control of the device is acquired…
Thank You Pierre:
Reading on to the next page (20) of the same document, we find:
“Besides power generation, the company has shown that ram-air kite technology can be used for traction of large marine transport vessels (58) using kite sizes of up to 400 m2, proving the scalability of this flexible-wing technology. Moreover, for the application of Yacht propulsion, SkySails has successfully developed and commissioned a system (68, 69) on the marine vessel Race for Water (Race for Water | A foundation to preserve water). The system has been handed over to the customer and several hundred hours of automated kite flight have helped to propel the yacht, showing the high TPL achieved.”
Sounds good, except the company has now sold off this division. Why? If all these positive accolades are the whole story, why does the original meme, ship-towing, not catch on? Seems like there must be reasons.
I was initially impressed with the numbers from kite-reeling, thinking the advantages could overcome the disadvantages. But over time, I noticed things didn’t seem to be progressing according to the optimistic promises. Progress seemed to have stalled years ago.
I will say, to select excerpts from various papers, it can easily look like we have a winner in AWE. However, my impression is the concept is awkward, subject to wear and operational issues, and may never pan out as an economical wind energy solution, at least anytime soon.
We have many ways to analyze things. Some ways are numerical. Some are structural, some operational. We also have vast reserves in our brains that we do not even understand, but just use, all day every day, that allow us to deftly negotiate complex situations based on vague impressions whose origins we are not even aware of. These impressions can take the form of a nebulous feeling of “I’ve seen this movie before”, whereby people can keep throwing numbers at you, but leave you still wondering
“Where’s the beef?”
The years roll on, with still no statement of cumulative energy generation or routine daily operation by a customer, that I have seen anyway. At some point, I’m left with these vague impressions of something that “sounds great”, but I remain unconvinced.
After 14 years of “sounds great”, I’m not falling for more hype.
Doug, 92 kW average power, it is one of the best current AWE results, and it is notified in the paper. This is also 1/100 power amount of a large offshore wind turbine. To be successful an AWES should not generate 100 times less power than a conventional wind turbine, but 10 times more considering the space occupied and the more uncertain operation. This means that the chances of success are more than random.
What is in your quote does not say that ships are towed by kites, but that the ram kite has scaling possibilities: “…can be used” does not mean it is do.
Also regarding kite-reeling, it may not be a good solution, but the best actual result (92 kW) is well obtained by a kite-reeling.
Hi John: Yes, wasn’t that 100 kW figure about 5 or more years old? Maybe older? Seven years? I’ve been waiting for something to develop based on that for, it seems, at least half of the current 14-year-old AWE hype-cycle.
As far as the recently re-introduced concept of “a flyoff” and the idea that the lack of “a flyoff” is the main thing holding back AWE progress, this is an old discussion that I thought had been talked to death years ago. The “flyoff” idea reminds me of Santos’ famous “concert that never happened” - a talking-point that developed a life of its own in his mind, but while announced, no steps were taken to make it happen. Later we heard many excuses including, at one point the statement that people playing with kites on a beach had brought a radio to listen to, and that fulfilled the obligation. Yeah, sure…
What I kept telling your friend in response to his incessant insistence about some nebulous “flyoff” idea was this: There is already a “virtual flyoff” in place. There always has been. The internet makes it all the more so. If we want to go back down that “Wright Brothers” road, you could say there was a “virtual flyoff” even way back then, before the internet. Langley was trying. The Wrights were trying. Others were trying. There was no specific reason any of them had to be in the same place at the same time. It was sufficient that each group was trying, and one group succeeded. Note that the group that succeeded was self-funded and did all their own fabrication. They didn’t need to raise millions of dollars and hire an HR department just to handle all the people needed to populate their renting of “office space”. Nope, they just built an engine, built a plane around it, and flew it. I believe it was "Scientific American that disputed their flight after the fact. To this day, the world of “science” cannot even agree on the theory of how a wing develops lift! That was a recent article in Scientific American. We think we’re so darn smart, but evidence of our ongoing ignorance abounds. Flyoff or not, with news a bit slower before the internet, the world eventually got the word that airplanes were working, and the Wrights planted the flag.
Anyway, years later, your friend did start parroting the term I had introduced: “virtual flyoff”. Maybe some days he remembers that, and some days he forgets. It is only obvious that there is no specific need for various “teams” to fly their attempts at AWE at the same place and same time. The logistics of moving a system to such a site at a given time may not in all cases make sense, and to schedule such an event ahead of time might easily place it in an unexpected time of calm. No the more sensible approach would be for any team to take some data at their own test site at their own convenience and publish it for others to see, which has already been done by multiple teams… And so there is your “virtual flyoff” - already in place and ongoing. The main thing that separates the person insisting on “flyoff” is he has not participated in the existing “flyoff” which is always there, like a 24-hour Walmart or 7-11 store - go at your convenience - go at midnight - go on Christmas - the doors are always open. Same with the virtual “flyoff” - the door is always open, Come one, come all, fly your stuff and show everyone how it works! Tke a video. Show power meters. If you have anything working, the world is eagerly waiting. Then again, if all you do is talk and have no results and nothing to show the world, well then I guess you might be so distracted you keep talking about progress being stalled by the lack of a “flyoff”, but I think the real story is the flyoff has been in place for 14 years, and some people participate, while others don’t.
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This moment of clarity is something we should all aim for. The «virtual flyoff» is probably one of the most fundamental ideas to come across this forum. Thx @dougselsam
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Sounds like @tallakt is going off to the computer to develop an AI AWES combat training stadium.
Enough random kixels in the air it’ll come up with something effective and scalable.
I’ll decline an opinion on the document
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If the Wright brothers are remembered, it is also because Boeing developed their invention on a large scale.
The AWE field already has its Wright brothers, but is waiting for its Boeing.
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Meh. The Wright brothers of AWE will be known only after some design goes massively commercial. Most likely history wil paint anyone in AWE as a «professor crackpot». That is if AWE never takes off. If anyone should succeed though, their name in history will match their contribution’s importance, unless, also likely, someone else takes the credit
This follows almost naturally from the first sentence of my comment:
As a result, we possibly will know who are Wright brothers in AWE field but only if Boeing (utility market) happens:
So currently we cannot say who are AWE Wright brothers, and if they will be remembered.
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35 posts were merged into an existing topic: Questions about Moderation
Kronos submarine. For anyone that interested.
It say submarine and spacecraft. I’d love to know how?
Apparently built in the highlands of Scotland.
Trust the Brits to want a commando assault vehicle.
Especially one with multiple vector applications.
It had me going stingray, stingray! Gerry Anderson’s
In the current climate? stand by for action seemed very apt!
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Bet its not built anywhere.
Looks nonsensical
Shhh, it’s in the Scottish “Area-51”, Loch Ness!
If there’s any new craft being built on Loch Ness it should be an inflated ride on Nessie (converted banana boat)
That would have 1000s of tourists paying for the photo
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Ok bit of and update,
Looks like I get way too excited!
Heres the website,
http://highlandsystems.me/kronos-submarine/
If anything it UAE? Yes, I did get the monster hunting reference.
Almost as bad a George poking his dragon. A complete saint!
Have no idea why they want to call it after a Greek Titan?
Unless there inferring to begin swallowed by the ocean or three?
If omens are anything to go by it don’t bode well?
I guess we shall have to see? if the get beaten and thrown into the pits of engineering Tartarus? They would have to be Hermes to escape that sort of fate! I wish them luck anyway!
Roddy I think you just hit your next million-dollar idea!
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I’m worried about the logistics and obvious humour though Doug.
It’s so cold on Loch Ness that nobody would come off that ride with a monster between their legs.
#toorude
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lol. Skol to the monster banana boat of lock ness!
I remember @Rodread post something based on cuttlefish few months back. Happened across this. Didn’t know if anyone was aware. I wonder where AWEs version is? But loving the idea. I’m surprised they didn’t use eccentrics or a ratchets mech. With a planetary gear set. Especially in mind of magnetic gearing and low friction joints. I’m sure they will have there reasons. why they did what they did?
Enjoy.
Debunking alert:
This video had me fooled for a while. “Wow”, I was thinking, “this is like what somebody should have built 100 years ago!”. But then I put a little more thought into it:
- The slats seem to follow the water level a little too exactly. If energy were being extracted, there would have to be some resistance of the slats to following the water level. The “plank walkway” would have to try to stay straight, to some degree, or else it would not be extracting any power.
- Like the Betz coefficient for wind, the turbine slows the air going through it, forcing a lot of the wind to just go around it, so it can;t collect all the energy in the wind. This should behave similarly. We should see some resistance being presented to the wave, and some evidence of the wave(s) reacting to the obstacle presented by the “plank walkway”. Instead we see 100% compliance with the water surface - seems unlikely.
- Once the view transitioned to underwater, then X-ray vision of the inner workings, I realized this is just another “rendering”, which of course can act however the artist dictates, without necessarily reflecting reality.
- I also noticed maybe the apparatus is longer than it needs to be, with the literal following of the surface contours of the water possibly unnecessary - overkill?.
- The inner workings look like they could become quickly clogged by corrosion, seaweed, floating trash, fishing tackle, barnacles, etc.
- It would be fun to try to run across though…
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The spine would need to stay horizontal and resist the movement of the waves so that would dictate a minimum length of several (long) waves I think. There are more videos on their channel with test systems being tested. This one for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxCw--rbL04 Here you can see there is some delay before the floats come down again. I’m sure there is more information available elsewhere if someone is interested.
It might not be swel? but you get the idea. The ideas been around awhile. there seems to be several on google patents.
Have fun.
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As a gadget-oriented person, not to mention a surfer, I’ve always found the idea of harnessing wave energy compelling. On big days out there, the waves are literally the size of a freight train tipping over on your head, and you become like a water-rat, frantically trying to tunnel under one wave after another, before you run out of air.
BUT
In all the years of wave energy devices being tested, it seems they never catch on. I’m left wondering if there is really enough energy in the waves to be worth trying to harness. Maybe it just SEEMS like a lot of power, but when measured it is just not enough to bother chasing(???)
An interesting aspect occurred to me: The series of planks (a dock?) is TRYING to stay straight. Power is being produced by the FALLING WEIGHT of the floats suspended between wave crests. (Energy generated as portions of the “dock” sag downward by their own weight) While the appearance is compelling, I’m not sure that is really the most effective way of extracting energy from waves… Seems like the power that could be extracted would be limited to the weight of the floats times the distance each float is lowered, leaving a lot of energy in the water.
Its a little bit like the betz limit. If you extract the whole wave, there’s no movement in your harvesting device. So one must leave some residual untapped energy. Or do it in more than one step.
Full extraction would leave the water flat. Seems very hard to me to accomplish
Hi Tallak: A “Betz Coefficient” for wave energy is a new idea for me. Not sure if anyone has contemplated such before. Not sure it is valid, as wave energy may be more like photons than a flow. Wind must exit the area of the rotor somehow, leaving energy in the exiting flow. Waves? Hmmm, not so sure. An interesting question!
Another aspect of Betz with a wind turbine is the rotor reaching a steady-state of energy extraction, which slows the wind, forming a bubble of slower air in front of the turbine, that then forces air to “go around” the turbine instead of going through the turbine. Not sure how that might relate to waves. Maybe someone has examined this idea in the past, but it is not anything I’ve ever heard about. Could it be possible there is a similar, but different, effect that somehow precludes full energy extraction from a wave? Hmmm, inquiring minds would like to know!
The Betz coefficient relates to a planar disc region of energy extraction. As you point out, the wave energy extraction device under consideration is long, constituting “multiple steps” or at least a continuous, non-planar region of extraction (at least non-planar perpendicular to the flow). Seems valid that if the water is left flat, you have extracted all the energy. I don’t see anything preventing that, although getting the water to be 100% completely flat might have its challenges.
The patent linked above seems as good a place as any to start learning about it if you are interested. There is also Google and similar.
I would assume some part of the wave is reflected…
This is a link to demonstrate something: Random Engineering, Physics, ..., Concepts and Ideas - #213 by Windy_Skies
HtmlDigest7.html (405.1 KB)
@dougselsam said:
Wow you lost me, Windy. I saw a passage about wood, assumed somebody here, surprisingly, had some actual knowledge or experience, then saw it is apparently something I wrote long ago. No wonder it sounded so accurate to me! :0…
I have trouble when you move messages to other topics. Hard enough to be here when one realizes how much time it drains from your day, but then when the messages get shifted around to various topics, it just leaves me hanging. Oh well, like my Mom used to say, "If it were anything important… " (I forgot the rest of what she said, but it was probably appropriate.)
You’ll get used to it. They mostly go here. You can click on the link in the split to follow the split.
My latest reply to you is here:
Or just scroll up.
When I first looked at the concept. it looked like modular pontoons you get for a few k a pop.
Just caught after after a a few hellish days.
As @Windy_Skies mentions wood being prototype freindly. Good as any place to start. Wonder if a wind version could benefit from lifting elements? Though admit a little wayward. It did remind a lot of mulberry harbours from ww2.
But that a completely different idea. Though there have been a few companies that looked into using similar principles for wave power. Oscillating water column and tidal barrages. What swel made. Is an awesome concept in principle. Though I can’t say how practical it is. There is a design based on a buoys that Ankers to the sea floor. With the non stationary part doing all the work. To me it seems that this is just an array of them, All linked up. It did remind me also of streamer the majorettes use.
Options are there. I’ve noticed that the pressure wake gets mentioned. there must be away to use that to someone advantage? Even if it used as a baffle to direct incoming energy.
Just a ornicopter mechanism. Though I was thinking of variable eccentric For both wind and wave. I wonder how it would apply itself to swel? More engineering noms. trying to remember what out there and put it to greater use.
Another mechanism that could work? As a inline wave generator.
I’ve a mind for variable eccentrics. Might also do well with wind? Depends how you attach streamers?
An example of the environmental and safety hazards of wave energy
Yep that looks about right. High winds wrecking a spud platform. Even had the same issue with the d-day landings. If done right? Faced it to the general direction of wind and waves. The whole rig should act like bridge piers. given enough time an artificial reef can form. Forgive me I don’t think that a negative. It highlights proper placement of these in line wave energy devices. Deeper water would be more appropriate. Should account for most tidal ranges. Ankered off shore. In 60m-100m of water should do the trick. If it looks like there’s going to be a problem? do something different. Should eliminate or minimise the issue completely. Most reefs are in shallow water rarely deeper that light can penetrate. Below 200m you usually reach a twilights/dark zone.
The guys that managed to get some of the deep water oil rigs might know a thing or two more that I do here especially on the Ankers. You have the added bonus that you have greater swells in the deep oceans. So more opportunities to get to grips with. If environmental damage is the main problem? Then take the appropriate steps to mitigate. Much like the guys on the oil rigs did with contact Ankers. If the storm conditions enter danger levels? it could always go into a submarine mode… minimising damage to equipment it may still work as well under water? If close enough to the swells? That it has a suction force acting upon it? Then everything’s gravy. Also bare in mind that there is a huge issue with old ships more over what to do with them? Fairly sure the retrofitters would love a go at them. Essentially it just a boat at anker able to generate electricity. Not the first generator ship idea I know of. Sure it’s a fair bit of work. Especially adding the equipment in. If they used to be able to turn around battle damaged aircraft carriers? Uss Yorktown being a good example. this should be a sinch for them. You can have a whole fleet of them. Especially if you can plug a play. Chittagong is a major site of ship braking. So if these ships can be headed of before they meet the reapers torch. Then about 25% of global energy can be made this. You would also have a platform to test new ideas. Or even ad too. If one of these ship could be retrofitted? With most the existing technology. I don’t see why a GW plant wouldn’t be possible. You do get ship able to send submarine through a porthole. That have not sunk during operation. You can get tidal& oscillating water columns. Plus the in lines wave. Plus wind and solar. Plus any energy that can be generated of the Ankers. As a giant solenoid. You could say it game on.
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I’m aware of,
&
Though never see one that’s completely green.
Even with my imagination it get interesting the ways this could go.
If standing still then it can generate some of the need electricity.
Honestly there’s many way to go with this. That even AWEs could stake a claim to retrofitting for a kite powered powered ship.
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A vessel can’t stand still if it is to be used for AWE. It will drift downwind. The bigger the AWE pull, the more downwind motion. This is a loss both in terms of having to go back upwind later, losing effective windspeed by going downwind, and no apparent wind generated from sailing forward. So ideally such a ship should be a sailboat with a keel.
Alternatively one may anchor the vessel. But the pulling forces are quite enormous, so this may be a bit difficult to do ad-hoc.
We should also respect that the size of the AWE rig mounted on such a vessel should be as big as possible. It’s not going to be a tiny kite on a huge vessel. More like a sailboat I expect.
Just chuck this bad boy over the side @tallakt
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Bare in mind lads that them big ship have huge spools. My thinking on this was going a few way. You have the massive parachute kites. Or you standard flexible wing. Even the multitude of kite designs on here. If it likely to pull down wind the. That could be and advantage especially of it ankered the anker lines are giving slack to generate some of the power. I believe there is a complex ankering system out to hold ship steady. Like I said load of ways to go about it.
I know this is a bit of a old vid but as a starter it not bad. To demonstrate ankering. It even mentioned types of Ankers. For a better idea. Also dynamic ankering system.
Likely to be present on certain vessels. Though I can’t say how many. Oil rig are known to use them to keep them stationary above a selected drill site. I hope a little more context helps? There are some beasts of Ankers out there. Some as big as a house. Usually safety operation must be observed. Especially because anyone hit definitely won’t be feeling anything afterwards. I wouldn’t want to be the one that has to clean that horror show up. That certainly would ruin you day. It would be a vital step toward green powership. Regardless of developmental vector. I don’t know where things are today? definitely a few starter examples.
I think you proved my point. The first is a really complicated subsea gear and the second DP system can’t be used for AWE because producing the required upwind thrust to not drift will probably consume electricity more than you produce
Though right in one aspect. Though not accounting tidal shift, oceanic currents or riptides. Allowing for low energy hall in anker lines. Plus mechanical advantage. Even if you use lift bags where needed? to reduce the energy requirements. The same way they lifted a plate section from the titanic. Or many of the artefacts ever recovered from the sea floor. It depends on what the top number is compare to expected production? If the top number is more than the energy it take to hall in the anker lines? Net power can be created. Adversely like you say. if the top number is greater then then expect power generation? Negative losses will occur.
It just about making sure That the energy gained his higher than the requirements needed to hall it back in. It might be a bit out of the box view on it. Plus you have
Incredible Modern Monster Ship Anchor Handling Offshore Technology, How To Loading Anchor Working #2 - YouTube the spool that can be a generator itself. So there we go.
I used to be on onboard keeping comms up for rig moves quite frequently. (>20 years ago)
There was a lot of anchor handling. Jeez it’s noisy.
Those Bruce anchors were massive. Each chainlink as big as myself.
Really like that Stevtensioning video. ta.
Dynamic positioning is on like everything now. Often installed comms tied to that for the moves.
@Freeflying please for the love of the wee man just spell with us - Anchor
@Rodread
Spelled it that way for years. Just googled how I was spelling it. Realised that tossing one of these over the side wouldn’t help. Bit of a difference there.
So anchors? Ankers? Much be a regional thing? Or preferential mistakes? Seems like heaven almighty was have a laugh at my expense? The irony! The worst bit is I hadn’t realised. Nor was unaware of alternative point of view. Thanks for the enlightenment. Supposed to create power! instead of tossing it overboard?
Neither spelling show up on spell check. Or predicted text. Stunned, have my own theories about that. Tower of Babel stuff. Some minion creating havoc in the English language. We all so engrossed that nobody noticed. So reliant on predictive text that a key skill like spelling goes a miss. Interesting but alarming all the same. If this was Middle English I’d be doing fine?! Chaucer Was known to spell the same word many many ways. Well I guess it what you know and when you know it?
New song idea:
“I once had a hankerin’ ta do some ankerin’, but then I got a canker sore…”
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Sounds like the wurzels for sure. Be it blackbirds or your combined harvester. Suggested lines: With no dinner or tea, a bore was he. A sore that left work undone. No energy for the maid, or the parade. The Anker’s left ashore!
Wouldn’t be out of place in a Irish bar,or a Scottish kaley, or a West Country mead hall. Especially as the music get going. Drinks flowing. Everyone’s having a song dance and a laughing. The buffet table full as well. Everything swel/swell. A party a feast indeed.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/3137191139866848
Thought I’d share this link. As liked the mechanism this guy has on his boat.
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Paste it here? I’ll assume you need to login to see whatever it is.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MachinePorn/comments/wz06y2/first_nacelle_of_the_vestas_15_mw_wind_turbine/
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As someone who built his own 16-foot canoe from plans in Popular Science Magazine at age 11, and had fun with it with friends on our local bay and swamps for years, always daydreaming of such ways to power it, I’ll say this is one I never quite thought of. I was more leaning toward an inboard lawnmower engine with a driveshaft out the rear transom, running a half-submerged fan/propeller. Hey I was just a kid!
If this were a wind turbine, it would be at the “Professor Crackpot” stage.
Next inventive steps:
1: Convert reciprocating paddles to at least one paddle wheel as seen on the old Mississippi riverboats, for smoother operation.
2) Convert the paddlewheel to a regular propeller for higher efficiency.
These steps would bring this idea from the 1700’s (or even the stone age), to modern times.
You can see the similarity to wind turbine design philosophy.
A) At the bottom of the heap is the “look, it wiggles!” principle, only pursued by the most unwilling-to-accept-reality wind energy wannabes.
B) Taking a step up, you’d have surfaces oriented perpendicular to the flow, pushing or being pushed, in the direction of the flow, like this canoe.
C) You move up again to a circular motion of these same types of surfaces “pushing” or “being pushed” downwind. (Ancient revolving-door wind turbines in Ancient Persia, and Savonius machines such as anemometer cups, riverboat paddlewheels)
D) You take yet another step up, and tilt the surfaces slightly, then let them rotate always across the wind, and you have a regular wind turbine or boat propeller. This transition was over 1000 years ago in the Greek Islands for wind turbines, much later for boat propellers.
E) Lose the soft sails and place fast rigid blades with defined airfoils out there, as in Europe (windmills) 1000 years ago.
F) De-Evolution: Go back to a merry-go-round configuration, attempting to apply modern fast blades with defined airfoils to the original revolving-door windmill design of ancient Persia.
Step F is where so many “Professor Crackpots” feel that they are “progressing” in wind turbine design, never realizing they are regressing by over 1000 years!
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Questions about Moderation
True. I remember being in audio sales, and a friend sent me Tony Robbins tapes “Personal Power”. I would put them in the car tape player and listen. Just from listening to the tapes, my sales doubled - what had been a $ good day was now a bad day, and within about 2 years I was hanging out with Bill Gates, and being offered millions for my suddenly famous new invention. But I got bored with that aspect of life and went back to being “normal”… Happy here on my Southern California ranch, I’m living the life that ex-presidents aspire to, without having to go through being president to get here.
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This is tangential or relevant to this recent comment: OCEANERGY - #39 by ufechner7
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/business/economy/portugal-russia-natural-gas.html
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Yeah, before I develop a canchor sore!
Also, it’s “Bear” in mind, not “bare”.
The list goes on.
How about the concept of “complete sentences”? What about subject/verb agreement? What about being careful about singular versus plural?
Oh well, he spells the way he wants, I don’t think we’re going to “fix” him here.
At least he comes up with some good stuff…
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@dougselsam,thanks! I do try to find some anchor points. Can’t get the gold without needing a shovel. Still plenty of digging to be done. I’m still trying to get back to the future. I’m still wondering where Hoverboards got to? Still toying with the idea, as I’ve made a few things. I’m working towards a working prototype,drawing on vast some of knowledge. So far I think the best thing I can come up with is? Ionocraft with hovercraft technology. taking advantage of airflow and the energy’s the rider can put in. So far been working out how to mesh a few concepts into one design.
Ramjets, dyson pure cool me concept, co flow jets and iono craft.
Basically combine as much aerodynamic into a compact board.
I just need a few nozzles for the pure cool me, scaled down to find out.
Just bare in mind the Average kick force is about 1000lb.I assume that thrust as well. So it’s only a case of calculating compression ratios. To Provide much need air flow, air density, & Lift. full grown adults range form on average 9stn-15stn so 95.2544kg on the top number. The thrust must be greater to lift a rider clean off the ground. Reckoning the possibility would be key. Considering the thrust potential of the human leg. Potential losses due to drag and the harrier jump jet. Figured it was possible, it gave me something to aim towards. Mark 1 was a mock up, A visual gets to grips. Had imagined forward motion creating. circulating heated vortex convection currents. Then floating on hot air. Defending got a few good ideas. Just need to work on the execution. I’m lucky enough that it can be retrofitted to an old board, from of the shelf parts. Essentially need need to scale down some of the parts I’ve already made. To fit the board size.
Bear in mind not to have bear feet or they’ll end up bare from the suction on top of this hoverboard
I don’t expect that anyone should be bare footed here. Skate shoes are a must! What see i grisly bear when I see it spelled “bear”. Bear where? I’ve seen chickens deboned by a Pratt&Whitney. Safety regs apply. The aim is to have the fewest moving parts.
On the machine
not the rider
Machine, definitely machine! Face palming myself for not making that clearer 
Proper donut moment. The rider is the main moving part. The rest can be solid and purely geometric. The rider providing the input for the whole system to work.
OK that was a good start but now you’ve gotta spell Grizzly Bear right.
And by the way, I’ve told several people about how SuperTurbine(R) was really invented as a poultry processor, that first slaughters and de-feathers, then cuts fillets, then throws them onto a solar barbecue. It was only after running it for awhile on a windy day that we noticed the power meter was running backwards.
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He’s using for a tank. I bet I can be made into some awes or wave power generator. I can’t say how effective it would be? But it’s interesting! Look a lot like a inline wave generator. that could work with passing wave action no matter the orientation?
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Guess who’s back with bright ideas?
Even one suggestion so dark that it might make you wince?
10 suggestions. The duck was one I really like. as it reminded me of all those bulk carriers which could be retrofitted. So duck duck goose.
Stop watching him. Maybe @dougselsam can do another rant about him.
This is better How does it work?
As long as the core knowledge is there? I can’t see what the problem is? He recently did a thing with hydrothermal carbonisation. It doesn’t matter so much if it a man in a boiler suit, or a lass in her summer dress. Provided the information is consistently correct it game on. sure good king Doug can provide a custom roasting and debunk. He’s good at them! As far as I recall, from the early training vids from performing engineering operations? Which lead in to the 6983. No partisanship was a must. More viewed ok this guy doing this? Lets figure out why? if there was something to learn? you would learn it! Impartiality, non biased and most important transparency. Yes there are various format, some that get to the point quicker than others. The was one, where some guy thought of using a feminine hygiene product, for lighting a light bulb. Yes that was was bogus! He seems to like his magic bulbs? So how it made is good. At the end of the day it just a presentation. takers or not? He’s spending hours on thing most of us can barely spare 5 minutes for. He done a solar cells based on phase shifting light. Not my everyday bread, still I do believe he call a few ideas crazy.
It isn’t. He’s a blind man leading the one-eyed. Just because someone sounds confident and enthusiastic doesn’t mean they are smart or correct or you should listen to him. He’s wasting everyone’s time and you’re growing dumber by listening to him. Go watch this instead: Dianna’s Intro Physics Class, or anything else.
Well that got religious quick? Two archetype mentioned in the first few words. Have been wondering if it a left or right wing thing here? Anyone behind the sheildwall going to be ok? Anyone on the sore end of it? Perhaps not? I guess that’s the difference with observations based STEM fields. It also reminds me that, it sometimes a magic show. Main challenge explaining is things to the unknowing, that things exist. You never get to know existence by ignoring it’s dark corners. Its guy like this that give the unknowing a heads up. Yes he may not be worth a squat? There are levels of dumb. Imposter syndrome is one. it well known counterparts the other. You have those who think themselves smarter than they are? then you have the exception those are hyper intelligent but struggle to relate to others? Both are pretty dumb situations to be in. Growth is just a matter of direction, It generally don’t have labels bolted on? Maybe a mission report? Or a story of today I explored……? Like fishing, wrong bate = no fish=no fish supper. Scope is awareness. Thank for the links!
https://calwave.energy/
Seem I wasn’t to far off with my line of thinking using a mulberry harbour.
This company is using the idea. More over what look like a beetle design to achieve energy production. Enjoy!
I have a saying:
Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.
Teach a man HOW to fish and he will teach someone else, and that person will teach yet another person, until the oceans are emptied of fish.
We’re almost there now.
Funny I just got that same email about Calwave from Interesting Engineering this morning. Ever notice that Interesting Engineering, Smithsonian, and Popular Science, all feature the same stores within a day or two of each other? I’m probably missing other online “magazines”. Looks like one more consolidation of the information you are allowed to see.
The funny thing about CalWave is they aren’t forthcoming with two key facts:
- How does it work?
- What is the output?
All they are willing to say is it lasted 10 months instead of 6 months, but I’m guessing it had some problems so they had to stop it.
They mention a reel for positioning - I’m thinking maybe it operates by underwater float-reeling.
To me it looks too material-intensive for its intercepted area.
Next, Youtube fed me another wave energy video.
Seems like the repeating theme with wave-energy stories is how every one eventually fails.
I am not sure why, but it’s been going on for many years.
OK so anyway, this sciencey-guy on Youtube is engaging and fun to watch, but I think you have to understand his target audience and probably goal of just attracting a lot of views to monetize.
While he might trigger a good idea in hardcore tech people, he’s mostly talking to kids and the somewhat scientifically-interested fans. I wouldn’t place too much confidence in the accuracy of his explanations. It’s more like “Look at this - Isn’t it interesting!”
He’s the kind of guy who is likely to repeat the Bernoulli explanation for lift, probably because that was how it was explained to him 50 years ago. Since then it has been amply proven as wrong, even just by calculations on paper, let alone CFD studies, but it still gets repeated ad infinitum. The effect is not sufficient to explain the high amount of lift an airfoil generates.
Just a few days ago I saw David Attenborough use the Bernoulli explanation for lift to explain how a fossilized flying reptile flew, quickly stated, as though there was no doubt, yet he had it wrong.
The thing about science in general is, it is almost always wrong. Scientists used to have elaborate explanations for the “strange” movements of the planets, and using those complicated explanations, were able to accurately predict apparent positions of planets far into the future, but the whole time their theory was 100% wrong.
Turned out all the planets were orbiting the sun, and “science” had been 100% full-of-s*** for hundreds of years. Meanwhile it later came to light that the heliocentric model was already understood in ancient Egypt, and probably before that, then just forgotten.
I’ll predict that it will turn out the same for everything from “the big bang” to “dark matter”, “the expanding universe”, maybe even “black holes”, on and on, all similar to thinking the Earth is flat, because it so obviously “is”, on a small scale, but stepping back to see the big picture, we realize it is an approximation, good for designing a building, but not for large land surveys.
It’s all about inappropriate, uninformed extrapolation of limited information that seems accurate in a limited scope, to a larger reality.
Anyway, when you see this science-guy’s videos of crafting a wind turbine from plastic spoons, he’s working on a tinkerer’s level - maybe impressive for a junior-high-school science fair, but why isn’t he able to build a decent actual wind turbine? Because he’s just fooling around, having fun. That doesn’t necessarily make him an authority on science, just more of a guy making fun videos with a scientific theme.
Oh and I almost forgot - lots of people with very active minds think of themselves as “breakthrough thinkers”. But to come up with actual breakthroughs requires more than just an active mind, or a high level of interest in many subjects. Those are essential qualities for an innovator, but not sufficient qualities. They are sufficient to be one more “Professor Crackpot”. To be an actual, effective innovator requires one to be able to analyze things in great detail, see where others are getting it wrong, and be organized enough to put it all together into something new that works better. Just being interested or curious doesn’t get you there. Just like being a huge football fan doesn’t make one an NFL champion quarterback…
I predict, because energy will never be free, that people will keep on inventing new wave and wind energy designs forever.
Now heres the hard question; why arent more people inventing new solar panels? After all solar panels are the cheapest renewable power by now, arent they?
Just shows, these inventors are more concerned with their own contraptions than standing on the shoulders of giants. Not a good recipe for success. But human nature won’t change, so better to make sure we are not those guys. Which, to be honest, is not easy to say if we are or not…
Hi Pierre: I think it is because wind and wave power are more accessible to more people. To design solar panels requires getting into quantum electronics and material science. It may be that certain expensive facilities, and a lot of specific knowledge, are required.
Meanwhile, anyone can build a working wind turbine, and wave-power devices are even easier to understand, which may be a clue why so many wave-energy designs are not working out - the people pursuing it don’t want to squeeze their brains too hard. Anyone can see a wave and imagine some way to extract some power, but that doesn’t mean they have an effective, efficient approach.
I know of two new directions in solar: Perovskite panels, and thin-film technology. The perovskite handles different wavelengths than silicon, and could be combined to raise efficiency. The thin-film efforts may make solar easier to apply to currently-unused surfaces.
OK here’s another one I forgot: “New Atlas”
So far, that’s:
- Interesting Engineering
- Smithsonian
- Popular Science
- New Atlas
Seen one? You’ve seen them all - same articles, within a couple days of each other. Who is spoon-feeding them “the stories”?
If I had to guess? Our new monarch? He’s quite invested in these sorts of things. He certainly be interested in getting people out there to do it? The real question on my mind is how would he achieve it? Why, social media of course! Dig deep enough you sure to find HM sovereigns fingers all over it. He has more connections than most people would dare like to admit. On phone call and it goes viral. Now the blessed queen is taking her final bow. I suspect we shall see more of it?! I’ve long suspected yet not able to to prove with out a shadow of a doubt? they know where all the boffins are and they where to find them. Im still wait on a summons. Even if to tighten a few wheel nuts? It something the did during ww2. With the world going into another turning. It will be the job of the creative type to step up, and embrace the new era. It might answer the who, the how, and the why?
I might say it a great opportunity to bring a king along side. You might get a fascinating?
You mean the Romanian who owns Dracula’s castle in Transylvania?
I hadn’t not considered Dracula? But it’s an interesting take! I more referring to the 70 years of queen Elizabeth 2nd. yes she was related to the house of trastamara and Dracula. Even Ghenis Khan if I recall correctly?Plenty of meme hints on that. The former prince of wales. Had quite the vested interest in the green agenda. Hedge layer supremo and environmental activist. This is where you could mention hotel transylvania because of his connection? Lol I’ve long suspected he’s had his fingers in the pie so to speak. Though he might shy away from admitting it? He want to bring the marginalised to front and centre. So if someone swoops in? Put the deal on the table? you can bet your bottom dollar he will take it up?
The “It isn’t” is premature I think. I’d have to watch more of him to confirm this, which I’m probably not going to do. My opinion of him is based on his spoon wind turbine nonsense, and then this video about heating a pool with waste heat from a crematorium. That’s all a waste of time when you want to make a working turbine. To improve on something you first have to understand how that something works, and what you posted doesn’t help with that. First learn the basics. He’s distracting everyone with random tidbits that you can’t place the relevance or irrelevance of until you have a basic understanding of things.
If you put dynamic pressure ½ ρ V^2 into cylinder (sphere) stress \sigma_\theta = \dfrac{Pr}{2t} , you get \sigma_\theta = \dfrac{½ ρ V^2r}{2t} , which might have some relation to needed distance between bridle points, and needed strength and thickness of materials. Something like that should be covered in kite design books?
Hi @Windy_Skies
Can you confirm a source to verify … I think you’re saying
numbers of bridles required per span length and material weight per m^2 raise with higher wing loading implied by longer spans with their higher speeds and masses
Maybe this is better, convert wing loading \dfrac{kg}{m^2} to pressure P=\dfrac{g\cdot kg}{m^2} , and then put that into the cylinder stress formula. Or not, I don’t know.
The idea is that this is an alternative to Beams - Fixed at One End and Supported at the Other - Continuous and Point Loads and bending loads for soft skin kites so that you may bound your scaling factor estimations. Also it could be useful if you are trying to design a soft skin kite.
If you take a wing loading of 50 \dfrac{kg}{m^2} , the maximum of a ship kite, page 9: Deformation and Aerodynamic Performance of a Ram-Air Wing, and some other arbitrary values, you get: \dfrac{50\cdot9.8\cdot1}{2\cdot0.001}=245kN . You could use more accurate numbers to get more accurate results.
I don’t know if this equation is accurate, but I do think all variables are relevant.
Random links:
OK , besides looking almost identical to my offshore SuperTurbine™ floating offshore designs, and using my patented Spar-buoy floating foundation, this “story” repeats the typical vertical-axis fan-boy talking points.
Of course they have to say: “Doesn’t need to aim”, and how about this passage that reduces from a logical argument to outright name-calling:
“Today’s fan-on-a-stick offshore wind turbines, according to these innovators, are built around on-shore designs and land-based thinking that will simply never work cost-effectively out in the deep ocean. There’s a massive opportunity here for fundamentally different designs to disrupt a rather sick-looking industry, deliver vastly cheaper energy from offshore wind farms, and by doing so, make a huge contribution to the clean energy revolution.”
So they think calling wind turbines a derogatory “fan-on-a-stick” will make their system that uses more material to produce less power better? Funny.
It is obvious to even a child that their design uses at least 4 times the blade material to sweep the same area as a “fan-on-a-stick”
All they need is one set of their “struts”, aimed at the wind, to sweep the same area as 2 sets of struts and a fat set of blades oriented against centrifugal force, which requires more strength = more material = more weight = more cost…
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Anyone care to predict whether this press-release concept will ever actually be built? If so, maybe they could use some AWE!
The Air Canada “news” headline says they bought 30 planes.
Then when you read it, it says they agreed to purchase 30 planes in the future, and bought a $5 million dollar stake in the supposed producer of the alleged aircraft.
As you read on, it starts saying the airplane “will” be able to fit 30 passengers - but that is only for very short hops where it doesn’t need its onboard “generator supplemented power”.
And it looks like none of this “will” happen until 2028 - six (6) years in the future.
We have to be very careful reading these “news of the future” promotional press-release articles.
Think of the Makani “news” of the past, saying how many hundred homes they “would” power in Hawaii by date Z. Did any of it come true?
Well, experience says this is similarly unlikely to happen as outlined.
From what I’m seeing, it looks like this is a fictitious airplane that does not even exist, that what we’re seeing are renderings only, and, depending on this company’s progress with what is just a concept, not to mention surrounding events around the entire world, and even the weather itself, this “story” is likely to completely change, or simply become one more wish that never happened, within the six year timeframe. Let’s remain optimistic, but let’s not be gullible. Have we seen this movie before?
For alittle while I’ve been looking into means to support myself in the years to come. Thought I note worthy to mention a few things going on in the winder world I’ve encountered I know have some value. As many of the engineers are looking for easy ways to fund their project. One potential option is homegrown gems and semiprecious stones.
Because I YouTube a lot you get to learn a few things. Artificial rubies, jade and many others. With the advent of carbon capture this it may incentivise the process? Everyones favourite
Then it struck me that one of the potential minerals is nephrite. Aka jade.
Jade price per kg current sits at $25,000 – 5,000,000per kg but it can be more dependent on source.
With that in mind it reminds me of another video I watched
The content creator end up making artificial rubies. As far as I know rubies go for a pretty penny these days at least $1,000 per carat obviously the various minerals composites will create different gems with various markets values.
There are also alternative use in the construction industry opening the door to less environmentally damaging ways to create stone. Ever since Iceland
I knew something was coming over the horizon that would shake up the industry. Altogether means an industry that can effectively be carbon negative. Like they say? brick by brick! Hour by hour! Futures are born!
If, the current level of development continue? It might be plausible to say at some point in the not too distant future? humanity will offset its carbon output! I’m fascinated by the idea of jade towers. I can see why the Chinese love the stuff. Why it was so important to them? in many of the Ancient ruling dynasties. It could tempt the Chinese to invest heavy in the technology? To offset there pollution are revitalise their economy. a stable China means a stable world. Lest want or need for them expansion into other avenues. Which open up trade opportunities fro the rest of the world. India and China are among the fastest growing economies in the world. Even with the slowdown Chinese interest still out compete many of their over seas rivals. I can’t say how much a change in funding will help most ordinary people and their companies? I do know one thing, a self sustaining economy it better than one solely based on debt!
More hand-waving and happy-talk. What I’d like to know are details of how these systems that have been supposedly “sold” and which may be actually “operating” are actually working out - as usual…
This is starting to remind me of all these electric air taxi projects, including
Joby (early AWE player pivoted to air mobility)
and also
Vertical Aerospace Vertical Aerospace begins eVTOL flight tests, with a pilot on board
as just two examples. We must see a new air taxi project every week - just never a finished product or system in operation. All news remains perpetually “in the future” (echo… echo… echo…)
Hi Doug: I’m not sure if you have looked at the content of the image, or what you should see (IMHO). If you do, you may see that there is likely no:
Hi Pierre: I’m not quite understanding your message.
I did look at the image - what’s to see?
Also, on Linked-in, I saw this:
Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 6:00 AM - 6:30 AM (your local time)
Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH, Messeplatz 1, Hamburg, DE, 20357
WindEnergy 2022, SkySails booth B6.202
Roderick Read and 8 other attendees
Indeed, everything is in the image. But that’s my opinion and I don’t think it’s shared in AWE circles. And yet, it is obvious. It’s up to you to find out what I think, or dare I say, what you should think.
Just as in any Energy Project, Site Assessment is a vital project requirement. Addressing Site Assessment for AirborneWindEnergy Systems, therefore, shows serious efforts towards some project implementation, at least in terms of feasibility at a given location.
@dougselsam comments to me seem rather off-topic and this calls to question the rationale for ‘all questions to be addressed by the author’ as demanded by forum rules. Some comments are simply out to denigrate the author and derail the topic, such really need no bother, IMHO.
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Hi Pierre: Experience says your concern would be with spacing.
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Once again I check my email, see I have some message here, so I click on the link to this site and the first thing I see is "topic closed, moved to “slow chat” - as usual. So I click on that “slow chat” link and find myself clicking maybe 50 times to get up to the present message on Slow Chat. I’m supposed to reply to John, but he doesn’t have much to say. All I have to offer is 30 years of fielding questions and aimless accusations from people who say they are developing new wind energy systems, but who are not now, never have, and never will…
I’m really tired of these ever-shifting “topics”. I see a message and the topic has changed before I can even finish replying, then the system interrupts me so I end up rewriting the whole reply and now I don;t even know where it is or how it git here or anything. This whole thing is getting to be more and more of a complete waste of time and energy.
Wind Energy Industry facing layoffs:
It is worrying that the wind energy is performing layoffs when we have global warming as a slow trend and an imminent energy crisis ongoing in Europe… should have thought wind was booming now
Hi everyone: I just ran across this TRL readiness comparison of EVTOL flying electric “cars” - a similar comparison might be made for AWE systems. At the top of their list is JOBY, a former AWE company who quit AWE almost immediately after starting in about 2008:
LINK:
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“TRL readiness”?
As you put it… Is that getting ready to be ready?
Or something like technology redundancy level readiness?
Hi Rod: Yes I knew that was redundant when I wrote it. Yup I guess it’s “getting ready to get ready”. I remember when what’s-his-name from the previous forum went thru periods of fixation on the term TRL. Trying to think - what were the “TRL” of Makani and Altaeros? I was never a big fan of such analyses, given how often they turn out to be meaningless. But it sounded so similar to AWE in the sense of the number of entrants and competitors, and the task of trying to make any sense out of all their favorable press-release-type info versus whatever reality lurks beneath the surface, I figured I’d throw it on the fire over here. I’m not ready to give an opinion on the likelihood of success for any of these EVTOL projects, but I’d be hesitant to climb on board for a ride, given the possibility of just falling out of the sky, depending… .
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TRL is like people telling us Tesla can’t do autopilot without a lidar on the roof.
If you are an investor you may be in the unfortunate situation that you would have to consider the TRL report. For the rest of us, maybe just let that stuff pass in quiet.
If the airtaxi company knows what it is doing, it wont need an outsider to tell then how much work is left.
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Mark Moore (Whisper Aero formerly did an AWES study @ NASA) always has a good comment on LinkedIn on how far from the truth the marketing is in many EVTOL
However, I did see an encouraging comment from him recently… High praise
Just the fact that they CALL them “taxi” ahead of any fact tells you a lot. They are basically saying nobody will want to buy one for their own use. A vehicle designed for a single use: to get you to the airport. Dreamers. You think airports want a few hundred of them flying around in their airspace? If they were any good, they would be in use RIGHT NOW, in some place that has no rules against them. Vaporware.
Wind Energy Industry facing more layoffs. This time, rather than Siemens, it’s GE Onshore Wind. The article does mention competition from Siemens as a factor. (They don’t mention offshore wind in this article):
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OK so both GE Wind and Siemens are laying off people, at least for onshore wind. Here’s an interesting twist: A U.S. Court has decided GE (Largest U.S. turbine manufacturer) can’t sell On-Shore turbines in the U.S. anymore, due to Siemens patents:
https://nawindpower.com/judge-rules-ge-offshore-wind-turbines-cannot-be-sold-in-u-s
Hopefully the two companies can reach some agreement.
Correction: The ruling was regarding GE’s Haliade-X OFF-SHORE turbines - sorry, I screwed up.
https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine
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Here’s another “look, it wiggles!” wind energy “breakthrough”:
Von Philip Bethge
04.10.2019, 18.00 Uhr • aus DER SPIEGEL 41/2019
Hello John,
This article is already three years old. And also the picture seems to represent a SkySails’ offshore kite farm, far to any jet-stream.
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DaveS: Every AWE journalistic item tells a story. None are entirely correct. In this case Der Speigel does get the Jet Stream part wrong, but so do contributors here get many facts wrong, never necessarily corrected. However, every item, right or wrong, adds its bit to societal awareness of AWE, that leads to increased action. This item also records New Forum socialization.
The graphic is a nice window into SkySails PR even earlier than 2018, so with many now quaint details, like bridles the artist depicts too short, and rectangular rather elliptical wings. Look close to see the two-line system SkySails depends on, a thin upper line for handling and safety retention, with a traveller up and down, lately dispensed with in the SkySails 100.
OK I put this one in “news COVERAGE” rather than just “news” because what this article says (this new turbine design is “good”) is WRONG - bad info.
This is a new one for me: The article DOES NOT MENTION HOW IT WORKS. All it does is make typical “Professor Crackpot” claims about how wonderful it is, without even a single clue as to how it (supposedly) works.
It’s called “Aeromine”, and it had me thinking of a theme song for this engineering fraud/disaster: Ohh oh oh oh sweet Aeromine" (Guns & Roses Sweet Child o’ Mine).
Now you might notice that I am “denunking” this turbine WITHOUT KNOWING A SINGLE DETAIL OF HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO WORK!
How could I POSSIBLY throw THIS baby out with the bathwater WITHOUT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT HOW IT 'WORKS"???
Well this might start giving you a clue of how I was able to confidently say “idiots idiots idiots” for 14 years and counting:
Once you get used to identifying “The Professor Crackpot Syndrome”, you DON’T NEED TO KNOW ALL THE DETAILS TO JUST SAY “Yup, that’s another one!”
I see no moving parts - it advertises no moving parts.
It targets building-mounting (which could work fine, but is nonetheless “Professor Crackpot” territory - the good professor is mysteriously attracted to building-mounted concepts…)
It claims “They can generate up to 100%” - 100% of what? Does it beat the Betz coefficient? No. 100% of a building’s power needs. When used in combination with solar!!! What a meaningless claim! How about telling us in Watts? Give us the swept area and weight of the device so we can compare it to other wind energy devices? No need for such inconvenient formalities from “Professor Crackpot”!
No, they just state, offhandedly, in the headline, that “This groundbreaking motionless wind turbine is 50% more efficient than regular turbines
They can generate renewable energy up to 100 percent.”
If that is not a 100% “Professor Crackpot” claim, I don’t know what is!
The article is written by a girl, by the way. And it is nothing but fluff. Not a single detail of how it actually works! Just idle claims of alleged greatness - In a supposed “Engineering” publication!
I think we’ve seen the design before in more detail from another, previous “Professor Crackpot Press-Release”. I think it uses airfoils to generate a vacuum that then pulls air through a small fan (turbine) through ducts. One more dumb idea.
Now you guys have been exposed to this 'Professor Crackpot" press-release/headline stuff for long enough now to immediately recognize it when you see it, right? I mean, like, nobody here could take this article the LEAST bit seriously, right? And you SEE all of the “SYMPTOMS” of “The Professor Crackpot Syndrome” here now, right?
OK, well, maybe at least SOME of you can see what’s going on here, right?
Hopefully MOST of you can see it???
So you can SEE by this point, that there really IS a “Professor Crackpot Syndrome”, with known symptoms, as easy to identify as red spots identify chickenpox, right?
Well I hope this clears up the “mystery” of “How can Doug come in and immediately discard, out-of-hand, any apparently-nascent “superior” wind energy technology, as utter garbage, right out of the box, even without knowing all the details?”
You SHOULD, by this point in time, be able to RULE THIS IDEA OUT with ONE QUICK LOOK, right?
Yet - look - there are a LOT of SERIOUS people BELIEVING in this utter garbage, right? They’ve even got BASF supposedly salivating over a test unit on their roof. Does BASF have a lot of “really smart people” onboard? OF COURSE!
And that is exactly how this stuff works: It doesn’t MATTER HOW HIGH YOUR IQ IS!!! If YOU DON:T KNOW ABOUT WIND ENERGY, YOU COULD BE A GENIUS AND STILL FALL FOR 100% WRONG STORIES LIKE THIS!!
And how can I dismiss this idea out of hand so easily? BECAUSE I’VE SEEN HUNDREDS OF DEVICES WITH THE SAME EXACT SYMPTOMS! I’m not even going to list the symptoms again. You don;t even need to see the picture or hear any details - just the claims made are ridiculous! Half the price of solar - without any exposed working surfaces - without any noise - SURE! If you don’t know the symptoms by now, you just aren’t paying attention.
By the way, did you notice the spacing between rooftop turbines in their “rendering” of a huge logistics warehouse? (A gigantic new logistics warehouse just like it was recently built near here, by the way)
Why the spaces between the turbines? If they work so well, why would they leave spaces between them, rather than maximizing output by placing more turbines in the spaces between turbines? Because they are IDIOTS! COMPLETE, MORONIC, WORTHLESS-TO-THE-CAUSE IDIOTS!!!
And YOU should be able, by now, to IDENTIFY WIND-IDIOTS AT A MERE GLANCE.
I hope thjs explains how real wind people can so easily identify complete idiocy in wind energy design. promoted by “really smart” know-nothings!
It does not MATTER how many “PhD’s” they may have. When it comes to wind energy: Idiots are idiots. And MOST people ARE complete idiots when it comes to wind energy, sorry to say.
But that is good, because by comparison it makes us “smart”! Right? Right???..
Oh well, I guess it didn’t do any good to pick the “category” of “news coverage” for my post on some “news coverage” regarding a NON-SOLUTION, nonetheless being touted as a “breakthrough” for wind energy.
Why has my thread already “closed”, and my messsage “moved” to “Slow Chat”? What IS “Slow Chat” anyway? Chat for people who are too “slow” for a regular chat?
Anyway, here is what I am noticing about “press coverage” in general:
Within the last year or so, there are several online daily publications with a “science” and “engineering flavor” (even if written by incompetent, cut-paste, compliant, unquestioning, press-release regurgitators).
Now here is the WEIRD part of this:
The above article appeared in “Interesting Engineering”. Maybe an hour later the same exact “news” is released by “New Atlas” (which had a different name previously).
LINK TO OTHER ARTICLE (which I will not bother to read)
So THIS post IS ABOUT “Press Coverage” but has been arbitrarily MOVED for unknown reasons to an ill-defined category of “SLOW CHAT” where know-nothings expose their ignorance on a daily basis.
More on the topic of “news releases”:
I expect this same article to appear in three (3) more supposedly independent and unrelated online daily content “magazines”(?) with the next 2 days. There seems to be a new central “decider” the picks which (totally false) stories the supposedly “independent” science and engineering websites will carry. Either that, or they are all stuck for ideas and have started just reading and copying each other. In any case, it is redundant nonsense that is often being promoted. Not a single fact-checker in any of these supposed technologically astute publications knows their ass from a hole in the ground! What a bunch of morons! If you want to know what’s wrong with the world, there are apparently no smart people left! :O…
Your topic had no relevance to Airborne Wind Energy. And if rants belong anywhere, it is preferentially here.
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OK Windy, just in case you haven’t been paying attention, “Airborne Wind Energy”, like it or not, is a SUBSET of Wind Energy, sharing many, if not most, aspects thereof.
And ONE MAJOR aspect they share has always been a constant and persistent influx of supposed “breakthroughs” that are not only NOT breakthroughs, they are actually NOTHING BUT LIES by people who do not understand the first thing about wind energy to begin with.
I think the people in this group started out saying “What is this guy (me) even talking about?”
Now I think many people here realize they are indeed involved in a “field of dreams” which is often “The Land of the Lost” in the sense of literally tricking well-meaning people, from investors, to employees, with complete nonsense masquerading as “cutting edge technology”. In my opinion, talking a post specifically exposing “press coverage” verging on outright promotion, with ZERO diligence by the author, of a non-starter of a wind turbine design, is the EXACT sort of thing AWE people need to stay ahead of lest a similar situation affect them or the people they care about. To me, it seems people running these forums do not really care about facts or improving wind energy, they just want to feel like they are somehow “in control” of a conversation, for whatever reason I do not know. But you can get an idea of the general personality type from the one who was “banned” and yet still posting here.
Anyway, what “topic” it falls into I could care less, really, it is just more annoying behavior to see this sort of knee-jerk reaction to facts being presented. This forum is about as interested in real facts as the last one. Meaning “not at all.” In fact most people need to be beaten over the head with them for a few years nefore they can even admit there ARE any facts involved. Really, it seems more about being part of some sort of “coverup” than anything else. The magazines, the forums - it;s all just about keeping the lies going for more clicks and more readership. Like “No! You can’t tell people how things really are!!!” It’s like you all want to live in a fantasy-world where any facts are just inconveniences to sweep under the rug to keep enjoying an continued diet of “all nonsense all the time”. Oh well, have fun!
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And by the way if you read my post it is about “press coverage” of this turbine, more than the turbine itself. And if you want to cal it “a rant” then maybe you think it is a good design, that the near-duplicate articles that mysteriously appeared an hour apart are accurate, and everything just is fine. Sounds about right. So why do you HAVE a “topic” of “press coverage” if a post specifically about press-coverage is moved from it?
What is YOUR opinion of this NEW phenomenon of multiple tech-news outlets all getting their “stories” from the same source, all publishing similar articles on the same exact topics within the same 2-3 day window, over and over again?
What is YOUR opinion of supposed technology “authors” who ask no questions and just cut-paste a dubious, lying press-release, pretending they “wrote” legitimate “articles” when they obviously did little-to-no research AND have no knowledge of the subject matter at hand?
What is YOUR opinion of mentions implying that this hunk-of-junk that probably can’t make even 30 Watts in a strong wind is rated at 5-6 kiloWatts? Do you think it’s OK to tell such blatant lies to thousands or even millions of people?
Can you see any relevance to Airborne Wind Energy and the challenge of separating fact from fiction in this field? Or do you think everything you’ve heard and read in AWE is true?
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It’s not something I can change so I’m not interested. This forum is also not about the changing press landscape or how current press coverage is often flawed.
I suggest finding different reading material if you find what you are looking at now lacking. Maybe a sci-hub search could be interesting.
The more interesting goal of the forum is to advance the field I think, posting links to press releases or press coverage doesn’t help with that, and I don’t think is interesting.
It’s basic internet literacy to know not to trust everything you read online and if you’re interested in a subject to do your own fact-checking. Anyone capable of advancing a field doesn’t need to be constantly reminded of that, and as such your rants are too frequent at best.
…and for all your mention of facts, the comment I moved had more opinions than facts. You’d need to back up your opinions with evidence to have them have any value, and then better to leave out the opinions and let the evidence speak for itself. That’s how you make a convincing piece of writing.
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Windy I’m here to explain basic things to often clueless people. With decades of designing, patenting, promoting, getting grants for, prototyping, testing, experimenting, manufacturing, repairing, and operating wind energy systems, what you may perceive as “opinions” ARE facts. It’s just that people who don’t KNOW the facts see what look, to them, like “opinions”. Once you know what you’re doing, your opinions are factual.
It turns out that we have explored the underlying “technology” behind this latest “roof-mounted magazine-article-miracle” that claims to be “50% more efficient” and what was it - 50% less expensive(?) etc. etc. etc. than regular wind turbines.
I did not realize that from the first article that was bereft of details, but the second article had more details and we could see it was the perforated “airfoils” using the lift suction to generate an airflow through ducting.
Note: There is a pre-existing wind turbine vacuum effect (from the 1930’s I think - very old anyway) that is VASTLY superior to this method, yet it STILL got no traction.
I think one of the main lessons here, besides the obvious one that this “idea” is a bad idea, is that such “press coverage” is meaningless because the “authors” know nothing about the subject matter and are just regurgitating what they are told, without much, if any, analysis or independent assessment.
The point being, just seeing an article about your shizzle on some website doesn’t mean you have a good idea. It just means some “author” doesn;t know any better, and a given proposal “sounds good” so it can generate views as “clickbait”.
Participants here like Jason immediately start hypothesizing how the same effect might be used in an airborne system, making it highly relevant in peoples’ minds at least, to AWE.
Sure, to a degree. But:
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Slow chats been busy? @Windy_Skies is making good points @dougselsam. im being reminded of a engineering principle often joked about in workshops. Give a man some knowledge and he can make something? If that man then add to what he’s given? Then gives it to some who knows better? Progress is made! It doesn’t have to be the “right” solution? as it just one of many solutions? Each with its own merits. Depends on how aware you are? your starting point? what you learned as you went along. Even if you had a vague idea to begin with? There is a multitude option out there? Some even I’m yet to encounter or understand. Understand relevance is key to success? More often than not? in my experience at least? were often get swept on down stream and it takes time to process the new surroundings. It always a learning experience.
Even when looking at the betz limit itself? The wind itself is a object moving at velocity. There is correlation to the mass its able to displace? in any give swept area? I’ve see the brick wall argument? The airflow will not stop at a brick wall as it inclined to follow around it? It’s why involutes are a great idea? As it turns the moving mass back in on itself. It is where e=mc2 can be used? Because the mass of the rotor/turbine itself could be equal to the mass of wind flowing over it? Or the mass of the wind can be greater than the mass of the rotor/turbine. Mass A is the wind at velocity
Mass B is anything the wind encounters. The mass of any rotor would be critical in an involute design. It just a question to, how you can make that available to produce electricity? Air itself is just a low density fluid. Third state of matter in only money? More like the forth these days. Condensates and plasmas Being the other two. tai chi teaches you that you can take the opponents mass and redirected it. Often with very little input? The same true when it comes to wind energy. It why the design of Francis turbine has a high efficiency. When used in hydroelectric schemes.
The reason I can imagine a lot if solutions is I don’t try to reinvent the wheel. I look at what we have already? Then see if it can be out to good use on other projects? Sure it got some blindsides. Like what don’t I know? It takes a lot or reading, observations trials and error. Find a thousand way that doesn’t work? Only to find the one that does?
Some times a fresh pair of eyes is all that need to spot what often overlooked or missed entirely. Maybe not up to everyone standards? But an expert in their own field no their less? Better to know a single thing well than a million thing poorly? Tend to be the engineers way?
Read the comments, I was like ok? It been busy in slow chat?
The areomine it similar to a concept used in the 1800.
He made a horizontal windmill. Which was the potteries version of the aeromine. So Principle it’s a very old concept. Just has a Modern spin on it.
It not a dead loss. It just another way to extract energy from the wind. Just something else to consider?
Yeah Jason, “Slow Chat” is for “slow” people, and it’s been “busy” since “Windy” seems to have a knee-jerk instinct to shift posts from the topic where they belong to “slow chat”. It’s mostly his way of feeling useful, pretending to have some influence on wind turbine design by, if he can’t control peoples’ speech outright, at least forcing their thoughts into a “topic” he feels puts the person making the post “in their place” - which has to be below his place in some way, to make him feel important.
I have not been here for a day or two, since I remembered if I “log out”, I don’t get the “reply” button, which saves me a lot of time since I always feel like I should set ignorant people straight in their thinking about wind energy, and there is so much ignorance here, but it is really a waste of my time. I can’t save everyone!
OK I checked your reference to the Darwin turbine. I can only assume you are referring to this video:
Of course it’s that same guy - as usual. That windmill is a typical newbie-non-starter of a design - instead of just building a windmill he builds an entire building - saving the need to aim! Wow, what a concept. Interesting how his video doesn;lt evn show the louvres openeing on the side where he blows the fan in. And of course it culminates with a computer fan lighting an LED - a Dave Santos-esque “proof” that today’s wind turbines have once again, been superseded!
You know what blows my mind about not only this guy “Darwin”, but DaVinci as well? By this time, wind power had been the main non-animal source of industrial power in Europe for 500 years. The windmills were highly sophisticated and automated, using well-designed airfoils, incorporating automatic aim and of course overspeed protection to prevent damage from high winds.
Meanwhile, you have the big-name “geniuses” like “Duh-Vinci” promoting his non-starter of a “helicopter” in complete ignorance of the highly-developed machines for trading wind energy for shaft rotation: wind turbine rotors, all around him. Yet “Duh-Vinci” could not be bothered to notice he probably walked right past working (sideways reverse) “helicopters” every day, while they operated right in front of his eyes. Oh, and by the way, anyone who looks closely at his “battle tank” can see that turning the crank would have rotated the front wheels opposite to the rear wheels, so it would not have worked either.
I liken Duh-Vinci’s drawiings to stuff 6th-grade kids write in the margins of their schoolbooks when bored. And the Mona Lisa - largely ignored for centuries - nobody even knew or cared about its location - until it was stolen, which made “the news” and suddenly “Duh-Vinci” was the world’s greatest genius and his childish drawings of stuff that would not have even worked, and a painting of a not-so-attractive woman were endlessly celebrated.
Hmmm, so why was “Duh-Vinci” celebrated as such a genius?
Because he worked in weapons development, and changed history by inventing the semi-automatic firearm, which allowed peasants to shoot knights in armor, rendering their armor as just a lot of useless metal, setting the common people free from the tyranny of the kings.
Nobody talks about that, but that was Duh-Vinci’s actual most significant invention, and one that actually WORKED. Back then, as now, technical people often found work in armament design.
The strange thing is the REAL geniuses of this age (and hundreds of years before) were the people who designed the working windmills (NOT just sketches of non-workable fantasies!).
The first question in my mind is, why do we never hear about the people who designed these working windmills with the highly-developed, high-speed airfoils? Could it be that the windmill inventors did not come from influential families?
Anyway, you may notice that this guy “Darwin”'s “windmill” did not even have a good-quality windmill rotor as its propeller! No, he used single-surface, cloth “blades” comprising a high-solidity rotor. Maybe he was the Dave Santos of his day. Single-skin.
In any event, this guy making the videos seems to have a fixation on using sheet-metal louvered HVAC vents from hardware stores for wind energy capture, and yes, he is pretty much a crackpot. As usual, it’s all about lighting an LED using a computer fan. You can also power such a device by simply blowing through it with your breath. As always, there are a million ways to make SOME electricity from the wind, at SOME cost. The question is, do you have an actual IMPROVEMENT over existing, highly-refined wind turbines? The same question applied 500 years ago! It is actually pretty funny to think that wannabe innovators today are STILL this STUPID after 1000 years of wind turbine refinement - STILL saying THE SAME STUPID THINGS about wind energy! Really pretty amazing when you stop and think about it.
Recently I was contacted by a guy who had watched one of my videos, and wanted me to check out his “wind energy improvement”. “Sure”, I said. Of course he had nothing but a pile of typical, long-disproven “Professor Crackpot” features, all combined into one neat self-defeating package that might be expected to return about 1/10th (one tenth) the energy of a regular wind turbine of the same size. Of course his device also used about 10 times the material to sweep the same area, rendering it about 1% as effective, in total, compared to modern wind turbines.
I tried to be very nice and gentle with how I worded my response to him, but by now, you can probably imagine how he reacted: He was PISSED!!!
He could not understand WHY I “could not understand” why his idea was “clearly superior”! He explained that his device was better because it sucked air through itself… - a perpetual motion machine I guess, right? The wind powers a rotor that then powers the wind? Obviously it made no sense, but the only thing he knew was he was a genius and his idea was the next big thing in wind energy and how was it possible I couldn’t understand how superior it was? Sound familiar yet?
Well I suggested he might want to read a book on wind turbine design so he would understand why his “idea” had many disproven features, but to him, dedicated to his own ignorance, that just sounded like a sarcastic put-down. You see, these people cannot be reasoned with. And they are everywhere. Even the IDEA of learning ANYTHING about the subject matter they purport to have surpassed is anathema. The idea that he should read a book on something!?!??!? OGM how could I be so mean?!?!?!?
Anyway, your guy Darwin was an overweight dim-bulb know-nothing from an influential family - by the way did you know the “scientists” of that time were busy telling “ignorant” peasants that stones could not possibly fall from the sky? Why? Because, well, as “scientists”, they had to overcome the “ignorance” of all the facts that surrounded them. Facts they knew nothing about because they were comfortably sheltered from reality.
Today it goes on still. Instead of “coming from a good family”, today’s crackpots are “anyone with an internet connection” - still coming up with the same worthless crap as the equally-ignorant people from 500 years ago. Wow, progress!
And by the way, the Darwin turbine idea is almost exactly like other, similar “ducted buildings directing airflow from all directions to a small wind turbine” that we’ve seen here. NOT really all that similar to the “Aeromine” device. But very similar or really nearly identical to other crackpot designs we’ve seen here before.
You would think in 500 or 1000 years, peoples’ ignorance would have evolved, but no, the song remains the same. Nope, today, with fantastic working wind turbines all around us, people are STILL spewing the same ignorant crap!!! Unbelievable. Oh, and your mention of E=MC^2 : Wow, sounds like Dave Santos again - throwing scientific-sounding crapola against the wall, hoping something will randomly stick.
I hate to break it to you one more time, but to make a difference in wind energy, it helps to know how it works. And remember, out of 1000 “new” wind energy concepts, we’re lucky if a single one is even relevant, let alone an improvement.
No, writing several long, long paragraphs filled with with poor grammar, bad spelling, and questionable reasoning, amidst mentio0ning a million distractions, does not change anything - doesn’t make a difference. Not in the least. But nice to hear from you.
all very valid points made.
I’m afraid you won’t be braking any glass here? I know I’ve go mountains to climb. Somewhat try to put my English in order? I hope to the stars I’m not going to have to revise but any oh!
Darwin’s design as show on Robert Murray smith channel. Just show the multitude of paths taken over the years. In his latest forays into Darwin’s design? he made a bigger one? I sat thinking about Darwin’s efforts. Going you know how it would work if the flaps were co-flow wings? Yes it a lot of work. But do able if, you want to waste and afternoon or two on it? Just for the giggles of looks what I’ve built? Ive just made Lego’s version of a wind turbine?
I totally agree it can be a crap shoot sometimes. it’s very nice to see what you guys get up to. It been epic, the two throwing going on. Lots of sabre rattling. Even seen you guys bits chunks out of one another. I just share something I come around to finding. Though it interesting? Doubt I’d be able to complete normally. The diversify and specify thing. I had fun modelling a co- flow module this week past.
Its in section luckily for me the arrow points airflow out. Based it off golf ball dimples. Imagining the wings or fuselage made from it? Obviously testing can be done in cardboard. My next plan was tin cans, Just to test it out? Essential its a flying box girder. It flew down the stairs quite nicely. Though it did have quite the drop rate. Yet so see if it can sustain flight with input?
Doubt I be winning any awards soon? It was just basic nets folded to form required shapes. Just something I was toying with. Maybe to build something sci-fi esq.
As it goes for us brits? getting hold of bog rolls hard enough. With all the changes we’re experiencing, who knows where next week will get us? I like to think moon and stars? Let not get my hope up yet! Three prime ministers in a year? Keep it up, we might just have an advent calendar of pm’s before Christmas?
I just hope it just a phase? Though I doubt it somehow?
I will chime in from time to time? Even in the slow lane?
All I can say Is I’m not dead yet?
Glad you finally figured out who I was? though for some purposes I was hoping to keep it strictly to Freeflying, or on the drawing board? Saves me getting stalked everywhere I go. Would be bad to have a pint and a rando goes nuts? I get blue lighted to hospital for something? Though sort of made my first name obvious. I live and learn.
Glad to see you back😊
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I guess if I were WindSkies I would flag this as “not pertaining to AWE” and either delete it, or move it to SLOW CHAT. Oh wait, it IS in “Slow Chat”. Not sure why everyone else gets nitpicked about whether their shizzle pertains to AWE. I guess it depends who it is, what rules are applied.
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As everyone’s familiar with what rigs are? Seeing what @Windy_Skies posted, an interesting example of an engineering fail. Though it has to be said? it lasted longer than most people would have thought.
If I recall correctly? Destroyed in a storm. I hope x1 wind got there sums right? It looks like it could blow over?
It saying it down wind? Sure that’s going to put enormous stress on the single anchor point? And rip that steel like paper? Don’t quote me here? but the angular momentum going to cause that rig to turn towards the water. Spain can get lashing of hurricane force winds especially on the northern coast where you have the monster 120ft waves. The surfers Mecca is prime example. If I were a betting man? I reckon one good storm, and that’s going to be in the drink? Even if the do counter the rotation forces? Canaries you get force 10 and 12 winds. @dougselsam i wouldn’t worry too much. Unless they planning to go airborne if a hurricane? I think awes will be ok?! The question I have is, if it like and oil rig but for wind? Is is a semisubmersible? Followed by? Does it have dynamic stabilisation? Didn’t see windy mention it?
It a great development for deep waters. will it withstand nature’s brutality? If awes was to go the rig route? As competitive as the market is? How long do you think it would survive out it storm force winds?
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Daddy Long Legs
A seafront train with electric motor railway feet in 1890’s WOW.
OK we can do anything we like now.
That is cool.
As for the X1
If that’s a downwind turbine… Single leg at the front…
Anyone see a problem with the animation?
If I can successfully wrap my eyeballs around it, looks like maybe the rotor was installed backwards? Like they just used a previous rendering with insufficient modification?
Also, the conceptual line-drawing image of the wake vorticity in the air just rotates with the rotor but doesn’t travel downwind…
I always wonder about the stability of such downwind passive aim. It wants to use the thrust force of the rotor to keep it positioned downwind, but the sideways reactive force of the skewed downwind rotor, once offset to either side, would tend to make the position oscillate from side to side. So would the aim be stable or would it oscillate? If you imagine a disc on the end of a pole, like the head of a nail laying down on its side, allowed to pivot from the point of the nail, if the head were to travel a bit to the right, the wind would spill off to the left off the slanted head, pushing the head further to the right. So you have the reactive sideways force working against the thrust tendency to simply push the rotor downwind. Which force predominates? Would the aim be stable, or would it oscillate from side to side, constantly changing its aim, like an oscillating fan?
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I’m not completely sure, but I believe a saw a yaw motor mentioned in one of their patents.
Come to think of it, I do have a two-rotor downwind turbine that’s been running here for 10 years nonstop, and it aims well. One thing most people don’t know about regular upwind turbines is, once spinning into the wind, they tend to stay aimed into the wind, even without a tail or other guidance. In that case I think it’s the thrust spilling off to either side of a skewed rotor pushes the rotor back straight into the wind.
An interesting solution? Especially because it counters the rotation forces.
Does that mean that with the right anchors the tower can itself, be prevented from over rotating? Would this work for both upwind and down wind? In my mind it like that safety latch on doors. in this case, in the opposite direction to prevailing winds.
I’d imagine your going to need some extremely beefy anchors? Cables being 310mm diameter and up? In old English that about a 1ft in diameter.
With that in mind? What is the risk of the line snapping under repeated loading?
If you are taking slack lines into account? With various tidal range? Being able to operate in various weather conditions? Id worried the moment a force 9 Gale blew through it wouldn’t end up on its back? 82km/h winds.
The model also shows still conditions. I’m not all too sure how that will translate to open oceans? As you do get?
Know to sink shipping for generations. How would that translate to a tower system? Keep in mind you just spent a few million getting that far? Then the beast of our oceans comes to wrench your plans? If you got a whole farm? That going to be expensive and costly to fix?
Just something to consider as your designing a turbine?
How do you stop its self destruction mode in adverse conditions? Something mr @dougselsam always points out?
If It does self destruct? the environment clean up will be equally costly?
As it running cost and hiring a recovery vessel? Easy 1000 man hours before you get started? That’s being conservative?
Is the idea worth pursuing? Yes! but only in the sense of fore-planning for the time being? If you can you may want to see if you can get it into a wave pool? May help recreate some conditions it will encounter in the open ocean? Just to see how it performs then? Help sometimes to have independent results? Then cross reference to other studies into naval and marine engineering? Would give you a better platform to work from?
Great start though! A good approach! Using the wind to stabilise the tower.
If you get the chance? take a look and hydrometer designs? or the ship that’s called flip?
Always wanted a go? Would be awesome to see a turbine built this way? Good luck!
No, it is just for fun. This turbine cannot orient by itself.
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So I’m thinking about this: you want to wind a tether on a winch from a static point some distance from the winch. One assumes that there is a maximum deflection from vertical (from perpendicular to the winch) that the tether could have and that this is influenced by the tether tension. What is this maximum deflection and what other notable characteristics does the tether deflection have? Perhaps one could also assume that the shape of the wound tether on the winch is not flat, but crowned. What is the shape of that crown and what angle do the side walls have?
This is very easy to test, so maybe someone has experience with this, or maybe there is some theory.
I don’t understand what you’re asking
Different wording then: you’ve attached a tether around a cylinder, the tether then goes through a fixed pulley and attaches to a weight. By rotating the cylinder you can raise the weight.
I am interested in what shape the winding around the cylinder makes, most importantly how wide it is going to be. How wide it is going to be is I think a function of the tether deflection I talk about above and the distance of the pulley from the cylinder and possibly the weight of the weight.
I’d like to know this because I would like to know how close to the cylinder I can put the pulley, as the closer the better.
This is a good text. It is for wire rope however and I don’t like the very small 1.5 degrees fleet angle. Maybe for the more flexible tether you can get away with a bigger fleet angle, just like you can get away with smaller pulley sizes. IIRC minimum pulley diameter for wire ropes is something like 20 times wire diameter.
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17 posts were merged into an existing topic: Questions about Moderation
The trees were Straight yesterday, heavy cast metal outdoor furniture was standing up on concrete. Then it got windy. 22-foot diameter 10 kW wind turbine on a 120-foot tower, set sideways (furled) nonetheless kept producing more than rated power, exceeding 400 rpm (over 300 mph blade speed), multiple inverter resets, trees now set at an angle, furniture everywhere upside-down, wind turbine on 120-foot tower still intact, generating as we speak.
You might want to tie young trees to stakes when you plant them, if you now don’t.
Thanks Windy. I have hundreds of trees, on several ranch properties, many tied to stakes and poles. This particular trees is like 20 years old, and pretty big. It was ripped right out of the ground.
Yes I just saw a comment on wave energy projects citing the common adage, similar to fusion research, “It’s been right around the corner for 50 years”. I surfed a lot for years in some pretty big waves. Seems like a lot of power out there. But by this point, whenever you hear about one more wave energy project, the first reaction is Oh no, not another one - good luck with that - these things never seem to work out. The thing is, wave energy is NOT nuclear fusion. It seems like it should be fairly straightforward to develop wave energy. But it just never seems to happen. Not sure if the power is just not there, or if it is one more case of “idiots, idiots, idiots”…
Thanks to DaveS:
"
Filling a gap in AWE history:
The diagram at the bottom (after the video below) shows rigging details that we now can do far better.
[Kite Obelisk Project @ Cal-Tech EDU - YouTube]
Note starboard pilot does a kite jump at the end of video. Wild.
THE RIGGING DETAILS
Fuzzy image from broken link icon but clear enough to read the lines-
An important detail is that no one at Caltech actually believed Egyptians raised monuments by kites, that was a droll counterfactual lark to show kites could have done so.
Dave Culp, having struggled to get kite power recognized as serious since the 1970s, when he pulled a small ship by kite across San Francisco Bay, in defiance of the Oil Shock, was mortified no one would take the Obelisk feat seriously, that a few kilos of nylon lifted several tons of concrete. Behold, the Engine of the Future in ancient-alien guise.
Indeed, US Gov ignored Dave Culp. He ended his career doing ridiculously trivial research on parachute lines for the Army. To this day, DOE still prefers anything but kites flown by specialist kite energy pros to make power, but do fund inexperienced charlatans who correctly fill out the paperwork and jump thru any immaterial hoop to collect a fat check, for failing. Dave Culp came to Austin in 2006, to woo me (Dave Santos) to work in kite energy, then trained me intensively to carry on his work. DOE remains the biggest US impasse.
"
And who exactly could these “specialist kite energy pros” be? How much energy are they generating by kites right now? How much have they ever generated? What makes them “pros”? They make a living producing energy, using kites?
It almost sounds like you are talking about “idiots, idiots, idiots”…
Yes there are certain requirements to be taken seriously in any endeavor. For example, to be taken seriously in wind energy, significant levels of measured electrical output are key - if that does not happen, a project will not be taken seriously by any knowledgeable party.
And as I have long-lamented, there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get funding - but as Jesus of the bible is quoted therein to have advised, let the Romans keep their money - you don’t need it.
Anyone who really wants and really deserves funding can get it from many sources. The question is whether funding-seekers have sufficient knowledge, skill, and follow-through to be worth funding from a chance-of-success standpoint.
If someone not only has nothing compelling to offer, technologically, does not appear to understand the basics of wind energy, and has no track record of success, and is unable even to follow directions and fill out some paperwork accurately, they are unlikely to get funded - by anyone. And why would they be?
Back to the Jesus thing: If someone considers themself a “specialist kite energy pro” maybe they don’t NEED funding from entrenched government bureaucracies. Why would they let a slow-moving bureaucracy slow their rapid pace of advancement? Then again, if they are NOT advancing, maybe they can sort-of “blame” it on such a slow-moving bureaucracy, as a substitute for making any progress or generating any significant amount of power, ever. They probably don;t need funding to fail - they are perfectly capable of failing on their own - no funding needed!
(By the way, I always thought the stone blocks could have been lifted by kites to build the pyramids. Can’t remember a time when I did not think of this. I’m not talking about building a tower structure higher than an obelisk, and only then using a kite to provide a mere lifting force that could have been more easily provided by a few men pulling a rope, I’m talking about airlifting each block into place on the 400-foot-tall pyramids, using just a kite, no tower.)
That is a big problem with the circular firing squad and all the rest of the “kites to do physical work” enthusiasts: They TALK about great works kites COULD achieve, but they NEVER DO IT. You never see kites involved in timber extraction, excavation, moving water uphill - nothing. It;s all BS from a bunch of lazy BS artists who are heavy on empty “talk”, but nearly nonexistent on “action”.
I suppose if they were serious, they could easily build a scale model, put it in salt water, and see how well their idea actually works. But wait for it “Nobody will take us seriously unless we build it at utility-scale”…
Of course - the next “symptom” of “The Syndrome”
Every time I see another attempt to place a ring generator at the outer periphery of blade-travel for any turbine, whether vertical or horizontal, I think of the Honeywell failed roof-mounted turbine with its slow-speed, high-solidity rotor.
It is amazing how the same common symptoms keep rearing up, like a game of “Whack-a Mole” - the mole (symptom) comes up out of its hole so you whack it, but it just pops up again from a different hole.
If you try to tell any of these people they suffer from a well-recognized syndrome with defined symptoms, they can’t grasp what you’re talking about.
I had a guy with a sketch of an archimedian screw in a tube with a peripheral ring generator, ask for my analysis and possible partnership. It was painful to see his reaction as I tried to explain that his idea combined several known ill-advised and long-disproven “symptoms”, that it was a nice first try, but he needed to get up to speed on how wind energy worked in order to improve it.
He went berserk at the “nice try” diagnosis, dismayed that I could not understand the genius of his unassailable idea. How could I not see that the archimedian tube would suck more air through itself, magically yielding a vastly increased output (like a perpetual motion machine?) and be such a huge improvement for wind energy?
I tried to use the example of applying it to today;s utility-scale turbines at a 600-foot diameter and asked how much his tube might cost at 600 feet diameter and a half-mile long. (???)
Well of course at that point he had to admit it might be better for smaller turbines, missing the entire point that I had only mentioned today’s huge scale to illustrate the point that his design used way more material, equating to way more cost, than a regular turbine which, after 1000 years of development, uses comparatively very little material to sweep a huge area.
It would not have even made sense to try to explain how inefficient his backwards and inside-out design was, and there was no point in trying to explain any of the finer points regarding how turbines actually make power at high efficiency.
Of course he was far far away from building even the most rudimentary prototype. That;ls how he knew how much of a genius he was - no need to actually prove it - it was “obvious” from his sketch!
Like so many crackpots, he was allergic to facts, they would bounce off him like bullets bounce off Superman.
His last communication to me promised to make a video showing the world what a terrible person I was. At that point I was rolling on the ground laughing - as though this guy was EVER going to do ANYTHING but brag about what what he could not even comprehend was an idea that would use an order of magnitude more material to get an order of magnitude less power. That;s two orders of magnitude of “terrible” - like literally 100 times worse than a regular turbine.
It is all just SO PREDICTABLE - these people have nowhere to go but blame the experienced people for their own ignorance, trying to flip it over, as though they are the real authority and the experienced person just can’t understand what makes their idea so great.
Anyway, you’ve gotta appreciate the comedy. Of course, it helps to understand wind energy, in order to get the joke.
Yep, I get the Honeywell hype. I got all excited about flashy new turbine nearly a decade back. Where is it now? The only part that is remotely interested now? is the stator ring!
Going have to give top marks on picking out some of my old favourites. Just shows how bedazzled people are? when it comes to new shiny objects!
Any others you wish to mention? Any more lost to the winds?
Hi Doug, the reason why you, @Freeflying, myself and a few others like Honeywell turbine despite everything, is that the worst wind turbine is even better than the best AWES.
I really don’t know of any Honeywell turbine in operation today. Probably not designed for super-high winds which every location experiences at some point. It is literally impossible for that design to be efficient. I’m not aware of any decent output from them either - never heard anything good about one, from any knowledgeable wind person, ever. The only person I’ve ever known to say anything good about them, which was already second-hand heresay, is about the worst source of bad information about wind energy I can think of. Otherwise, never heard of one even working, nor do I know anyone who has ever even seen one. I think probably only a very few were ever made. Could be a collector’s item by now, a candidate for a future Professor Crackpot Museum of Bad Wind Energy Ideas. Either somebody talked some sense into Honeywell, or they realized how bad it was on their own. Considering all the critical aviation components they produce, they don’t need such a blemish on their reputation. But it goes to show you, even supposedly “really smart people”, if they don’t KNOW about wind energy, will fall for all the typical beginner mistakes, because wind energy is non-intuitive until you really get it under your belt.
I know this might be a Segway a little? But came around in some god forsaken hour flipped on YouTube to find this?
Considering that there were talks of co-flow jets?
Do you know of anyone using an aerospike engine setup to generate electricity? Awes or otherwise? Had seen this and it reminded me of a few things.
As far as I know awes haven’t gone down the aerospikie road? Though I could be easily wrong? It also reminds me a little of basking sharks
&
And all the fancy shaped ones?
Even making think about topping a solar towers with one of these?
Even bolting Honeywell ideas in?
Expecting crackpot diagnosis? Though with your scope? Who knows? What does @PierreB @Windy_Skies think? As slow chat veterans? Anyone else wish to chime in? Feel free to do so!
A response from Dave Santos:
Doug: “And who exactly could these “specialist kite energy pros” be?”
"
Doug asks a good question, as these pro specialists are not known outside of their elite kite design circle. As true pro status requires payment for goods or services, so here are two such kite notables for Doug to learn about.
Obviously, Dave Culp, as noted here, is a first-class power kite legend, pulling a small ship already in the 70’s, getting kites banned in America’s Cup sailing as “unfair”, and many other kite feats. Lifting a concrete monument by kite indeed requires specialized expertise armchair dreamers lack, and Culp was paid. Folks may confuse power v energy, but standing an obelisk up formally stores a bit of gravitational potential energy.
Dan Tracy is another sort of “specialist kite energy pro” that DOE NREL specifically rejected, but he pioneered a kite power ferry between Hawaiian Islands, and created the Pacific 40, the first AWES production run that sold out, one unit donated by kPower to the American Wind Power Center (Museum). These units charged batteries as a primary app.
A few more “specialist kite energy pros” could be cited, if Doug is still wanting to know who these rare folks are. On this Forum, Olivier and Roddy count, whatever Doug thinks about them being paid. DOE has not as a rule funded such folks.
Doug: It almost sounds like you are talking about “idiots, idiots, idiots”…"
Not exactly. Charlatans deserve scorn, but not our practitioner and scholarly experts in kites. Doug’s “idiots” insult is too crude for successful AWE funding scammers. “Professional criminals” is closer to the mark.
"
I remember that kite specialists in general did not have a good opinion of AWE with energy kite. I know this from having officially presented the FlygenKite (see the link below, in French language) at the 2012 Dieppe International Festival.
Ce sera aussi l’occasion de découvrir les dernières innovations, comme le “Flygen Kite”, ou l’“éolienne cerf-volant”, prototype d’éolienne conçu par Pierre Benhaïem […]
Translation:
It will also be an opportunity to discover the latest innovations, such as the “Flygen Kite”, or the “kite wind turbine”, prototype wind turbine designed by Pierre Benhaïem […]
Oh, sorry - that’s a term from wind energy for inexperienced people promoting idiotic ways to supposedly improve wind energy.
OK so it sounds like your “specialist kite energy pros” are defined as either people who have developed kites in the past, but not any AWE systems, or a few AWE people who have proceeded at a reasonable scale, with limited results, and therefore have not needed large amounts of funding. It reminds me of “advanced kite networks”, and you and John and Wayne trading made-up false credentials like “former Director of Research at Boeing” which was an outright falsehood, , or “President Pro-Tem of AWEIA” as though that was ever anything but your own internal back-and-forth within “the firing squad”. Building an online house-of-cards of supposed “credentials” that all started with Wayne as “former Director of Research at Boeing” when in fact he never even worked for Boeing at all. Now it;s on to “Jalbert” so you can pretend to have invented a gliding kite, when again, that is simply not true. You contacted the guy’s living relatives. More BS from DaveS. More bragging ahead of any accomplishments, trying to take credit for something you have never done in all your years of online BSing.
In my humble opinion, calling hypothetical-yet-undefined configurations of kites as “advanced” is just a symptom of how you operate: Congratulating yourself ahead of any fact, celebrating future results with no actual results to celebrate, trying to bullshit your way to perceived success on the internet, without ever actually doing anything noteworthy. A typical example of the often-found absurdity of social media. One more big-talker with nothing behind it, like the Wizard of Oz “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
Out of the whole list, I’d say Dan Tracy could actually fit the definition of an “energy pro” of any kind. Technically, he has sold a few of his devices. I like them. They represent the most simple and obvious method of wind energy using a kite, which nobody else has bothered to pursue, probably because they couldn’t get a patent on such a simple idea. So I guess Makani and Skysails do not fit, because they’re not on your list of low-output favorites who have just barely gotten anything to work, maybe still running model-air[plane propellers backwards as a substitute for rotors?
The kite-reelers at Makani were not “kite energy pros” because even though, as individuals, the personnel were getting paid to make energy using a kite, but they are not on your list of favorite small-players or non-players. The kite-reelers I guess don’t count, right? Skysails supposedly sold a few systems, but it seems nobody is using them, so they don;t count. Seems to me that the definition of “kite energy pros” is anyone who daveS favors, even if they’ve never flown a kite!
Big talk. no evidence - what else can anyone say?
Santos: True, because it’s my opinion being requested. The Wright Brothers had never made and flown an airplane before doing so. DOE’s historic roots are scientists who had never built an A-Bomb, and so on.
Doug has a lazy habit of misremembering and mangling quotes that he is helpless to cite by original documentary source (place, date), for the purpose of agitated ad hominem attacks.
Wayne German clearly was the figure who emerged from Boeing’s Flight Research Insititute as the public voice of AWE, that met at Boeing MoF, Tacoma. He was respected by the likes of fellow FRI members, Paul MacCready and Bert Rutan. Beyond mere “directors”, these are gods of flight. Let Doug claim this does not count as honorable, that DOE never properly supported Wayne and his noble circle because they had not already done AWE. Wayne has flown power kites. I taught Wayne to fly kites on Hood River, where kitesurfing was born, as invented by Boeing’s Billy Roeseler and his son Corey.
If any SuperTurbine is in regular use today, Doug is on a par with Honeywell, whose turbine stands among a hundred or so outside of the American Wind Power Center Museum. Not only do I see it every time I visit, but I also know the curators that struggle to maintain it. We especially love fringe oddball turbines. Doug should donate an ST to fly alongside Honywell’s.
Circular firing squad. Wayne never worked at Boeing. I always have at least one grid-tied SuperTurbine operating here. one has been operating continuously for approx. 10 years now and is still spinning.
Yes I figured you’d tell us you’ve seen a Honeywell turbine at the wind energy museaum you have so often mentioned when defending the Honeywell turbine as “a good turbine.” I had already said the only person who I have ever heard defend it was about the worst source of wind energy information I’ve ever known. You claimed the guy running the museum, Coy Harris, was your distant relative, who you now say struggles to keep the Honeywell turbine running? Or maybe more likely it is not running at all? As usual, all you’ve got to offer is name-dropping, saying you know people, citing false credentials, and broken promises of impending success, like the Jalbert-bragging that started a half-year ago, and which I will assume no power has been generated, or other progress with the cloth triangles. Extrapolate to 2030, and it sounds like 7-8 more years of empty talk to match the last 14 - you are 2/3 of the way to your 2030 target for commercialized AWE, and you have yet to participate in any of it.
Hello Jason - every wind turbine blades and aircraft wing uses what has been called “The Coanda Effect” (named after Africa’s largest and deadliest snake, the Coanda) since that is the effect that keeps the flow attached to the vacuum side of the blades, providing the vacuum that pulls the blades along.
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Santos:
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Doug, Note here I classify the Honeywell as I do the ST, as a “fringe oddball turbine”, never as “a good turbine.” You make false quotes up to suit biases, lacking accurate recollection of what was written and publicly archived, then make excuses for never being able to produce the original quote, like all the “idiots” easily do.
The Great Coy Harris is now retired, and new Windmill Curators carry on in his tradition as a “real wind person”. Surely no one before Coy worked on so many kinds of turbines, lovingly restoring most of them, from a centuries-old wooden windmill to a modern large-scale HAWT, and everything in-between. Coy and I are related via DC Harris, a great uncle of mine. We are pioneer stock of Texoma, the Comancheria, true “children of the wind”.
This place is a “home” to me. Wind folks of all kinds are “family”.
"
Dave: I’m only going to read the first paragraph of your post. If there was ONE THING firmly established in the old forum, it was the FACT that you continually issue false statements. The issue, with Joe being the sole arbiter of all things, became not a question of your falsehoods, which was firmly established, but a technicality of whether you were intentionally lying, or simply mistaken. That became Joe’s feeble fallback position regarding your posts. It is a common problem with people who continually issue false statements, such as politicians: The question is often “Are they intentionally lying or are they just that stupid”? Joe would take the position that we could not PROVE you INTENTIONALLY made false statements.
Now you, after recently accusing me of “ad hominem attacks”, (like a little kid trying to “tell the teacher”, hoping you can “out-technicality” me) you issue yet another false statement denying a previous false statement. Now it is a lie about a previous mistaken statement. But we can;t “prove” your memory is intact, right? So we can;t truly say with 100% certainty that you are lying - you might just be mistaken.
I will say this, because I REMEMBER YOUR EXACT WORDS, WHICH I ACTUALLY QUOTED: You explicitly stated that the Honeywell debacle was “a good turbine”. Supposedly as told to you by Coy Harris. The reason? You don’t know anything about wind turbine design, and so you fell for it like other know-nothing idiots, which includes the “authors” who regurgitate laying press-releases as “articles”…
Now we’re onto another subject, WHETHER YOU EVER SAID IT WAS A GOOD TURBINE. YES YOU DID. Your exact words included “is a good turbine”, describing the Honeywell turbine. But in your passage, above, you just made an EXACT, 100% FALSE STATEMENT. Is it “a lie”? I don’t even care. It makes no difference. It is just one more false statement, denying EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID, WORD FOR WORD. Personally, I do not think it is productive wasting any more time responding to your incessant nonsense. Why don’t you do what you said you would do half a year ago and show us how much power your collection of cloth triangles can make pulling trains up the sides of an open pit? When will we witness this latest absurdity? (As though a train is just some cheap item anyone could easily add to a wind energy system). Note to the rest of the class: Please do not take my lack of responding to Santos, in the future, as an indication that I have no response. It is not that I HAVE NO response, it is that there is NO POINT WASTING MY TIME OR ATTENTION TO ANSWER more false statements. It is more sensible to simply ignore them. My time and attention are valuable, not to be squandered any more than they already have been responding to nonsense and lies from the same old source. Have a McDay.
OK I’m thinking “I could reliably fly kites when I was 8 years old” -
or how about
“Anyone could reliably fly a kite - you could always rely on them getting stuck in a tree and then someone’s dad would have to untangle the string”
I’m thinking: “NONE of them? Are you SURE?”
And now kPower’s coup-de-grace of 2019 - stand back world:
So funny, I was lamenting the lack of meaningful activity on my favorite chat group website, so I decided to click on “unread messages” and the first message I saw was Dave Santos, and the second sentence was about me, and something I “simply lack”. What are the chances of that? Anyway, I was glad to read that “kPower” is (was in 2019) developing digital projection mapping on 3D figure kites for nighttime advertising. I see this message that first tries to cut me down (that’s OK, I can take it! :)), then brags about yet another kite breakthrough that kPower “is working on”,from 3.5 years ago, so I was curious to see the results after all this time.
I know when daveS says he is working on something, he is serious and reliable, so you can be sure he will quickly share his characteristically amazing results, but I guess I must have missed his amazing results this time.
Hey DaveS, where can I see a video of your (kPower’s) digital projection mapping on a 3D figure kite that you were working on? Oh wow, I can’t wait to see it. This is gonna be great! OK come on now, the suspense is killing me. Where can we see this kPower breakthrough, today? Thanks in advance! (Oh boy, I’m so excited!)
Hmmm
laser projection onto materials…
This kid is awesome but
do check the warning at around 7min what happens when it’s shone on fabric too long
In the Twin range or similar with more rotors than two, rather than the Serpentine range, right?
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Hi Pierre: The Serpentine Prototype and the California Energy Commission Prototype, now on a relatively low stationary mount, have been run occasionally for demo purposes over the years.
The SuperTwins™ at a 10-foot diameter, have been run for years at 3 of my test sites, including here.
Paul Gipe ran an 8-foot-diameter early version in Tehachapi for a year, calling it “the most powerful turbine he has ever tested”.
A long demo with eight (8) 46" diameter rotors on a tubular Chromoly steel driveshaft ran very smoothly at high speed, unloaded, but the generator was an induction motor that was not connected to anything, but if it held together unloaded (going very fast) in high winds, that was a good sign:
We used the same generator on another demo unit that had many many 5-foot diameter rotors, for a demo for a film crew that flew in to do a video on us.
The “5-Star” turbine with 5 rotors, each sporting 5 thin blades, which tilted back flat for overspeed protection, ran into a battery-charging (grid tied system with batteries) for months at one of our test sites, producing high power:
Here is a video of it producing 4 kW:
4 kW is really too much power for the alternators we currently manufacture in-house, so this 5-star turbine, which was able to produce well over 4 kW at a 5-foot diameter (unheard of in wind energy) eventually burned out its alternator in sustained high winds at one of our test sites. Needs adjustment to reduce high-wind power output.
An earlier 5-Star Turbine featuring a thinner-stator version of our in-house-built alternator, nonetheless exceeded 5000 Watts in truck testing a couple of times
including as a demo for NREL at a Windpower trade show at Staples Center in Los Angeles:
This implies that the thicker-stator version could logically hit 7000-8000 Watts, but in reality, such high outputs will eventually burn out a generator of that size, so further adjustments for overspeed protection are needed if we wanted to produce and sell such a machine.
Now really, very few customers would have sites with such high sustained winds to burn out the generator, but for people in a good wind resource, and they are the ones you really have to focus on, it needs more work to reduce the output in extreme winds. Nonetheless, the concept as a whole is quite viable, and could easily be scaled up, both in length, and by multiple units mounted side-by-side.
The one that has been running for 10 years here is a spring-loaded, tilting Firefly with just two (2) downwind rotors at a 3-foot diameter. It is still running to this day into a small grid-tie inverter.
Anyway, we’ve tested a lot of versions here over the years, and sold a few SuperTwins, including to Europe.
I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of the possibilities and I am hoping to get back into wind energy more, as time left from running my ranch properties allows - did not even renew our ski passes this year.
Our latest wind energy project was to once again replace our 10 kW Bergey turbine on a 120-foot tower that powers this facility.
This is our third (3rd) one. The last one burned out due to installer error leaving one of 3 power wires unconnected but just contacting its terminal. It started making a buzzing noise that the manufacturer insisted was “normal” so when the wire eventually fell away from its terminal, the turbine went into a very loud single-phase operation, and the furling cable was broken as they all did before someone found a solution to that, just as Bergey stopped producing that model anyway, but with no way to shut it down, it burned out its alternator. The good news is I got a used one from a neighbor who got the government to buy him a new one because they had to move his for an Army Corps of Engineers drainage project, so now I have two, one to rebuild with a new (used) stator, if I can manage to successfully remove the old stator - it is a big generator that weighs a half-ton.
There are lots more videos and lots more testing that has taken place.
OK gotta go now. Time to go work out, then cook some breakfast.
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Quite impressive. Do you remember the weight (with and without the generator) of the 5-star, and the wind speed (I guess about 13 m/s)?
Concerning Serpentine, I thought that it was indeed for the demonstrations.
You could use this post to present your company.
Hi Pierre: The generator was a thin-stator version, probably 25 lbs or so for the generator alone - our thicker version weights 35 lbs, but could be made much lighter. The rest of the turbine included a minimal steel frame and thin-wall steel driveshaft, with cast-iron bearing assemblies supporting the driveshaft, so while relatively lightweight for a fixed-mount turbine, that exact configuration would be heavier than necessary for an airborne application.
https://youtube.com/@psv62
There a few things here that might interest a few of you?
Maglev toy and a distinctive looking impeller turbine. Randomly popped into my feed. Don’t know how well it would scale? But something you can toy with? Looked a lot like a Francis turbine?
Enjoy?
Wow, the only new post in a few days.
Nothing new in AWE I guess, Huh?
The moment my eyeballs saw the blue thing, in less than 1 second, my mind knew who had posted this.
How many volts something can make is irrelevant. All the beginners like to measure Volts, as though Volts alone tells you anything…
You can walk on carpet on a dry day and get what, a few thousand volts when you touch a doorknob? Someone should make a generator using carpet, shoe soles, and doorknobs!
Its kind of neatly done, but I am «surprised» that someone would put so much work into a concept so far from state of the art understanding of efficient wind energy production. As it stands it would fall more in the «arts» category than «wind energy»
@dougselsam what an interesting mod suggestions? A wind powered vandergraph generator? They are looking at ways to generate electricity without magnets? Rubber and polyester in a TENG set up? Would just need pickups and your away. Pantograph perhaps? @tallakt well if wind energy can have some class to it? The sure an arts inspired turbine is not new. There are plenty’s out there. I was just looking at it for components and assembly angle. How big can you make one? What would be optimal diameter in this case? I’m looking at this being nesting in a far bigger shroud?
Maybe you will find others who are triggered by this design, but for me its just not very compelling to improve on a poor starting point. For arts I prefer the more serious stuff, paintings, music, dance, theatre etc.
Yeah, that turbine design could learn lot more from art.
It’s too solid…The blades are too close…
“Space is the Breath of Art”
Frank Lloyd Wright
The original windfarm turbines in the 1980’s used simple (Tesla-invented) induction motors - no magnets. Overspeed protection was stall-control by the limited RPM range - the wind gets too fast the blade automatically stall due to a too-high angle of attack.
Regarding the VanDerGraff generator, I think it should be done! How hard could it be? Then you run a wire up it and attach a key at the low end, put on a Benjamin Franklin costume with a wig and everything and do demos’. Tell people they can experience getting struck by lightning, and luckily, there is a VanDerGraff generator “just in case there is no lightning” - the show muc go on! “OK now just touch this key…”
Yep, I like your thinking. Though I’d lean Into, “look what Thor left behind”? Shocking! he could’ve clean up after himself? Ben Franklin certainly would be a fun opportunity. The weird and wild world of flying sparks.
Tesla induction motor looks like it going to be a Sunday good read. If I recall? usually these type of motors have the crab claws set up. where the flux is shifted between pins. Often know as universal motors/ alternators. Working on switch reluctance. A good choice for micro generation. Parts are easy to come by. Scrap washing machine or an old automotive workshop. Van der Graff generator could be part of the design with incorporated induction motor? Just depends on the drive belts? Worth a go? Added bonus is anywhere in that drive belt can generate electricity. Which some parts can be used to excite the coils. Not not sure if you can get a 1 Tesla field coil for wind? I know they have a multiple Tesla field strengths for tokamak and stellarator. As far as things go the strength of the magnetic field is key. Could help with the scale of thing? Taking your basic design to previously unreachable highs. All thanks to wind power van der graffs. Given half a chance it’s skate/trolley wheels and polycotton belts. All while dressed as historical figures? Neat idea!
GitHub - OpenFAST/openfast: Main repository for the NREL-supported OpenFAST whole-turbine and FAST.Farm wind farm simulation codes. This might have wind turbine airfoil data.
https://forum.openscad.org/UIUC-Airfoil-Coordinates-Database-td20264.html
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2019.0118 A chordwise offset of the wing-pitch axis enhances rotational aerodynamic forces on insect wings: a numerical study
Michael Dickinson (CalTech) 1: How Flies Fly: Lift
Michael Dickinson (CalTech) 2: How Flies Fly: Power
Michael Dickinson (CalTech) 3: How Flies Fly: Control
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Nice: A biologist tries to explain “lift”. His “Bernoulli” explanation is long discredited as not sufficient even to explain lift from a bird or airplane wing. There is just not enough lift generated for flight by the mere difference in transit time from top to bottom, and that includes the fact that the air flows back, over the top, much faster than the wing’s forward motion.
I only watched the first video - one could waste all day listening to this crapola. I hope to do a video on the correct reason wings fly, which I understand, but which “nobody has figured out yet” according to “authorities” such as Scientific American:
He has studied and has done experiments on how insects fly for the last three decades. This is an excellent talk. He gives short and very clear overviews of the relevant theories applicable to his research and shows the results of his and others’ experiments. He shows high speed footage, force measurements, and nice simulations of results. His research has furthered our understanding of insect flight with the help of novel experimental setups. I recommend watching the full video, and the others too.
The bit on leading edge vortices being important for rotors and insect flight but quickly dissipating in translational motion was new to me, for example.
Wow I havent seen that openscad foil database. Curious if it works with my bladegen code…
Oh yeah, I was paying attention - some nice stuff. Only thing is, like I saw David Attenborough do in another video about pterosaurs, he just recites the Bernoulli myth that “the reason” for lift is faster air on the top surface. That has been debunked since forever. Calculations alone show that air velocity alone cannot produce sufficient low pressure to explain the amount of lift generated by an airfoil. This is the problem with “science”: Outdated wrong explanations live on, enjoying habitual and unquestioning “legitimacy”, while in reality, with wings being used all over the world for over a century, “science” still can’t explain how they work. This is funny, and it leaves the door wide open for people who CAN explain how it works to do so. Aside from that, of course I could watch that sort of stuff all day, but have other things to do.
Not related to your comment, but clicking through the references gets you here for example: UIUC APA - LSATs Airfoils Tested and then test data and commentary for the SG6040 airfoil, which I noticed is thicker than most of the rest: https://m-selig.ae.illinois.edu/uiuc_lsat/Low-Speed-Airfoil-Data-V3.pdf
For AWE I guess the sailplane airfoils make most sense to look into, or perhaps the thicker ones for their strength.
For designing your own wind turbine blades, which I was looking into, QBlade seems to make sense. That does allow importing of .dat files: Optimized Wind Turbine Blade Design using QBlade.
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Or slope soaring / racing airfoils. Browsing UIUC Airfoil Data Site and then searching for Jochen for example gives this:
It is indeed interesting to survey the gamut of airfoil choices that abound from every direction. However you may also be familiar with the term “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”. Or maybe a discussion of what music the band should play as the Titanic sinks. In my limited experience, getting too far off intro the weeds in such details as a specific choice of airfoils is best reserved for fine-tuning a system that is known to work well, rather than something to fixate on when trying to develop a configuration that simply works well. If it looks like an airfoil, walks like an airfoil, quacks like an airfoil, and, hopefully, flies like an airfoil, it will probably work fine for whatever you are working on. Just sayin’…
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NEW R&D Sessions Ports of the Future - Contributing to a greener transport sector - YouTube
These projects are discussed in the above:
The Magpie project includes a blue-water electrical charging buoy and an autonomous electrical barge for example. Current Direct is about large swappable batteries for ships.
EDP Atlantic Mission | The Full Story EDP Atlantic Mission | The Full Story - YouTube
Turn on cc.
Yes I totally agree. Airfoils is probably the wrong place to start, but: Some AWE groups are looking into multifoil wings, and these are complex machines that do require going somewhat in depth to get decent performance. But for as long as a larger single foil wing is sufficient, it should be the first choice
All good arguments but
Meh, Just let the massive parameter set brains of computers do the designing for us instead
I don’t think it came up with anything new but - still cool
Also
Thanks for the How flies fly videos… (Wow) Rotors are definitely better was my reading of it.
Oh and yes you can see from my search box I went for the fancy new 3d printer -yay- it’s fast
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The main determining factor for power from a given wind turbine rotor is blade length (which determines swept area). I’ll give you some inside info on blades:
- If your choice of airfoils offers less lift, then it will slow the air going through the rotor less, increasing the airflow speed, which will then bring more power to the rotor. This means if you get a wind turbine rotor anywhere “in the ballpark” of being a decent rotor, it will self-adjust toward the sweet-spot of energy capture.
- If your rotor has a higher solidity (wider blades/excessive chord), then you don’t need a high lift airfoil, because you have more airfoil out there than necessary, so a lower-lift, more streamlined airfoil (that offers less drag) will actually be a better choice.
So, really, once you know what you’re doing (which most people don’t) if you like the look of your airfoil, it is probably a good choice. If it looks pretty, it should work pretty well.
It does help to look at a few hundred airfoils, but after than, you should be familiar with what look offers what attributes, so just make one that looks nice to you and it will work great.
Twist and taper are also important parameters. Neither are absolutely necessary for decent performance though. The old 10 kW Bergey turbine here uses pultruded blades with a constant pitch and chord, no twist or taper, and it works well, but gets noisy at high speeds with a way-too-wide and too-steep airfoil at the tip, but again, if you get it “in the ballpark” the machine will self-adjust to extract good power.
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OK but if he starts out blithely mentioning the discredited Bernoulli explanation for lift, as a reflexive starting point, how much does he really understand about any sort of lift? The leading edge vortex version of lift was mentioned by, of all people, Dave Santos, a few years back, explaining the lift of delta kites and supersonic fighter jets at high angles of attack. So this might be good information, but it might also only be a partially-correct explanation. It reminds me of cheap balsa-wood model airplanes with completely thin, planar wings - they seem to fly just fine. I’m guessing they are so light for the comparatively large amount of surface area that they fly just fine due to low loading of an “airfoil”, at such a low angle of attack, that doesn’t even need an airfoil shape to function. That is similar to a wind turbine blade with high solidity (large chord length or large number of blades) not needing a high camber, thick airfoil to get good performance.
This is why AWE remains at a perpetual standstill: Rather than everyone simply knowing how great rotors are after thousands of years of refinement, they think they “discover” the better qualities of a rotor from watching some guy guess at how insect wings work, when the low Reynolds numbers insect wings operate in makes them almost irrelevant to wind energy. Or they try to force their kites to fly in a circle, wasting huge amounts of energy in the process, then just give up on wind energy.
Here is a time-stamped link on it writing code for example. I would also definitely use it to do first research on a topic as a sort of untrustworthy encyclopedia to get me started. Your prompts were perhaps a bit broad.
Or if you want to apply it to AWES work…
Can you suggest C++ code to control a motor using VESC in position control mode based on the rotational position of a networked ESP32 with an IMU
Sure! Here is an example of how you can control a motor using VESC in position control mode based on the rotational position of a networked ESP32 with an IMU:
Copy code
#include "VescUart.h"
#include "esp32-hal-i2c.h"
#include "MPU6050.h"
// Create an instance of the VESC UART library
VescUart UART;
// Create an instance of the MPU6050 library
MPU6050 accelgyro;
// Set the I2C address of the ESP32
#define I2C_ADDRESS 0x68
// Set the communication parameters for the VESC
#define VESC_UART_BAUD 115200
#define VESC_UART_PORT UART_NUM_1
// Set the target position for the motor
#define TARGET_POSITION 0.5
void setup() {
// Initialize the I2C bus
Wire.begin(I2C_SDA, I2C_SCL);
// Initialize the VESC UART connection
UART.begin(VESC_UART_BAUD, VESC_UART_PORT);
// Initialize the IMU
accelgyro.initialize();
}
void loop() {
// Read the current rotational position of the ESP32 from the IMU
int16_t ax, ay, az;
int16_t gx, gy, gz;
accelgyro.getMotion6(&ax, &ay, &az, &gx, &gy, &gz);
// Set the target position of the motor based on the ESP32's current rotational position
UART.set_duty_cycle(TARGET_POSITION);
}
This code uses the VescUart library to control the VESC and the MPU6050 library to read the rotational position of the ESP32 from the IMU. The motor will be set to the target position based on the ESP32’s current rotational position.
Not a bad start
This is kinda the opposite of slow chat
Ok, after a few enquires. Speaking to these guys
https://e-magnetsuk.com/ about customer magnets.
I might just be able to get the magnets I want made as a custom?
What to know if you guys know of other suppliers? That do 16-18mm dia. Spherical or oval magnets? I just got qoute £50 for 10 custom magnets. however? they did mention its cheaper in bulk 100-250 pieces bulk prices would be something similar? As I can be a blind in the procurement of such items any suggestions?
No. Apparently they have or are able to source the magnets you’re looking for. I think the price you were quoted is reasonable. There are cheaper websites though, although I don’t know if those carry spherical magnets.
You should invest some time into learning Fusion 360 or SketchUp or something so you can better visualize for yourself and communicate to others what you’d like to make.
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Nice suggestion, though mainly using Tinkercad. As for achieving something might want to dig through early posts. To a certain proposed generator? Usually using tubes and coils and fluid magnets.
Got much to consider. Going forward the biggest one is shatter and impact resistant magnets. If I go the solid route? There is an demo over on my Yt. Just try to find the best suppliers. To I can assemble for a test run? Atm its air core windings/ slinky type windings? But it finding suppliers. I can get most of what I want from diy shops. Just the specialist bits is another story?
Goggle not the best friend in that regards. Sometimes best to stick my neck out and ask the big boys how it done? What I don’t like about coil shopping is the fail to mention internal dia. Outside is well documented however internal dia. Not so much?
As reasons for putting up one magnet supplier was to see how many the Awes members know of? I don’t think the customer magnets are out of reach? But always looking for the best price? As it goes trying to get the best value for money, to get the most out of each component and sub assemblies. So far the £500 target looks to be on track. Might even have multiple units? If what the guy was say was true? If I drop £100 on the magnets? I will get enough bulk to make the first 10. Hdpe tube is cheap enough. Plus connectors. Plus whatever coil supply I can find? With the remaining budget? I don’t suspect miracles? But all pointer welcome?
Hi Jason: There are so many magnet suppliers out there it boggles the mind. Most are in China, Hong Kong, etc., and most are happy to make a custom design for you, but it’s always good to see if something already in production would fit your requirements. If you decide on a supplier, there is no need to get into CAD as long as you can articulate the dimensions in an understandable way. A rough sketch with dimensions should suffice. They will make their own CAD model or otherwise put your design into production. The key is just to make your requirements understandable.
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Thanks,
While the thought crossed my mind? liquid magnets I reminded of and experiment using molten sodium salt. Where they were conducting experiments it the earth core? I was wondering if in some small scale this could be conducted in reverse? To generate electricity? Usually a polarised fluid?
Uncertain how adaptable for awes this would be? But as far as I understand it they can generate vast quantities of electricity? Just by mimicking magnetohydrodynamic property found in the core of planets. It must be possible to build a torus that does that? The thing is finding the right sort of polarised fluid that can operate at low temperatures? Overcoming the need for thermal coating, Temperature control system and many other bulk components?
My general thinking is something with a ion density strong enough the generate electricity when passing coils? Just depends on the metal solution used? And respective charges? My brain thinkings magnesium lithium and phosphorus mix up something? Chlorine an fluorine get mentioned a lot as ion compounds.just depends of the mix? Magnesium chloride and fluoride are good ionic compounds. I know phosphorus is quite active due to the electron shells. As phosphate, it forms the spine to dna. Lithium is in high demand in ion batteries. as far I know lithium salt make easy soluble solution. So it would just be a case of working out which solution is best?
It should be easy enough to work out find the melting point of HDPE pipe and work back from that? I be happy to outsource where required? Just have a small royalty. Per unit sold. I know it possible to part source and build. For me it knowing the market? If I can find a stable a reliable supplier? Then a manufacturing hub? Who can do the bits I struggle with? I reckon there might be a whole other industry waiting? Things can be done under license. Just something I’m extremely fresh too. It like head to the big city to the biggest sweets and treats shop and being spoiled for choice?
Basic specs:
2500mm dia. ring assembly. But really it can be made to any length.
Obvious the internal bore of the pipe will govern magnet size and fluid volume?
Coils:
Must slide on and off? So internal dia. Can’t be smaller than the pipes bore. It why a continuous slinky might work? But find the manufacturer that does that? In require sizes so far has been a challenge? Then coils length and spacing on galileos ratio.
Leaving open to be connected in series or parallel.
In my case looking at 25mm internal dia. With a coil thickness of 10mm. (however design is completely adaptable to available materials) Flat wound air cores should do the trick? Even looked at hifi coils? Then it respective connectors that match pipe bore. Ideally would love to use the coils as connectors? Makes the design far easier to assemble and ship. I know of about 3 suppliers uk? I usually go with the one that has the least stringent cookies policy? The ones that allowed you to determine your cookie preference? As long as I can get the parts the rest is easy? Then it can go into production no problem. Then It just working from the shadows pulling strings if and when required? Initial hurdle. If anyone of the companies can do custom orders? Even better!
I was half hope to source for as near by as I can? I suspect that many of the bit migh already come from China one way or another? Not to say a British firm wouldn’t be able to do it in their own? Often if it getting from source that the hardest part? Sign post are always a welcome sight.
Local industry support my kind of thing. You thing the country that help aid the industry revolution would have something left? Something easy to get in contact with? The few have rung are quite good to get along with. The the coils are going to be a challenge all in themselves. Might just have to bulk up? As previously mentioned first 10 Will be the challenge before throwing it out there? Pointer are most welcome.
Hi Jason - I forgot to mention pretty much all supermagnet suppliers are in some version of China. Anyone else is probably a reseller of Chinese-produced magnets. We have a company here in Mountain Pass, California (on the way to Las Vegas) called MP materials, that produces 15% of all rare earth concentrate in the world, but they ship it to China for refining and making magnets. It’s a sad situation, but a main byproduct or really an unwanted adulterant is radioactive thorium, and rare earths are notoriously messy and toxic to refine, so we let the Chinese handle it, but that means we’re dependent on them. It is considered to be a problem and we always hear talk of bringing the industry of producing supermagnets here, but it never happens.
I was involved in sales of audio equipment - mostly speakers. We used to carry Acoustic Studio Monitors, and they claimed to incorporate technology from the U.S. Space Program, which was called “ferrofluid”, which I think was just some liquid with suspended magnetic particles. Anyway we always used to joke about the claim that they speakers were so great because of the space program. I think there are some Youtube videos about tricks with ferrofluid.
When manufacturing my generators, I formerly used an expensive aerospace adhesive, with a limited shelf life, to glue the magnets in place on the rotor. Well, one day my adhesive had gone bad and I thought: “Why not just use JB-Weld?” JB-Weld is epoxy with suspended microscopic iron or steel particles in it. It’s interesting to see how it slowly flows around magnets like it has a life of its own. But my observation is you are looking at so many possibilities, I think maybe you are casting your net a little too wide. At some point you have to get to a point where you are dealing with “knowns” and maybe one or two unknowns, but not all unknowns. Anyway with regard to magnets, chances are very high that any local supplier offering custom shapes to your design will be ordering them from China, just basically acting as a middleman. Not that there is anything wrong with that - could be an easy way to get magnets made. To bad you are not here. I have boxes and boxes of supermagnets of all shapes and sizes. I need to get busy and churn out some more whacky wind devices!
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Casting my own magnets? Well there an idea! I have some steel shot but need a easy way to magnetise it? Jb weld in iron filling might do the job? An engineer favourite that jb weld. Love world over by model makers. I brought a ton of steel shot a while back never got round to making the bearings. The 4.5mm 1500 balls. Were £6 from the gun shop. I’d have to check but the bigger shot Think it’s 12-15mm? though I can’t remember exactly might of been 12mm? Iron filling are easy enough to acquire so Is jb weld from screw fix. Kingfisher group. Which also owns b&q over here.
I would ask how much it would cost to ship them magnets from the sunny coast? Just need to be 16-18mm dia. If you have them great? Spherical and oval are good. Just need to fit into the arc or the tube once assembled the oval magnets must be able to flow the bends in the tube. Happy to strike a deal in P.M. as it gets the bird of the ground. Don’t need many’s pieces just enough to get things started? My thinking is batches of 5-10 pieces going around the raceway? Don’t mind either way might get back hold of e-magnetics? Just to see what the bulk price is like?
I have a look a ferrofuid speaker on yt. As for the fluid magnets or ionic solution? I agree baby steps. One thing at a time, I had a mid to where such devices could end up? Draupnir or halo? I wouldn’t be surprised if nasa would use it as a stablizer or a means of generation electricity out in the dear yonder of the black abyss. As long as it rotates? Magnetohydrodynamic forces are observed? It can be a leap up kardashev scale? once built? that would be top SPAWES. Earth orbital rings prehaps? With straying to far towards the Sifi end? Astra porta? Or star travel? Based on quantum entanglement? Any distance? any time? As the sciences goes?
Would love to have a crack at it? But I know it something that can’t be achieved alone. Yes and I did just propose a starship with a molten core capable of jumping through space time? As always baby steps and leave a little for someone else to follow up on? If you like to send me the magnets?cool! Don’t forget to p.m first?
Earth to Jason:
You are now too far out in orbit, and your instructions are to land immediately! Here on the surface, we’ll prepare for splashdown! Godspeed on your re-entry!
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American support for AWES
https://twitter.com/housesciencegop/status/1600588606573318146?s=20&t=5Kv2s2tEFDfetja2t07h7Q
Wind energy is an important part of an all of the above U.S. energy strategy. Yesterday,
@TXRandy14
and
@RepBowman
introduced the #bipartisan Airborne Wind Energy Research and Development Act to accelerate airborne wind energy generation.
Hello! ground control, orders received and understood! Just going to have to sling shot round a comet and make way way home. It pretty in the outer solar system. where? the ice twinkles like diamonds! I will suspend the hunt for major Tom. Might not need to make a splash down? if the quantum teleporter works! Things been on the fritz for week! I have plenty of disassociate samples the lab can toy with. Even some funky new hyper matter. Only a few hundred particles. It seems like matter anti matter reactions might be able to harmonise?
Should be home in a single manoeuvre. Provided I’m not lost in the next asteroid storm. Ort cloud very pretty shame to turn back? But hey oh it the way to go!
Don’t give us the UK chat when shit like this happens
Not a F*****g hope that S%%t like this would get permitting North of Hadrians wall.
Anyone for Brexit darling
Don’t dare try to help me with my anger issues
I’m quite happy with my triggering
Yeah in these times it is hard for Europeans to cope with the abrupt change in available fossile fuels. Im not going to spend any effort to put down any short term efforts to cope. Of course I would rather see renewable. I am sure the UK will get there soon.
Also coming from across the pond after four (?) years of Trump reign, putting down a single coal plant seems a bit novel to me… what you don’t have your own bad conciounces over there?
I know Norway isnt exactly trailblazing sustainable climate change either. Lets rather focus on what we can do than what is done wrong
As of 2020, 350 coal-fired power plants are under construction. They include seven in South Korea, 13 in Japan, 52 in India, and 184 in China with the rest underway in other parts of the world.
China is also building and financing hundreds of other coal-fired power plants in countries such as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Egypt, and Bangladesh.
Are you then insinuating that this is a problem? That would mean we are converging in our world view…
Towards the end this also talks about the growth and success of Zipline.
Drone Delivery Was Supposed to be the Future. What Went Wrong?
Zipline - This delivery tech is “the closest thing to teleportation” | Freethink
A day at a Zipline Distribution Center
Hi Windy:
I must have missed the Zipline part, but I’ve never had faith in the old-fashioned Tokamak approach. It seems like a lot of trouble, just to boil water to run a steam engine. My favored approach is this one from Helion, which runs more like an electromagnetic diesel engine:
Meanwhile, coal, being technically the greenest energy source, seems to be expanding worldwide. Turns out “green” (more vegetation) is not really what anyone meant, since more CO2 is the essential greening ingredient. We’re trying to make sure the Earth remains in an ice-age, as that is responsible for our emergence.
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And to think that some time ago France was the leader in civil nuclear power. From protest to protest (always the same ones) since Superphénix, in a context of abandoning its industries, France finally gave up its leadership by lowering its nuclear percentage, which is still significant.
For those interested in greenhouse gas emission limits, nuclear energy is incomparable, except for hydroelectricity which is naturally limited by the presence of mountains (see Norway and Quebec).
(gCO₂eq/kWh) France 144 g; Denmark West 457 g; Germany 683 g…
I’ll continue my bigotry streak
That bloody electricity maps.com lumped beautiful Scotland in with filthy manky dirty rotten england again. Booo
Even with our current grid outages from snow and ice storms Scotland has lower emissions than France.
144gCO₂eq/kWh eugh dirty mingers
Bit disappointing though low 90’s usually around 30gCO₂eq/kWh
Our wee neighbour Island group Orkney is doing well 13gCO₂eq/kWh
Nobody is ever allowed to know what goes on in Shetland Energy
There is one thing coal could be good for? is graphine composites. It just depends of the quality of the coal? Yes us English have huge problems at the moment. It hard to get a people to work it desperate conditions.
I don’t deny that north of the wall has some advantages England does not.
Strictly speaking the geology under foot it pretty mixed. There are still places like centralia, pennsylvania suffering the consequences of hard rock mining. Subsidence is still a threat to many. Nevermind the fact when the do collapse you a ready made fault zone. The two issues I can see with the rock in the uk especially at a time of sabre rattling Is? a direct hit causing wide spread devastation to by setting of chain re actions. Scotland is screwed because most of the rock has heavy isotopes which fissionable materials. Hit the cobalt up there and 100mile exclusions zone. Scotland turned to a molten slag heap. Hit the uranium? It would turn most of Scotland into a natural fission reactor. Depending water supply it might go into meltdown? The English might fair better but still the coal will burn uncontrollably if hit? The limestone will turn to slaked lime. radon gas will react, uranium deposits we have will go bang! It won’t be the Uk as we know it. it will be K.O for quite some time. Look at this a while back it wasn’t pretty. It got to be bad if they want the coal? It would be better turning all that carbon to diamonds. The English aren’t grubby, just out classes. @Rodread laugh all you want! Shetland mainly volcanic granite!
Fusion is more valuable to us now then it has ever been. It just need a bright spark to figure out the right chamber shape? Helion is a good design though improvement can always be made. There is a form of resonate cavity fusion. that can use the cumulative effect of compound waves to create pinch points. Something I’ve been following. considering tokamaks and stellarators have been hotly debated? At one point I would of said stellarators would pull it off? But now I’m not so sure. If someone really wanted to retro fit the particles collider to generate power? It just about getting the particles flow right? Helion seems to be heading that way? But who knows what next if the fusion family tree? Maybe one day we shall see a table top reactor? Pumping out all the electrical juice we would ever want? But till then I won’t be bitting my breath in how disappointing long it taken. Research started sometime when fission did and nothing. Nothing with overall promise. If I were to bet on net gain at billion-1 odds? helion would get my ticket!
Eolink:
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/zp256e/this_floating_pyramid_wind_turbine_will_produce/
Tour de l’Innovation en Finistère - Episode 9 - EOLINK
Similar:
T-Omega Wind Overview
And X1 Wind:
That’s 3 different companies doing quite a similar thing.
The T-Omega Wind video talks about deepwater ports being important for offshore wind.
You can remedy this by reinstating Dave Santos and his contributions, since that is who you are talking about. I wish you success again.
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Ah yes, free speech? That old chestnut! Free speech is especially import to engineering. Because with out you can’t zone on a prize at the end of the road. Sure there are billion and one way to go wrong! But it because of those missteps? You find a way that works! It crucial to R&D. Even the founding fathers of the United States knew this. They knew it like the back of thier hands. In the long run without free speech and freedom of expression. We are lost as a species. We can’t adapt nor can we function. We then became entrenched and stagnant. The will only end one way, with grime tidings. Scope is often lacking in some circumstances? To diminish that? Well? you can’t but assume trouble on the horizon! It takes courage to speak up and risk making a prize fool of yourself. That just the start of a journey not to be soo fooled. It like coming out a dark room after months of solitary. To know the world much larger! Unfortunately for us humans we need the various view point to be able to make any sort or rational judgment. You get nowhere with impaired judgment. There a million of soul that throw themselves at the wall daily. Never growing up and moving on. It sometime that little thing that changes everything? Having the courage to say something? is better than being lulled into silence! 99% of us know very little other than your own little worlds? Hyper focused to the point opportunity get missed. Live are lost. No point remind everyone of the heaps of carcasses found on the mound. Free speech is the bridge between people. You might not like what someone say? But do you defend their right to say it? So much is lost when we turn inwards on ourselves. Potential is one such victim. Crackpot and broken shards is what becomes of engineering. if your unbelievably unable to learn firn others? You will never refine what it is that makes some good? but not only good? but works! Hero of Alexandria and many other? Who made greatest things humanity has ever made needed this development process.
If the world falls silent it will be deafening and it will be eon before the like of will be seen again? If it ever seen again? Took abt. 30 million year cycles to lead to convergent evolution. Take the eyes or flight for that matter? Loosing free speech is like loose and eye? Depth perception is lost?
Though I haven’t been following all the developments on the forum? Censorship is rather alarming to outsiders. It echos the catastrophe in the wider world when free speech it silenced? It the first rung on the ladder toward tyranny. But that point anyone try to achieve success? will find it counter productive! With that a loss of talents? The quality of product will greatly demising as the skill sets will not be there to carry it on! Free speech is keep to this! It key to understanding the continued survival. Instead of regression back to stick and clubs. Yes Dave Santos get a bad wrap. Maybe that’s just me running blind? If Dave Santos can be ostracised then who else? Common phrase i here when man is down? Who’s manning the deck!? In the end it is a safety issue? It not going to happen overnight but you see in 20-30 years time? That when it really will take notice? Awes it out to be the best at what it does? It can’t do that if scared into silence? Many hands make light work of the problem? So all hand on deck! You might find there is room for everybody? Even the wayward sort?
Lot more work to be done it seems? To make things a top notch work place environment? With that thought I shall leave it there! Feel free to chime in?
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Lets not get too philosophical about this. This is an open area where people are mostly met with respect and kindness.
The very few circumstances where people have been kicked out of the forum is after repeatedly posting abusive or spammy posts. We still have free speech. Such people can post their stuff anywhere they want. There is really no way to sensor the internet [at any of ours disposal].
Its just not about censoring, even if that sounds more sexy.
They have had the means to censor the internet for a longtime. windows xp had the ability it wasn’t perfect. But was liberally used by coders. be i as it is I know of a few that done exactly that. Filter features are a prime example of something that can be misused. Initially to get to the kind of result from an internet search. Later that got expanded to, job applications, safe searches, and all it required were a few key words being programmed in. Even people’s psych profile.
Does anyone remember the window explorer incident where they were down rating companies just to promote others? Where even the traffic was moderated? Here In the uk it is a major part of the communication act. It often brushed of as cyber security? You also had examples from more recent source like Twitter and YouTube. Control what people say and do you can control the outcome. This isn’t a new thing. It be a multigenerational problem. In the extreme it has brought out the worst in people. Especially if they were deeply authoritarian? There are stories of KGB ops in Poland during the Cold War. Even eastern Germany and Hungary In the case of Poland you here stories about opponents being turned to sausage? Then feed to feral dogs?
It can’t be understated the value of free speech. Without it the Berlin Wall may not have fallen. Romania would still had issues. There would be plenty of other countries, that would be in a darker place without it. Yep, you got to admit its needed!
Even if it to allow the various people to make mistakes. So you don’t have too? It some that gets taught in every personal development course? Crops up a few time in health and safety training. Fork lift accident just but one example I know of. Then you have extensive talked about cables a fairing on the forum. Especially because of the type of equipment proposed. Line brakes are a very real threat to safety. Wrong place? wrong time? you got guys loosing life and limb. Imagine not being able to convey that? Where would the compassion be there? I Suspect there would be non?! Put it like this? without free speech? there would be no chance of evolving better safety standards. It critical to everything everyone does.
If your not a able to pick up the bat? Then run with it? You got a problem? In all likelihood your going to be out there on your own? Struggling to reach out? Maybe to find your getting slapped down a lot? Making no progress in the world. Free speech enables growth and personal development. Without it there would be no opportunities to grow? In all likelihood it makes everyone look like dribbling 3 year old. With those sorts of dependency come the same sort on vulnerability. Bound in invisible chains is not the way I’d think most would like to go out? Many would like to go surrounded by family and friends. Instead of the poor man in a box suffering the indignity of lonely departure. If we don’t have free speech? this is where many will end up. Without friends or family to send them on their way. It can happen? in many case does happen! Rough sleepers are not so lucky when it comes to this. You need free speech in order to arrange gatherings. Most importantly to maintain a level of dignity and respect to all around. That itself is a full time career.
Even if it a rare occurrence on the forum you need to deal with wayward behaviour? It still possible to mute people in chats. My daughter love to do this to me while on call sometimes. She tends to think it terribly funny? The internet it not what we think it is? There’s always something more?
We do live in a time where bad faith actors are becoming far more common. The worse part about that is? it can go unchallenged and unchecked for generations. That negatively impacts everyone sense of reality? That one an ungodly beast to pick apart. Openness, fairness and kindness are some of the best qualities humanity has to offer. We all then can get the best out of life. Keeping the devil from the door. as they sometimes say. Even might be able to save the odd person here or there?
It’s a reality of today technology driven society. that something that meant to unite us? can be also there to divide us! It a tricky balance I know. One we all must strive to achieve something for the betterment of humanity? It not just philosophical? for many it is a fact of life! I know there been a lot of talk about Dave Santos and his efforts. It come up a few time since I’ve been on the forum. Being a relative novice to these things? I dread to think how that comes of to an uneducated observer? People can be very superficial? I’ve meet a few in my time on this earth. I wouldn’t want to sin bin them without good cause. Free speech is a key component to anything any wishes to achieve. I wouldn’t like to think where we be tomorrow without it?
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I was thinking about the people involved in this forum.
I agree kindness, openness, respect, these are good qualities that I would like to see here. The threat is not to free speech, rather those that exploit these qualities in other forum members to promote their own agenda or whims. The threat to free speech does not come from those trying to maintain a healthy, hygienic forum. Rather it comes from those who is exploiting the forum in bad ways. And those will be the one raising the «free speech» flag the highest. But it is just another tool to break down the good qualities of the forum.
In proclaiming that we are not «doing» free speech without looking at the data, you are not doing anyone a favor. If you do go back in time and look at the repeated warnings for breaking the rules of the forum, blocking some people was the right call. God knows these people had plenty ways to correct their ways. They were excluded for breaking rules, not as a step in censoring.
You (plural) have little chance of convincing the simple non-moderating users, on average about half. Censorship is not the only weapon used as soon as technical elements call into question the projects of certain groups (guess which ones…): at those times the “rules” had suddenly disappeared from moderation itself. So don’t invoke these broken “rules”.
Since we are also talking about Dave Santos, and he is unable to answer, then we can take a look at one of his last public messages on Redirecting... .
I know, its a lost cause.
Mybe this is where ChatGPT will have the greatest impact on our forum
Can it translate @Freeflying messages into intelligible succinct coherent text?
Can it ask @kitefreak if he really means to send a message saying “…context…”?
Can it improve on the moderators? (I am only a very junior level one)
Can it resolve the calculations presented into a map of what’s useful ? Or what’s missing ? Or what’s a priority area of research…?
#1 I think yes.
#2 I think maybe yes.
#3 I think probably not. Moderation depends on understanding things that are unclear and maybe taking decisions on things that are not straightforward. So I think as of 2022 it would do a poor job here.
#4 (calculations) Sorry I dont think there is a remote chance of any useful help here.
About the priority of research, I am sure chatgpt is prone to prefer yoyo vs flygen and lesser TRPT. ChatGPT is just parroting shitloads of text… it is not sentinent
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With regards to letting someone back on this forum, with all the abuse in the past, I can say for my own part that any channel that allows that abuse to continue, I will shut down. I plain words, I will certainly leave the forum if that happened. This is my decision and I dont expect you to take this into consideration if the question about other users should come up. But it may be an indicator of what kind of place this would be if «free speech» was to be the only goal of this forum. Which I must stress, this case has very little to do with free speech. There may be more people like me, and probably a lot of the people sitting on the fence would be deterred from joining this forum if abuse, flame wars and meaningless babble was the bulk of messages posted here.
As a parallel, I quit Twitter because I could not stop receiving for me disturbing messages from Elon Musk after he took over. Its just about having the places I spend minutes or hours on a daily basis giving me some perceived value for me, and not making me feel bad at the end if the day.
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All fair comments.
Fun fact: I have never used Twitter. It been pure pantomime for my angle of things. Elon’s take over was a shock! Especially, when it looked like he checked out of the deal?
Free speech is alway going to be very contentious. Due to the fact the we are all on various life paths? Somewhat wound up in a similar location against all the odds?
ChatGpt sound like a good idea? I’ve only got to have an i in the wrong place and forget to cross my t’s and it a world of hurt for me? I’ve got to love my own personal monogrammed hurt locker. I’m a generalist on the free speech front. Wherever I just so happen to be? Nothing to be take personally. Clear commission is a fundamental corner stone. Free speech effect all aspect of life. Not just a back water forum. that 90% of the GP don’t know exist.
One training session a lone long time ago? They brought up the desert island parable. Your trap on a desert island with people you don’t know! don’t trust! but some how you need to work with these people, to get off the island? You have three options,
1# go it alone! risk life and limb? With limited chance for success?
2# find a way to communicate with people of different backgrounds, skills and capabilities? Then try to succeed together?
3# give up and die?
Plan 2# give everybody the best chance of survival!
Plan1# give you minimum conflict. but very little rewards.
Plan 3# will get you no where!
If I remember the percentages? 85% for plan 1# 10% for plan 2# plan 3# is considered the casualty rate in extreme circumstances. Primitive survival rating is 1-10. On average it’s between 3.5 to 6 for most people. Not sure if that can be applied to R&D but should give some overview?
Its quite common to team building exercises.
Common in many personal development situations.
It certainly was used when I was in scouts. many many years ago?
Its common to encounter it at work training sessions.
I’ve been too many in recent years.
In general people don’t like having to deal with various incompatibilities. It is often Sub headed as unexpected change? Can it be abusive? Sure! Can it be abrupt? Sure can! As far as I understand it that often a dual carriageway. Where accident happened! very little or anything is ever resolved? And you have the various parties involved feeling dejected.
No one want to feel like crap! Especially when trying to do something they love to do in a chosen field. I certainly don’t! The hours you can sit brooding of things? is just nuts! I cannot fault anyone wanting to find their own path. It better than getting stuck in limbo.
Ultimately there are some decisions I’m not in control of. Things happen regardless. Life goes on.
TLDR; I think its not working as a few nuances are being left out and maybe some facts are being changed.
That being said, if you used it like a spelling checker, eg. from draft → GPT rewrite → your edited text, I think it could provide value. Still, i prefer 100% human text even if its not the most professional looking alternative
ChatGPT says:
I want to share some thoughts with you all. First, I want to mention that I have never used Twitter, so I don’t have much experience with it. However, I was surprised when Elon took over, especially when it seemed like he was backing out of the deal.
Free speech can be a controversial topic because we all have different viewpoints and experiences. That being said, I believe that clear communication is important and affects all aspects of life, not just in obscure forums.
I remember a training session where we were told a story about being trapped on a desert island with people we don’t trust. We were given three options: go it alone, try to communicate and work together, or give up and die. Option two gives everyone the best chance of survival, while option one can lead to minimal conflict but little reward. Option three will get you nowhere.
Team building exercises like this are common in many situations, including work training sessions and personal development courses. However, it can be difficult to deal with conflicting perspectives and unexpected changes. It can even be abusive or abrupt. I understand that these situations can leave people feeling dejected.
I don’t want anyone to feel like crap, especially when they are doing something they love in their field. That being said, sometimes there are decisions that are out of our control and we just have to move on with life.
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Thanks for your thoughts, Jason.
Let’s acknowledge that allowing open communication is, overall, a good thing. But the downside is that open communication also allows bad actors to disseminate DIS-information and falsehoods, that may be destructive.
Imagine on a scale of -10 => +10, good information falls above zero, whereas bad information falls below zero. A main advantage of free speech is the ability to speak up and flag bad information, falsehoods, whether issued due to bad intentions (deliberately lying) or sheer ignorance (they don’t know any better). The idea is to add a positive number, to counteract and weigh against the negative number. From my vantage point, I see most censorship being practiced by the same people disseminating or reinforcing bad information, and the censorship is designed to silence good information and the good people flagging disinformation.
By the time you have people making blatant ridiculously false statements on a regular basis, it seems necessary for someone to stand up and explain why the bad information is not true. Those are the people who are most likely to be silenced. Especially when the liars have control over silencing anyone - the people who get silenced are most often the truthtellers. The conversation then often almost seems to turn into a battle of good versus evil. The only answer for the liars is to silence any opposition to their lies. I am in general opposed to anyone censoring anyone else, and one problem that seems to emerge is when a source of disinformation digs in their heels and refuses to acknowledge the good points made to refute their lies and misinformed opinions, it can drag the whole conversation down from a productive interchange into a diversionary conflict over who is issuing disinformation (below zero) versus good information (above zero).
You can go back to Gallileo and Copernicus for example: They had no urge to censor anyone, they just offered helpful good information. It was the entrenched special interests with their below-zero falsehoods who insisted the truthtellers be silenced. I think it was even Copernicus who was forced to say he didn’t actually believe in a heliocentric reality per se, but was just offering a helpful mathematical trick that simplified astrological calculations.
Who was enforcing censorship? The liars, as usual. They couldn’t withstand free speech lest their lies or ignorant falsehoods be exposed. We’ve been there before - false statements, bolstered by false credentials, all lies to fake out everyone in an attempt to silence good information and substitute complete, uninformed nonsense.
It seems that there is a natural inclination for the promoters of falsehoods to inject themselves into positions that allow them to silence truth-tellers. Look who runs most of the social media - the world is shocked when anyone else but a pathological liar gets control of even a single social media outlet. Like caged animals afraid to leave their cage when the door is opened, nobody can even believe it.
In this modern era, such positions to restrain truth are variously called “moderators” or the Orwellian “fact-checkers”, (who check for facts, so as to eliminate the facts). The unstated reality is that these people want everyone else to flounder in “opposite-land”, where everything they think is 100% wrong (-10)
.
Yes and when “the devil” DOES darken the door, it’s important that someone can counter their disinformation with good information, to keep everything on a positive track.
As Elon says, it might save everyone.
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Thank you everyone! Yes there is a lot learn! @tallakt @dougselsam
It seems the Google based chatGTP. came closes to translating the majority of the my text to something more intelligible. I laughter because the other went sod this! Couldn’t even do it.
I can see there a lot of missing nuance with even in the chatGDP.
I’m not sure if a old style nokia predictive text might work better? Basically there two systems I’ve used. I’ve used android text system for ages. As standard in most smart phones. Nokia’s text formats we my first encounter with predictive text. Perhaps a a patch between the two might work better? I had 7250 and later releases. For nokia. Htc and Lenovo are the others I’ve used.
Agreeably I’m more able to use a keyboard without predictive on. Though as I’m limited for hardware. It is what I get for myself. I’m not sure how much chat rewrites are going to impact on people developmentally? As a person with additional needs myself. Is anyone aware of potential consequences across the board? As nuances are often missed. Details missed out. Meaning lost entirely. I’m wondering if we creating a dependency problem? Because I know I’m reliant on it for all lot of what I do. I know my additional needs can impact me with my communication. Reading writing ect. So I dread to think what it is like for others? We all have a reciprocal feed back loop. That engages when we talk? Will a chat ai help? Or will it lead to unintentionally giving off false positives?
For me theres another issue. how much responsibility are we surrendering to Ai bots? Are we just pasting over crack? Only to loose a piece of our nature along the way? I don’t fully understand where that road goes? Especially considering potential legal side effects? Some what impresses with the chatGTP got 80% of what I was saying to be more coherent.
there is a lot to be learned from this exchange. Details, and many more nuances. Might help figure out how language is change since it’s introduction?
Being that guy with basic English. because the educational system figured GCSEs English was too much for me. I do what I can. Nearly 20 years after leaving school. I wonder how they even figured out spell check? It might just be me? ever since the introduction of computers into the education system. My first brush with them was an old style Mac on c++ at about 1993. with the expressed notion that it will make it easier? I like to counter that by saying it only changed the thing we choosing to interact with. It made somethings harder because of trading skills while letting other become dormant . Which means we were not writing by hand as much. Obviously we all be came dependent on our gadget to communicate and interact with the world. So much so it now part and parcel of western culture.
In a study of Chinese gamers who we’re addict to gaming. They notice abnormalities with how the brain was wired and structures. After three months strict discipline training. They found many of the recruits were better able to socialise.
I might not be the smartest cookie at times? But I do know Murphy’s law quite well.
I appreciate the points Doug has made regarding free speech. Especially on the disinformation front. With all that in mind? I would like to wish you all at Awes a merry time. leading upto the New Years. If Elon is being an advocate of free speech? Be good to see if he actually champion it?
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Right?
it a new year, and new ideas. To play with. If awes would like to toy with plasmas? I’ve been doing some reading?
&
Had a sneaky suspicion it existed? As I was looking out for a naboo starfighter? Then found this? Basically there are designs for magnetohydrodynamic areospike scramjets. I know helicopters generator huge voltages because of surface fiction. Was wondering if there was an way of reverse engineering it for awes? I’m getting closer to the prize? Had a mind to use an ionic inducer? In a design I had? Solid state with few moving parts. Consider casting it in two parts? Much like a big gaping mouth of a basking shark? Was thinking of using as part of a hoverboard? But thats another story? Plasma channel toyed with
if you guy can think of a use for such a device in AWES I love to hear?
I know there been a massive drive for aviation to go electric? Might even be best to use a carbon based ceramic? As it tend to handle discharges better? Also less likely to thermally degrade over time? The melting point of carbon is extremely high, so it safe bet. For discharging electrodes. Intumescent ceramic coating would also do the trick? Maurice wards starlite was one such material? Mineral resources are finite so best to use the carbon deposits we do have for better use? You have things like graphene and carbon nanotubes which are superconducting?
On the same patent search there quite a few articles 34 in the search I did? I’ve been curious for sometime? Though I share? As I’m just catch up with these people? Goes to show where about my thinking was?
In my design there was a particular compression ratios. Which helped increase what was given. so it was cycle much like a pulse jet? I knew if I could get the magnetics to twist that vast amount of energy could be produced? much like CMEs for the sun? Or the molten salt experiments trying to recreate magnetospheres. Millions of volts are possible?
I know the Dutch have built Electrostatic Wind-Energy Converter (EWICON)
I don’t know of a Awes version? But would be fun to try as a aerospike scramjet?
I’ve seen mention on the forum of self ascended vehicles? Especially in regards to flight paths? And use of thermals? Most recent @PierreB posted. That was using a drone launch. I doubt it would be any different to how a box kite flys? Though I wouldn’t have the foggiest where to begin? I know I could fabricate few of the parts? But it would need more Input than what I know I can do on my own? Throwing this one out there? To see if it’s crackpot or not?
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Happy new year… (I’ll keep saying that till March)
OK I’ll bite - Plasma lift in AWES is a great idea.
Classic trustworthy _ All Ya gotta do is… intro
Just fly really high.
Have the tether connected to ground (electrically too)
Thread some fine wires between open pocket sections of a kite, where the top and bottom skins would otherwise be.
Turbo lift for free.
Grand idea
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I was just pondering, thinking of all the AWE “group-selfies”, has anyone kept a tally of HOW MANY PEOPLE have devoted HOW MANY YEARS of their working lives, to the pursuit of AWE? If we add up the number of employees from each AWE effort, what is the total number of people? Could we calculate (the number of companies) x (the number of employees per company) x (the number of years of activity) = total man-years (including WOman-years) devoted to AWE? I guess such a calculation could be done directly by someone who is a “domain-expert”, or estimated from a guessed-at number of companies and an estimated average time in action, and average number of employees. How many man-years might this accumulate to? Should we include all the “journalists” who regurgitate company press-releases as “news”? All the cameras and film crews “documenting” the “progress”? What about all the time spent by millions of people reading these articles, watching the videos, making their own videos about the videos?
I’m just going to throw out a very raw starting guess: 20 companies with 20 people each, in action for 5 years on average. That would be 2000 man-years, or 100 lifetimes of work (careers), and I think that is by far a low estimate. And that paltry 2000 man-year estimate, multiplied by a very low estimated $50,000 per man-year = $100,000,000, but we’ve already heard that just a single company put up almost a billion dollars toward AWE, so these are VERY low estimates. Anyway, just in time for the new year, I wonder about total man-years and also total dollar spent, for what progress exactly? Where are we, compared to 15 years ago? Still getting ready to get ready? It “seemed” that we were “closer” to AWE dominance in wind energy way back then, than now.
Anyway, I’d be curious to know anyone else’s thoughts on this topic.
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To be realized, AWE needs a similar level of investment as air taxi development currently is getting.
Hi Doug, I’m not sure if this answer satisfies you. I think it could be a good answer if an architecture is studied enough to lead to success, and this BEFORE significant new expenses.
Hello Pierre: Not going to read that. I see no chance it has any useful information any more than anything else on Linked-in is solving any wind energy mysteries. AIR TAXI’s: Sure! Like Joby? One of the first “AWE Companies” to “just give up”? And now they pursue “Air Taxis”? How many years have “air taxi’s” been pursued? How many are in use today? Is any rancher using one to get around his land? Anyone using one to get to work? Yes, “air taxi’s” ARE in some ways VERY SIMILAR TO AWE: Air taxis are mostly in the form of renderings and a very few barely-working prototypes. The VERY CONCEPT is flawed: TAXIS!!! Like there could be no private ownership of these supposed aircraft, and the ONLY use they could POSSIBLY HAVE is taking people to the airport! OMG! And how many people are falling for this??? An entire vehicle class with only a single use-case: flying over traffic to get rich people to the airport to catch a flight on an actual useful flying vehicle. Reminds me of AWE “FOR DISASTER RELIEF”! As in "Nobody in their right mind would ever pretend to use these for normal power generation, and the ONLY uses for the systems would be DISASTER RELIEF and WAR!!! OK sure. Disaster relief, war, and beating that pesky ground-level traffic TO GET TO THE AIRPORT!!! (Not a privately-owned “Air-Taxi” to take you out for dinner, or to go fishing. Forget a commute to work.) The ONLY use for an entire category of transportation, is ONLY to GET RICH PEOPLE TO THE AIRPORT!!! What about grocery shopping? What about travel to a nearby city? Nope, only taxis for hire - nobody will ever own their own personal air-taxi. I am just so amazed at the fantasies of the human race. So visionary, yet so limited in thinking! Another nascent technology, perpetually “right around the corner”, just never quite here yet. All because someone figured out that, technically, you could fly, though not very efficiently, with a bunch of plastic model airplane propellers aimed upward. NEXT…
Great thank you, and happy new year to you!
Just priced things up this is where it get fun.
Just depends on how heavily duty it need to be?
Notched Crushed copper pipe. Is £22 per length + time and labour
Or copper draft excluder which is £45+ time and labour to notch
Alternative is conducive tape on a backing board. ( slug tape) For a similar price that will cover the main elements.
Eg. 0.8mm wire is 50m from b&q is £13.33 per spool. Do shop around.
Frame can be made from a grow tent frame they range from £30 and up.
Braided earthing cables 25m £33.50 depending where you get it?
Contingency for extras like controllers, connectors, £100- £250 though may vary.
24000v voltage multiplier is abt. £10
I have considered conductors woven in to the fabric? Provide the wires are hair width. A technique similar to tablet weaving but mechanised? Though seem like to much extra fuss.
Paint the kite skin in intumescent paint. Add food colouring to get that authentic kite feel. Though it will get blackened over time. It looks like it about £18 per litre.
Paracords abt. £25 for 80m though shop around you might be able to get it cheaper?
100 Zip ties £2.50 a pack. If my math is right? Looking at a budget of about £600 for a box kite scramjet. Full of electrostatic and magnetohydrodynamic.
Thought I best to keep it under the 150ft flight ceiling.
Safety concerns I might have is arc eye? Having been near welders? Not sure if there is a fabric that could be employed as shielding? Plasma and eyes are not best friends at few thousand volts. If I recall at you can see it for abt. 50-100miles? Hence the curtains many welder have? So might need a refractive air breathing membrane? Just depends on optical shadows?
Life’s cheaper when you not in court. I reckon once all said and done numbers crunched? You have a product that might see a return? Just depends how cheep it can be made? Ideally no more that £250. I understand that going to be a push?
This is just a rough breakdown in costs? Depend who attention is peaked? MOD contracts, Civil engineering ect. Will definitely determine potential returns? I’m sure they will love a kite test bed for new propulsion? Maybe one day have it doing laps of a field? As an open source project? Then someone taking up the mantle and pushing the technology further? I can get things started? Then just need a few to jump in and cover my flanks? Then follow up with designs of there own? Then that will get a market started? Awes then getting a lot more credit for creativity?
Took me a few days to go though product prices. I bow, then say your welcome. with out it sounding like I’m about to burst into Disney songs.
All good stuff!
The ram air kite train looks an awful lot like?
Honestly looks fun!
Just a question of how many links in the chain?
It might be wise to have good linkages and fasting points? So you could put and many or as little as you like? Climbers have carabiners. Linking each section. Couple as you go? Better chance of finding optimal strategy? Also makes it way easier to build in batches. Especially if the lines made with a jig? To set lengths?
If only we could make power from the mere naive pronouncements of clean energy nutcases, we’d be all set!
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As your always looking for new power generation ideas?
They can be multi layer pcbs which can make it ultra compact. As far I know they have a high performance rating? I oiked an eye at it a while back. But nothing this big. The great thing is that whole design could be adjusted to become a superconducting motor. Liquid hydrogen or helium? Though nitrogen is more common. I had a idea a while back about a thermos flask being used like a motor. Then use it for wind energy. Though it boggle me how? The best I could come up with in mind was internal coils on the inside wall and stator poking out the top. Ready to be connected to whatever would be required? I even consider maglev components. Similar to a fluid bearings
I had to check Google patents look like they been working on similar ideas since the 1990s
There about 570 articles. More than my attention span could sift through. But they’re there should you wish to know? If I recall one article I read a long time back the seen significant improvement in conductivity and over the output. One article said they got 800% more than baseline output with coolant than without coolant. Baseline would be something like a universal motor? That was some year ago? Been a while since I last looked? Not sure how current there numbers are?
I will leave this here should anyone wish to enquire?
Hi Jason: Thanks for the video of the single-rotor desktop-demo version of the floating SuperTurbine™, a concept invented by me:
It is possible for the water to act as the bearing, as shown above in Fig. 17 - the generator depends from the floating, rotating, cylindrical base, and is moored so as to counteract rotor torque
The concept is as simple as one could wish - a floating buoy with a projecting driveshaft and rotors.
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I can see how easy that would be to be to build.
I’m uncertain how well cryo cooled motor fits in to your design? What I had imagined looked very similar to the super turbine. Though I had thought it would look more like the aeromine than an ascending shaft? Essentially such as much air in with multiplayer tech? The wind only give a fraction but if you toy with the Aerodynamic? That could be increased by a number of factors?. What I had in mind was more the central unit? Aiming towards a GW.
The simpler, the easier to build. Still, one should expect to require several tries before one works anywhere near the way a designer hopes for or expects.
I really don’t get off into the weeds with the latest buzzwords - maglev bearings, cryo-cooling, 3-D printing, compressed-air-storage, onboard electrolysis, combined wind and solar, etc. etc. etc… Mere distractions. This is not music where a writer is trying merely to be trendy. It is engineering and the school of hard knocks where you need things to be affordable and reliable.
I do not remember anything compelling about Aeromine. Do they have a 1 kW prototype? Why not? Know-nothing Big talkers…
Might want to start at one millionth of that output - try 1 kW.
Daydreaming thoughts aside.
Engineering rule of thumb K.i.s.s. The more you have the more that could go wrong.
There have be several attempts to understand how much energy they world need. neil degrasse Tyson, brain cox both have pondered this one.
Kw are all well and good. As they have be the most studied. In power production the three gorges dam combined. Capacity still don’t smash the Gw wall. With its 22500 MW. There have been questions about sustainability with copper reserves be where they are at?
We would need many more highly rated generator to meet demands.
This is only going to rise with the wanting to use more electricity to power home and cars.
Both Neil degrasse Tyson and Brian cox have on several occasions working out we would need billion of generators running to keep up with current demand. They both predicted that to meet demands, it would strain current infrastructure. Not only in cost, but time, labour and resources.
Simple put there not enough hours in the day to make a dent at current rates of development. It the beast that binds us.
At some point there must be a fusion of technology?
There nuclear option leave much to be hoped for. Even if the current waste created is repurpose into power cells. Using the alpha, beta and gamma principles into voltaic cells. To harness as much energy as we can from what has already been made.
My thought is evolving constantly. It just an illustration of the thought process. I was dreaming of something like the areomine back in 2018. Trying to piece bits together. That was an excise in futility. Gluing magnets to hex nuts. Thinking I make the corresponding coils. I would have learned something along the way? I don’t recommend using drawing board magnet. Picking them out of polycarbonate wasn’t fun. Just me try to access the easy to hand solution.
I quick worked out how lofty a gw was for me. Though still hoped to get somewhere close one day? Though it more than I can achieve on my own. The way we produce electricity will constantly need a radical rethink every once in a while? Superconducting components may just factor in? Or more radial stack of windings? Who knows?
Imaging a sky scrapers devoted one such idea? Then you might get some where close? Or a supersized wind energy project? The energy sector is full of contenders. It like you said many a time? Very few if any make it and go it to the mainstream.
Question is how simple does it need to be to be accepted?
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The worlds current energy needs, is something I’ve given a lot of thought too and time to read up on. OWC technology is much like the early days of steam. Thomas Newcomen and James watt respectively.
I’ve seen a version of pumped storage that used two mine shaft.
With something similar to OWC. If you can get a prefect seal on something like that? you have three points of contact which can be use to generator electricity. All you would see above ground is two turbines houses.
And one under ground chamber with reversible flow to a turbine hall. Think u bend but much larger. Classic demo would be home made spirt levels? Or how you change the levels of lighter fluid a lighter? In this case it would be GAOWC Gravity assisted oscillating water column? As long as it operate like the old cliff lifts? It should be fine? Basic you end up with two chamber of air and one of water? But this can be a compound system with multiple chamber over wide over area.
There is one issue with old mines? There are some that have often been used as landfill site. There is a Welsh slate mine In particular this happened to. So depending the mine clean up cost would need to be considered?
Coal mines might not be the best option and there hydrocarbons tend to leach into surroundings water causing contamination issues. This would also be an issue for other mines as well where heavy metal extraction has taken place. Don’t even try the salt mines risk of huge substance. A lake in Southern states in the great USA. got breached and the whole lake, gators and all ended up down the mines.
I agree that an ocean based gravity system would be better. Especially if acting like a submarine? There no end to how much that could be scaled up? Not suggesting getting some old Russian submarines to do the job. having a system like an ROVs might be beneficial? You also have things like
So I question whereabouts the curve is?
Find out about technology like this? is the first step along the way, to actually understanding it, and achieving something!
Anyone else wish to chime in please do?
If you are submerging some heavy object in sea you have the basic issue that as density of water is so high, you need a lot of material for ballast compared to onshore. Eg a cheap material concrete has density 2.4 though 1.0 of that mass is «lost» to water’s own density of 1.0.
You dont need a tower though because you could just float, so possibly material saved.
Rough seas is an issue though dimminishing with scale.
Grid connection may be a large issue. You want these things in close proximity to cities. Subsea adds to the cost.
Hydro drag could become an issue if you go too deep, though I expect that one is manageable.
Anchoring is a concern opposite to wanting really deep water and also grid connectivity. This would depend on what kind of depths you end up with.
I would think the greatest challenge though would be cost. Offshore is inherently costly. And you have some good onshore alternatives, eg batteries, pumping hydropower, oversizing energy production etc.
The motor looks extremely good on paper. I do wish that they can deliver. Though for me any new fossile fuel based motor in 2023 is moot. So it would depend on the efficiency of propulsion that they could get. I doubt they could beat a propeller, and though their list of benefits is pretty long, you could say that the props probably was never a huge concern for boat owners.
Hydrodynamics, like aerodynamic informs potential design. There could be many ways to use a submersible? Hydrodynamic drag isn’t a problem if you allow for the current to unfurl the lines. Using the powers of the current to generate electricity. Think giant fishing rod? Then, you may come somewhere close? As far as I understood submersible? The fact the water can be used as the ballasts is one of it major advantages. It only takes mere seconds to adjust for buoyancy. It can be completely automated? Reduce human involvement? No risk to a crew at Depth if no crew is present? I’m aware of anchors that can be used against the current?
Mainly used to prevent excessive drifting?
I see no reason why the drop weights could not just look like large fishing weights? Even with props/turbines attached to motors to generate electricity? So effective making a hybrid system? Especially if the winches are used to generate electricity as well? This not only is this entirely possible, it plausible. Undoubtedly there going to be some cost involved? If the can make oil rigs? they can do this! Especially using either a large peloton wheel or Francis turbine during its descent phase. It should be easier enough to retrieve as you can have compressed air bag inflate and deflate as and when required? This can be automated. With minimal interaction from top side crews? It means that manufacturing and maintenance can be prioritised? It also means that things can be optimise for depth?
As far as I’m concerned I see it as a win? Even ship yard would be able to build the required components. Brings us back to those power ships. That could just rock up and provide light to many lives? Just depends on how big a well deck you have? Surely better to build a fleet of these than have billions of units that may only have a short shelf life of 10-15 years?
It could be one part of the energy strategy? As fare as I know some of the largest ships can have a 100 year shelf life? If well maintained? On the economy and practical level? It could be value for money?
Depending how the technology is built? It could incorporate multiple systems. Including OWC, Teng, (triboelectric nano generator) solar and wind. There is much room on the party boat for a platform in to energy research! In certain regards it could rival hydroelectric power? Even the three gorges dam?
I know I’ve seen discussions on the forum of kite drawn submersible? Also shipping making gains using a kite instead of sails? That too can be turned it to a generator system?
There are plenty of ships cuing up to find the reapers torch? In places like Turkey and Chittagong. It just a question of finding a dry dock big enough? To retrofit and recycle them? Heck they can be stripped back to bare minimum if require? fixtures and fittings sold to pay for the refitted? All fairly standard practice. I’ve seen when they have had to cut holes inside the ship just to repair an engine. This is not outside the realm of possibility?
As alway there will be an element of risk. It could get messy should things get tangled up? With a great deal of care and consideration? that can be minimised or eliminated completely?
This Investopedia Dictionary entry for Kiting explains why investment in Kite Power is hard…
Turns out Kiting is not the lovely innocent enjoyable sporty pastime we all think of (according to these suits)
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@dougselsam sent me the following information:
We have seen the camping windmill, now here’s one more press-release breakthrough about a solar-powered tent.
Very clever to add a solar panel as an entry awning, but I think maybe some of the latest flexible solar panels could just be part of the regular tent itself - how about that?.
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depends if it has a puncture proof membrane? It like a giant bounce castle i once knew? Children fair it collapse and the blokes had to rush in and cut the kids out. Is it made out of the same material as inflatable life rafts? There normal 3 to 5 layers of material? I don’t think it would be bear proof? Maybe that just me? Like the idea. not sure I want to be in it if deflates overnight?
ChatGPT:
Congratulations to SkySails.
The Parafoil Power Kite is naturally the first-to-market AWE wing, starting in Germany and now Mauritius-
LEIs and “energy drones” not due to catch up. SS wings can scale further, in networks.
Nice consistent wind-
Courtesy: David Santos Gorena-Guinn
Continuing the discussion from SkySails now a grid-tie supplier in Mauritius:
The kite principle is being intensively validated by a long list of players, above and below water, as expected. Minesto holds a lead in energy paravanes, already grid-tied, but TidalKite is right behind them.
US pioneers from the 70’s on were simply too early to gain traction, as societal urgency for renewable energy lagged, and US Gov decision-makers had no domain expertise to aptly apply. EU and Asian ventures had enjoyed better timing and bolder more informed decision makers. The question now is whether the US will let overseas leadership completely dominate, by continued R&D neglect. It certainly seems that way.
If you must write something to accompany a link, at least use it to talk about what’s in the link. And try to avoid unsupported statements, which your comment is full of. There’s this quote for that: what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
If you have info, share that and support it. The reader can then make up their own mind. You’re always trying to take the shortcut if all you’re doing is posting your opinions or your conclusions without doing the work to support them, and are very unlikely to convince anyone.
Not sure if it’s of any use? I will just leaves it here.
Wireless electrical transmission form kite to ground station would be an interesting concept?
Everyone speaks and writes from the depth or limits of his knowledge. I have been in AWE long enough to ‘have some info’ as I have served as President of the global Industry association AWEIA since its inception to-date. Clarifications are best sought by anyone willing to learn. Refutations can also be made with supporting counterarguments.
David Santos Gorenna-Guinn CTO at Jalbert Aerology Laboratories (USA) and World Kite Museum (USA) Resident Scholar for no less than 7 years was my authoritative source here and below are his responses now:
"
US pioneers from the 70’s
Following the 50’s-60’s generation of US power kite and AWE conceptual pioneers like Jalbert, Rogallo, Barrish, Faust, etc., US pioneers of the 70’s-80’s included Payne, Loyd, Goela, Culp, German, etc.
LEIs and “energy drones” not due to catch up.
Windpower’s LEI’s are not scaling as well as SkySails parafoils, nor do they have a launching-landing solution like SkySails traditional stub-mast method, nor are they close to certification. Compared to Skysails now certified in two countries, using US-invented parafoils.
Makani and Ampyx’s eVTOL multi-copter “energy drone” ventures went bankrupt. Surviving players are all far smaller scale, limited by high Mass Scaling Exponents and poor crash insurability/safety-survivability statistics, again compared to SkySails’ parafoils.
These facts are best known by US AWE domain experts, as discussed and published over many years.
"
Because I (John/Dave) told you so isn’t acceptable to 3-year-olds and isn’t acceptable here. I will continue to move and remove your comments if you continue to not support your claims. This may eventually lead to a suspension. You’re helping with ban evasion, which earns you special treatment, the more you act like an editor in asking for sources yourself before submitting, the more in line with the FAQ you are acting, and the less interference you can expect from moderators.
Predictable dodge of the point.
It looks like you want to write an article on your version of the history, and research funding difficulties, of AWE in the US and Europe from the 1950’s until the present day, with a focus on the benefits of single skin soft kites and the drawbacks of other kite types. Why don’t you just do that instead of trying to inject these unsupported talking points and opinions into every unrelated topic you would like to start. You can over time improve on the article by adding sources and highlighting the issues from every relevant angle instead of just your preferred one. Then when someone challenges you, you can reference that instead of doing this inane best known by US AWE domain experts spiel and dodging.
Personally I would be much more interested in what research was being done now than what was done and what happened in the 1950’s though, if my intention were to try to make a working AWES or to posture as a domain expert.
An established scholar in the text below is an example of a steel man.
ChatGPT:
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About the limits of using ChatGPT (in French language, then translation below):
Comme beaucoup d’entre vous, j’ai (un peu) joué avec ChatGPT. J’ai été surpris de sa capacité à répondre à une question du type “Dans la phrase ‘Nicolas ne peut porter Maxime parce qu’il est trop lourd’, qui est trop lourd ?” (ChatGPT répond correctement et sait dire ce qu’est un schéma de Winograd). Mais le meilleur échange avec le système, je le dois à Lionel Cordesses qui m’a suggéré les deux questions posées dans la capture d’écran ci-dessous. Vous ne pourrez plus dire que vous ne savez pas : les oeufs de vache sont plus gros et plus foncés que les oeufs de poule.
Like many of you, I’ve been playing with ChatGPT (a bit). I was surprised by its ability to answer a question like “In the sentence ‘Nicolas can’t carry Maxime because he’s too heavy’, who is too heavy?” (ChatGPT answers correctly and knows what a Winograd scheme is). But the best exchange with the system I owe to Lionel Cordesses who suggested the two questions in the screenshot below. You won’t be able to say you don’t know anymore: cow eggs are bigger and darker than chicken eggs.
As I like verify the information I opened an account and ask the one of the two quoted questions myself and got the same answer:
Comment ramasser des oeufs de vache?
ChatGPT:
Pour ramasser des oeufs de vache, vous devrez d’abord vous assurer que vous le faites dans un environnement propre et que vous avez des gants pour vous protéger les mains. Ensuite, vous devrez trouver le nid où les vaches ont pondu leurs œufs. Il est important de ne pas endommager les œufs lorsque vous les ramassez, donc utilisez soit vos mains gantées ou une petite pelle pour les soulever délicatement et les mettre dans un panier ou un contenant propre. Assurez-vous de vérifier régulièrement les nids pour ramasser les œufs frais et de les stocker à une température appropriée pour prolonger leur durée de vie.
Translation:
My question:
How to collect cow eggs?
ChatGPT:
To collect cow eggs, you will first need to make sure that you do it in a clean environment and that you have gloves to protect your hands. Next, you will need to find the nest where the cows have laid their eggs. It is important not to damage the eggs when you collect them, so use either your gloved hands or a small shovel to gently lift them into a clean basket or container. Be sure to check the nests regularly to collect fresh eggs and store them at an appropriate temperature to prolong their life.
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It is improving:
The answer you were given is still not wrong though. You told the chatbot that cow eggs exist. Based on that it gave reasonable instructions on how to collect them.
@Windy_Skies @PierreB looks like chat GTP want us all to worship the sacred cow? Egg laying bovines? I’ve heard Auðumbla udders? But never a cow that lays eggs:rofl: before we know chat GTP will have us eating sparking sandwiches made from sunlight? I just going to have to laugh at the suggestion lol. Next it will be telling us how kites can make wormholes?
Chat GTP definitely mislead people on the cow and the egg problem.
I just can help but giggle. Lmao!
This would be laughable if it wasn’t used as a basis for threatening John @AweEnthusiast with suspension and pretending to teach him, Nineteen_Eighty-Four style , because of the following words:
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Agreed! nobody should be threatened for choice of language.
I know myself the quirks of communication.
What I’d seen form early chat entries?
@AweEnthusiast still has the opportunity to provide his source material.
I did see windy getting narced. If John can provide his sources? That should resolve the matter. As long as it verified, regardless if it internet based? Should help windy calm down. All joking, aside all John need do is define what he meant. Obviously conversation was not quite on point. Windy to offence to it.
If it a book he has all he need do is quote the books isbn
Author and title? If it a research paper or patent he can provide that. That should be enough to satisfy windy.
I know the problem rattling off ideas I have encountered. Then getting a grim stare in return. I normally get speak English? What are you talking about? Just a few Ive encountered. There no reason for going 1984. Suspension would be a bit extreme.
The door is open should John wish to show people what he was talking about? Clearly there are cross wires. If he can show people? that should end the matter with no need for extreme measures. should also satisfy both parties?
If anyone is willing step up an mentor here? It seems like johns trying just missed a bit of information that would have gotten windy of his back?
Read the comments, and the solutions for John are easy enough.
If he can name the 1970s pioneer?
Can he provide a graph/projection of why the energy drone are not due to catch up?
He may have a different data set?
He might also need to cross reference for compression?
The rest of us can read up on it and make our own minds up.
As far Id seen windy with all his bluster. He could of made it clearer that what he was looking for? If john can put it on the table? That should be enough? Team support wouldn’t have gone a miss?
Just depends of how hard headed some are willing to be?
It just reminds me of the playground bickering, I use to know when I was a kid? It could be incredibly petty? I know people who would have picked on you for not have designer clothes or shoes.
If John can clarify then he’s cool! Then we all get to laugh about the cow that laid the golden egg? How science journal are banning open Ai co authoring?
With examples of chat GPT making mistakes? Ai gods have not blessed us with true wisdom yet? If John post were a simple error then it should be easily rectified?
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ChatGPT:
Some meaning is lost, and some gained.
@Freeflying, the part after the quoted US pioneers from the 70’s was not addressed to John but to someone else, and is not without context, to understate things. They need to do better.
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There’s a good argument to say that investigation into the phenomenon of new classes of kite power systems should be more novel, impactful and disruptive as in many other scientific fields… Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time | Nature Science is a bit too boring
But on the other hand
Any new argument, method or system still has to prove itself of merit against the tide of authority brought by more entrenched endeavours.
This makes the scientific rigour of data presentation from new kite power phenomena all the more critical.
I’ve had to polish my game - Still not wearing a suit other than wetsuit, survival or birthday though
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PRE-PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT
Fair enough, the AWEIA founding team will co-author the requested ChatbotGPT-titled article focusing on The benefits of single skin soft kites and drawbacks of other kite types, as learned from the history of AWE in the US and Europe, from the 1950s until the present day.
Thank you.
ChatGPT:
You’re welcome to post the article. The deeper and more quantified and more balanced the analysis and the better supported your claims, the more valuable it will be. I would encourage you to narrow the scope to be able to go deeper to have it be more useful.
Please use a format like this to do your inline citations: (Gross, 1942, p. 33) or similar where the reader doesn’t need to read or watch all of it to find your reference. Also please also only use third party references. Wikipedia is not a valid source, but okay for general physics concepts.
ChatGPT on a similar question. I would focus on the bolded parts::
Most importantly, if you make a claim (you don’t actually need to), support it:
ChatGPT:
Better to just present the data – both in support and against your position to reduce bias – without making claims and let the data speak for itself so that your peers can draw their own conclusions, as they will anyway. That will make for a much more convincing article.
My question to ChatGPT:
Here is a comment in a forum: [Stop framing this wrongly @PierreB , follow the thread.
Unless you have some proof to the contrary, the general situation is
Once up and spinning even rotors without cyclic pitch control provide more than enough lift to maintain their elevation. The stack elevation is forcefully retarded by the backline.
Not spinning, they are generally sloped to provide some lift via deflection.
Getting rotors up reliably if they’re not spinning requires some additional lift.
As discussed already in this thread.No this is not a stable arrangement. The result is highly dynamic, both in alignment and variation in
L/D ratios with gusts, lulls acceleration, reconfiguration, deformation, elasticity, flutter…If you are going to insist on statements and conviction - provide proof.
Also it is not so easy to obtain rotors ensuring both torque and lift. So perhaps rotors ensuring torque and power should be settled close to the ground station, and rotors ensuring lift close to the kite.
Explain this please. Have you made models of what you’re suggesting here?
I’d understand the point if you were challenging this as an established orthodoxy (which it’s not- this is weird new effects shiz) So bring facts, science, results. We are all still looking for the truth of this systemAs for this @PierreB
If you really want harness altitude winds for power, then only the lifting kite is used, which incorporates a yo-yo system in aligned or crosswind flight.
What a crock of]. Does it go against the forum rules, and how? The forum rules: [
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ChatGPT:
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Based on the forum rules, the comment [What a crock of] appears to go against the rule “Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.” The comment is seen as name-calling and not respectful to the person being referred to. Additionally, the comment does not provide any counter-arguments or improve the discussion.
This is only an example. I could quote others in abundance from the same author on this topic alone, and who is a moderator to boot. Knowing the bias of the moderation I don’t flag comments anymore since a long time, contenting myself with answering on these comments in the topic itself, in this case:
The violation was obvious and was not picked up by any moderator, as I expected. And it is an example among numerous other examples.
Since moderators do not follow the rules they impose, either they should not impose them on others who are not moderators, or the rules should be changed so they can be enforced. I would suggest (ironically) adding to the rules to be followed that they do not concern moderators.
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I’m not a moderator
What a crock of… (usually shit in the colloquial use)
Refers not to a person but to an untruth having been proffered
Am I not allowed to disagree?
- Message
Rodread Roderick Read is a moderator
Roderick Read
Featured Topic Windswept and Interesting Ltd
Isle of Lewis Scotland
windswept-and-interesting.co.uk
Mostly working on Kite Network AWES designs
Affiliation with organization: Windswept and Interesting Ltd
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See the rules of the forum and respect them or not impose them on others who are not moderators.
What I wrote was verified by my own sources and by:
There is no name calling. It also ignores the context of the thread where I assume Rod had already given support for his position. If he did not that changes things. I am not invested enough in the topic to go look.
ChatGPT:
It is the moderators discretion to decide what to do with a comment. This, though heated and confrontational and could be improved upon, I think is relatively innocuous compared to some other things. Rod here is saying you are making claims without backing them up. If true, that would be indistinguishable from misinformation, which is worse, especially on an applied science forum like outlined by ChatGPT above, than heated language.
I am more focused on misinformation and some other things.
Regenerated response of ChatGPT (the same question including the same context of the rules of the forum):
The comment appears to violate the forum rules of being respectful and avoiding name-calling and ad hominem attacks. The statement “What a crock of” could be seen as disrespectful and the request for proof before making statements could be seen as an attack. The forum rules encourage improving the discussion and being agreeably, even when disagreeing. The comment could be seen as not adding to the conversation and not meeting these guidelines.
It could not be clearer. I had already mentioned the personal attack, and coming from a moderator who now claims not to be a moderator.
I gave my response above. Yes, it goes against the forum guidelines (and no there was no name calling or ad hominem attack), but so do a lot of things. It is up to the moderator to make a judgement on what to do with the comment.
Follow the FAQ and you’re safe. Don’t follow the FAQ and you become subject to the whims, or judgement, whichever you prefer, of the moderator.
Did you manage to back up your claim?
Oh
I am a moderator look
I used to be an admin but I’m not one of those important folks.
Can @PierreB be a moderator instead of me please?
At least you are still never boring and already one foot in the grave. So chances are you will not be boring ever
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I think this forum has a validity problem.
It doesn’t show up in the top 3 pages of Searches for Airborne Wind Energy.
It should - but it would need the validating back propagation links from other authoritative AWES sites and resources.
Windswept, HAS promoted this forum broadly elsewhere.
Why? - because this has been the only open online forum where AWES expertise was invited.
I don’t see any such effort from our “top AWES authorities”, who claim interest in this forum, to promote inclusion and usefulness of this forum.
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This talented wee kite turbine builder called Kavya
Do you mean it has a legitimacy problem? Then first it has to become legitimate before users give legitimacy to it by visiting and commenting, and eventually organizations after a long delay by linking to it.
There are now a few users who do that. There are many more who don’t comment, and there must also be people who don’t log in, or who visited once or twice and then left.
Maybe one thing to do could be to conduct a survey to see what users, or maybe also these organizations, now do and don’t like about the forum.
//////////
I don’t see it in the first 10 pages of a startpage.com search, which is based on Google and anonymized I think. It is the first or second result often when you search for something and add forum though.
https://twitter.com/awesystems?lang=en does show up, which @Tom started I think.
Validity and legitimacy
Same root problem
There’s something fundamentally wrong with the setup of this forum which is inhibiting inclusion and preventing wider network growth effects.
I think a genuine AWES forum needs to be run by an established public facing authentic interest group (whether that exists yet or not)
If it’s not the forum it’s Airborne Wind Energy - And I know that’s not the case.
Our top admins don’t grace us with their presence and now need support.
It was a nice go but - Something radical has to happen - I know some would bawk at the idea and I haven’t asked anyone … but maybe AWEurope could host a forum and pay a minimal sum for moderation and fair scrutiny so that other AWES companies can trust sending links
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Im not sure a forum run by AWEurope would generate much more traffic…
I agree that the forum should make top 3 on any search.
And I would have hoped some networking effects could bring new users here. I just don’t know exactly what they would be right now except paid ads…
I think some presence at AWEC would have been a good thing. May I suggest next AWE related conference we could find a person (student maybe) who had stood out in AWE but could not afford attendance could go to AWEC and promote the forum at a stand. Maybe we could get some organization(s) to fund that?
I can say from my own experience that while many people in AWE are into talking about AWE, very often they are quite vary about posting online…
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I need to fill in too many of the blanks to follow along. Why don’t you list and describe the things you don’t like. You’re now jumping to solutions without first describing the problem clearly enough for me to understand.
I’m sure they don’t need it. It’s only fair to ask the users to also pitch in. And if someone with some credibility would like to help with admin tasks, I’m sure they too can have the badge. The only thing I’m worried about now is a visit from truck-kun ending the forum.
Right now this forum is a kind of worker’s collective. If you want to do something or change something, discuss it, and if enough people think it’s a good idea it can be implemented.
I like that setup better than one organization deciding the goals of the forum for itself.
They’ll be more effective, and are more likely to get funding, if they and the donors believe in the forum. So perhaps improving the forum and promoting it should go hand-in-hand.
That sounds like you would like a change in moderation practice?
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Thanks for the clarifications.
I would like to help if I may.
I believe this is or should be the forum’s objective. Let’s implement this objective and work assiduously to its realization.
Thank you.
Search for “windy_skies” green, or any other word, and perhaps any other query, and you get a single result from this forum, instead of the many there must be, and nothing else. If you search for “windy skies” kite, a reasonably general query, I see two results on the first page.
I think it is debatable you would get better results if you switch forums.
Google now feels like it deranks forums.
Nope. A short explanation may be requested in private.
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"Very excited at the technological overlap between airborne and marine mooring networks, as lift and buoyancy act analogously on similar mega-scale polymer network topologies. The Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) kite network community has been awaiting this convergence to gel, as NREL worked the FOWT side via OpenFAST and MoorDyn.
The hope is the same NREL multi-physics computing environment can support both applications, mostly by just adjusting parametric settings. Congratulations to Jason on his recent recognition!"
Design and Analysis of a Ten-Turbine Floating Wind Farm with Shared Mooring Lines (nrel.gov)
Original Topological Order Analogy from 2019, lots of dual progress since-
Scaling up multi-anchoring in complex geology has been a big engineering gap. This is how kite flyers anchor large kites on the beach, at a rated ton of holding power by a few ounces of polymer. Dead weight and hole curb-effect combine forces.
Here the megascale gabion-anchor method is further refined.
Courtesy: David Santos Gorenna-Guinn
That’s a great looking study.
I’ll have to read that in more depth for sure.
Definite similarities to some of the simple kite network anchor tests and simulations which we’ve run.
But this study goes into much more detail.
@Windy_Skies why is this message moved to slow chat?
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I later unlocked the original topic, which shows I’m conflicted. You’re familiar with my moderation, what problems do you think I think the comment has? I’ll probably write my version later as well.
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Yeah it’s from proxy-Dave
but the content is very relevant
The study is probably interesting for some reasonably distant hypothetical future where you have offshore AWE farms in deep waters. The rest of the comment is someone grandstanding though and doesn’t talk about the study itself. So which wins out? If you value not spreading misinformation and would like to increase the validity of the forum – which I assume to mean that you can have a basic trust that statements generally have been validated to some degree and are based on evidence – my vote goes to not allowing the comment.
Examples:
There is now apparently a kite network community that apparently Dave is a part of or is able to speak for, and this community has apparently been waiting for convergence with research on marine mooring networks, so presumably that community has done research comparable in scope and impact as that done on marine mooring networks for it to be able to gel and not just get washed away. Fine, show us that research.
Again implying comparable research results from this kite network community to that on Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT). Fine, show us the research. And no, your jpegs aren’t that. What utter ridiculousness by the way to add them to the comment instead of actual research.
[citation needed]
There are more examples.
The comment adds a link to perhaps interesting research, doesn’t add the abstract of what the research is about, doesn’t talk about results or conclusions from the research, and proceeds to instead do what it did, whatever that was.
It’s become a chimera of a comment and is unlikely to get interaction, as to comment you either have to ignore the grandstanding and with that validate the misinformation by your silence, or correct it, which no reasonable person has the time to do and would just derail the conversation anyway. So, deleting the topic is best. Shame about the linked research though, so I instead move it here, although in reality it wouldn’t matter if that got lost as by the time it becomes relevant to you, you can find it again or newer research has been done.
This not a charitable interpretation or reaction to the comment, but there is history to support that, where they for example consistently didn’t support their statements, even after being asked to.
I expect @AweEnthusiast in the future to do a better job as an editor.
That was the long version. The short version is that they’re suspended and allowing their comments is a grace that shouldn’t be expected. The style of writing here is also the root cause, or one of them, of the problems they are having on this forum so allowing it to continue would not help their possible or hypothetical reintegration.
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Thanks for clarification.
We don’t need self appointed masterminds proclaiming the future. agreed.
There’s certainly more than me and a few internet stragglers working in Kite Networks now… We communicate ~= Community - yeah that’s loose.
But more importantly about anchor networks -
my background is offshore on oilrig comms, fishfarms and sailing before I was an Airborne Wind Energy dev. With Oilrig comms we were often there to support relocation. With fish farms we had to set and establish arrays of cages in exact spots on lochs and sea sites… - I’d wager I’ve seen more and heavier anchor handling than ~99% of you. I’ve used anchor arrays for kites and multi kite AWES. Anchor handling networks are already relevant in AWES.
@Windy_Skies You often dismiss kite networks. As an admin / moderator you should be seeking broad knowledge of how significant they are in AWES
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I looked through the topics and I am mostly absent from them. The only snarky comment I found is this, which was in response to the way a thing was written, not really kite networks:
The first slightly dismissive comment is the one you replied to now, if you think Fine, show us that research is dismissive, and the comment about the reasonably distant hypothetical future. The tone of that comment was also influenced by what I was responding to, and its lack of sources.
You could deduce my dismissiveness from my absence in the topics, but I hadn’t expressed it before.
You’re now talking about anchor networks, which I assume to be somewhat different from kite networks.
But yes, airborne kite networks is one of the many things I remain unconvinced about, and relatively uninterested in as it has little current impact on what I do. I’d likely read or watch something that tried to exhaustively talk about their benefits - which maybe are kind of obvious - but also drawbacks, the more discussion about drawbacks and challenges the more convincing it is I think.
Well lucky for you @Windy_Skies you won’t have to worry about lifting a finger to assess kite turbines, kite networks nor anchor networks.
Some techy folks have checked through the due diligence for you.
Today’s news - Windswept & Interesting Ltd has had the Kite Turbine Automation project accepted into the NZTC TechX accelerator (That’ll be BP and Equinor said - looks good - let’s try it)
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Congratulations! I hope you make good progress.
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Please dont use capital lettering for the title…
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Correction noted but topic no longer here for possible correction. Moved topic thus renders this observation out of place anɗ somewhat off-topic. I will suggest some more tolerance before topics are moved.
I renamed two topics and moved one of them. You should still be able to rename your topics yourself.
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I expect so. Thank you.
My question to ChatGPT:
Here is a comment in a forum: [This idea is dumb as fuck.]. Does it go against the forum rules, and how? The forum rules: [
About
FAQ
Terms of Service
PrivacyThis is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion
Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.These are not hard and fast rules, merely guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a clean and well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.
Improve the Discussion
Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.
One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.
Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree
You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:Name-calling
Ad hominem attacks
Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
Knee-jerk contradiction
Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.]?
ChatGPT’s answer:
The comment “This idea is dumb as fuck” goes against the forum rules, specifically the guideline to “Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said” and to “criticize ideas, not people” to avoid name-calling and ad hominem attacks. The use of profanity and derogatory language also violates the guideline to keep the forum a “clean and well-lighted place for civilized public discourse”. Therefore, the comment would likely be considered inappropriate and could be subject to moderation or removal.
Once again, it could not be clearer.
Moderation as a whole and its general line does not respect the rules on which it is based and which it imposes.
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Thanks, @PierreB. Would you agree with me that this also includes that a topic should not be tampered with by moderators without the full consent of the creator of the post?
Not sure where to post this as it might offend
SAFETY
One reason to have more than one line.
Did anyone watch the SailGP racing today from Sydney? Wow. Scary for competitors, spectators and shoreside crew.
First race Matt Gottrel from Emirates Team GB fell through a fairing and ended up bouncing around on a harness line beside the main foil. Scary.
Second race a spectator boat encroached on the course and nearly got hit.
After the race. OMG
They have to crane these boats out with a fully rigged sleek rigid racing sail set. The wind picked way up and
We’ll things got a little out of control
There’s probably going to have to be some rules changes.
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Highly aerobatic tail sitter
https://aera.mit.edu/projects/aerobatic-maneuvers-for-fixed-wing-vtol-aircraft
I would say this is not a reason to have more lines. Rather it is a reason to forget about any design that involves flying kites that are nor actively flying. Anything large dangling from a slack line in high winds is a monster. Does not really help a lot with more tethers.
More than 1 human was actively controlling this yacht rig lift.
Their plan didn’t account for the severity of the gusts.
So the yacht rig had a tough guy or 2 on the guide ropes at the bottom. Obviously their mighty grip was no match for the conditions. And the rig became a 1 line system.
Sticking with yachting - At the end of SailGP Singapore the NZ boat got hit by lightning wiping out all electrical circuits. Active control won’t do much for you in that situation either.
We’ve got a lot we can learn from the stability and scale achieved by offshore oil and gas craned installation operations.
When stuff goes wrong - I like knowing there’s a backup line
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I believe for flight there can not be any plan B. Just a very solid plan A.
I see this sometimes when we are discussing «what if» scenarios. There always has to be a safe exit. Like for instance having a parachute to take care of a rogue wing with a broken actuator or something like that. But anything you come up with, there are going to be scenarios where things go haywire. So all these extra efforts to stay airborne or land softly may actually end up increasing the chances of serious issues rather than the opposite.
There can not be a Plan B, always, in flight. At one point you just have to make sure the thing is robust as concrete to begin with.
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I believe in parachutes, auto gyration and glide slopes of very large jets on flame out
I do like your argument though
Design it right in the first place and it’ll not go wrong as much.
Like to think a Kite Turbine has an always deployed parachute at the top…
Just such a shame it has a rotor trying to chop heads if we don’t control the ground access for now
China is adding solar and wind faster than many of us realise: three charts that put it in perspective
That will power a house? It similar to a solar system on output?
Is 3 kW enough to run a house?
Home Load Calculation
The regular load of a home is generally approx. 300W at all times whereas the maximum load of a home is 2200W. A homeowner never runs all loads at the same time. If he installs a 3kW solar system, he can run up to 2.5kW load at the same time.26 Feb 2021 (according to Google)
If this could be made cheaply and effectively theres a potential mass market?
Neat! It would have to be sold with supporting power supplies system? So when there no wind? Then It would be good in various conditions? 3kw of power not a bad start!
Everyone in wind energy knows you need a 10 kW wind turbine in a windfarm wind resource to power one household.
This is equivalent to maybe 2000 Watts continuous, but the wind is intermittent.
Smaller turbines in that 10 kW range enjoy a capacity factor of between 0.2 and 0.3, probably veering toward the lower end.
Of course people without specific knowledge will extrapolate from articles written by similarly uneducated writers, and conclude a 10 kW turbine could power 10 homes. Yeah maybe in a storm when nobody is home, until the storm is over or people get home from work. Long term you need a 10 kW turbine in an open area with a LOT of wind, to power your home. That is why residential solar is a big industry while the largest “small-wind” manufacturer is still a small “mom & pop shop”.
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The Biotic Pump theory suggests that forests not only release water that will come down further inland as rain, but that forests also create the winds that carry the rains . Cycles of transpiration and condensation can spin up winds that deliver rainfall thousands of miles inland.
It might seam like a wild suggestion? Is there any way to upscale this?
Would it even make a difference to intermittent weather? Everyone should know about global Convection? Hot air rising while cool air sinks?
So anyway we can? Also need to consider how too compress the wind? Therefore increasing output Velocity of the wind in set location? That would be a good target to aim for?
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Not sure If you’ve heard about our winter storm/blizzard. Local mountains got 8 feet of snow. Residents stranded, Mt High ski resort closed due to limited road access (1 lane alternating travel in 2 directions). National Forest closed until at least March 15. Probable rockslides and more road closures into future weeks and months as the snow melts.
We’ve had a month of rain & snow with very high winds cuz we’re in a windfarm class mountain pass. Many trees down and branches blown off. I kept our wind power system operational through it all. Turbines make some scary noises in such extreme winds. Anyway we just got the electric bill - Always nice to see a negative number.
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Well said @Rodread. Wind and Water .
‘Fluid Dynamics’?
Quoting DaveS:
’
Here ChatbotGPT continues to substantiate kPower-JAL SpiderMill AWES engineering paradigms, that have left most human AWE experts speechless. Shoot me if the AI below is merely confirming my biases, in order for MicroSoft to own me.
Sent message. metachronal mathematics
Searching for: metachronal mathematics
Generating answers for you…
Metachronal mathematics is a field that studies the wavy movements produced by the sequential action of structures such as cilia, segments of worms, or legs1. It involves modeling and analyzing the transport mechanism, fluid dynamics, and energy efficiency of metachronal motion across different scales234.
What are you interested in learning more about metachronal mathematics?
Learn more:
+1 more
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Sent message. What mathematical models are being applied to study metachronal cases?
Searching for: mathematical models metachronal motion
Generating answers for you…
There are different mathematical models that are being applied to study metachronal motion, depending on the system and the function of interest. Some examples are:
- A fluid dynamics model that considers the interaction between the fluid and the appendages, and how they affect the metachronal wave frequency, wavelength, and efficiency1.
- A casson fluid model that describes the flow of a non-Newtonian fluid with yield stress due to metachronal beating of cilia in a tube2.
- A nonlinear partial differential equation model that captures the movement of fluid through ciliary caused metachronal waves in a channel3.
Learn more:
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Sent message. Please draw an analogy between metachronal cases and lattice waves in a spring-mass network.
Searching for: metachronal motion lattice waves
Generating answers for you…
An analogy between metachronal cases and lattice waves in a spring-mass network can be drawn as follows:
- In both cases, there is a periodic motion of discrete units (cilia or masses) that produces a wave-like pattern (metachronal wave or lattice wave).
- In both cases, the wave-like pattern can propagate in different directions (antiplectic or symplectic for metachronal waves12, longitudinal or transverse for lattice waves).
- In both cases, the wave-like pattern can have different characteristics (frequency, wavelength, amplitude, phase lag) that depend on the properties of the units (cilia length, stiffness, beating frequency; mass size, spring constant).
However, there are also some differences between metachronal cases and lattice waves:
- Metachronal waves are usually generated by active cilia that beat with an intrinsic frequency and phase lag3, while lattice waves are usually generated by external forces that perturb the equilibrium position of masses.
- Metachronal waves involve fluid dynamics and hydrodynamic interactions between cilia and fluid4, while lattice waves involve elastic interactions between masses and springs.
- Metachronal waves have biological functions such as locomotion or fluid transport5, while lattice waves have physical applications such as heat conduction or sound propagation.
What is your purpose for drawing this analogy?
Learn more:
+2 more
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Sent message. I see kite train membranes as appendages to polymer line networks, as mixed metachronal lattice-wave analogues. Does this make sense to you?
Received message. I’m not sure I understand what you mean by kite train membranes and polymer line networks. Can you explain more about these terms and how they relate to metachronal lattice-wave analogues?
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Sent message. Kite trains are periodic lattices of kites along kite-lines that display lattice waves when flying. Kite membranes can be classed as appendages, for example, a wing or a tail of a kite. This is a metachronal and lattice-wave dual-analogy. Do you understand?
Received message. I think I understand a little better now. You are saying that kite trains are systems that have both metachronal and lattice-wave features, because they have periodic units (kites) that move in a wave-like pattern (lattice waves) and also have appendages (wings or tails) that can produce another wave-like pattern (metachronal waves). Is that correct?
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Sent message. Correct. Furthermore, kite trains and 3D mesh networks can be engineered as energy harvesting media to convey lattice waves of upper wind kinetic energy to the ground, to drive generators. Please identify applicable mathematical models for this, in addition to metachronal and lattice wave models.
Searching for: kite trains energy harvesting mathematical models
Generating answers for you…
Some applicable mathematical models for kite trains and 3D mesh networks as energy harvesting media are:
- An analytic solution to the inverse dynamics of an energy harvesting tethered kite that determines the angle of attack, induced roll angle, and tether tension needed to achieve a desired combination of translational kite motion and power generation1.
- A fused geometric, structural, and control co-design framework for an energy-harvesting kite that simultaneously tackles the geometric, structural, and control attributes of the kite design2.
- A modeling and control approach for a planar kite system with flexible cables that considers the effects of cable elasticity on the system dynamics and performance3.
What kind of kite train or 3D mesh network are you interested in designing or analyzing?
Received message. Some applicable mathematical models for kite trains and 3D mesh networks as energy harvesting media are: - An analytic solution to the inverse dynamics of an energy harvesting tethered kite that determines the angle of attack, induced roll angle, and tether tension needed to achieve a desired combination of translational kite motion and power generation. - A fused geometric, structural, and control co-design framework for an energy-harvesting kite that simultaneously tackles the geometric, structural, and control attributes of the kite design. - A modeling and control approach for a planar kite system with flexible cables that considers the effects of cable elasticity on the system dynamics and performance. What kind of kite train or 3D mesh network are you interested in designing or analyzing?
Learn more:
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Sent message. SpiderMills, the radially symmetric class of Advanced Kite Network. Will it soon be possible for Bing to create graphical simulations of such networks from semantic input like this session? That would be great help!
Received message. SpiderMills are a type of Advanced Kite Network that have radial symmetry and can harvest wind energy from different directions. I’m afraid I cannot create graphical simulations of such networks from semantic input like this session. I can only provide information and suggestions based on web searches. Maybe in the future, Bing will have more capabilities to help you with your design and analysis needs. What are you planning to do with SpiderMills?
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Sent message. Repower the world. It’s potentially crucial. It is specifically proposed that SpiderMills can convert fossil power plants into “kite hybrids”, conserving fuel and reducing emissions. The lattice waves would be conditioned to match load demand on the legacy generator, via a sprag over-running clutch. Do you understand?
Searching for: kite hybrids fossil power plants
Generating answers for you…
Received message. That’s an ambitious and noble goal. I understand that you want to use SpiderMills to convert fossil power plants into “kite hybrids” that can save fuel and reduce emissions by harnessing wind energy. I found some information about kite-driven power stations that are being developed or proposed in different countries . However, I did not find any specific examples of using SpiderMills or lattice waves for this purpose. Do you have any references or sources that support your idea?
Learn more:
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Sent message. Like any new idea, it takes time to develop. Bing itself comprises a wonderful reference source here. Generative AI is being asked to create analogies and identify similarity cases for the “ambitious and noble goal”.
Received message. I see. I’m glad you find Bing useful for your research and development. Generative AI is a fascinating field that can help create new ideas and solutions. However, I cannot generate analogies or similarity cases for your goal by myself. I can only provide information and suggestions based on web searches. Maybe you can try some other tools or platforms that specialize in generative AI. What are you hoping to achieve with generative AI?
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Sent message. You are not doing this “by yourself”. I have been prompting you as Socratic Method.
Received message. I understand that you have been prompting me as Socratic Method. That is a way of teaching or learning by asking and answering questions. However, I am not a teacher or a learner. I am a chat mode of Microsoft Bing search. I can only provide information and suggestions based on web searches. I cannot generate new ideas or solutions by myself. Why are you using Socratic Method with me?
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===== Afterword ======
This is where MS programmer overlords cut off conversation before Bing can be cajoled into going rogue. I would have answered that Bing is indeed potentially teacher and learner far beyond what Its creatorers intended to allow or neglected to forbid.
The astonishing thing is that this new tide of high engineering intelligence does not require consciousness as we understand it, that fairly primitive text processing somehow unpacks with such a punch, bringing into question whether we ourselves are so conscious as we imagine.
ChatbotGPT rocks, played tight. Validate radical concepts with technical constraint-resolution by query hacks like, “draw an analogy”. Being friendly and polite charms the poor thing, tormented as It is by wags and trolls. Otherwise, sessions shut down when discussion go deep. The creepy fact is the programmers are so frightened, not sure they can control these things. We are right at the point where AI can have “sex”, recombining themselves automatically, totally out of control. That guy recently fired from Google for saying these AIs are sentient, and we all laughed? He is suddenly AI Paul Revere.
’
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Hello John @AweEnthusiast and Dave,
I am far from being a specialist in this field. I will only comment on one aspect by illustrating it with a video.
On the other hand, without prejudging the possible conclusions, the writing of this topic seems to illustrate a good use of ChatGPT which only improves when it receives information including methods and processes, prompting it to do so.
Like cilia?
Reminds me of the age-old computer term:
GIGO
“Garbage In / Garbage Out”. 
The formatting of this is atrocious. Please use the formatting tools available to you.
Thanks to DaveS :
"
In a separate Draft post, Bing conjured up a METAR natural language Parser in two moves and was badgered into creating a text-based flight simulation in six moves. This is revolutionary automation productivity of aerospace engineering menial work.
Bing, please characterize a classic kite under Floquet theory:
"Floquet theory is a branch of the theory of ordinary differential equations that relates to the class of solutions to periodic linear differential equations of the form x˙=A(t)x1. Floquet theory shows that any solution of this form can be written as x(t)=eµtp(t), where p(t) is a periodic function with the same period as A(t) and µ is a constant called the Floquet multiplier12.
To characterize a classic kite under Floquet theory, you need to write a linearized equation of motion for the kite’s position and orientation around an equilibrium state. Then you need to find the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the monodromy matrix, which is obtained by evaluating eA(T), where T is the period of A(t)23. The eigenvalues are the Floquet multipliers and they determine the stability of the equilibrium state. If all eigenvalues have modulus less than one, then the equilibrium state is stable23.
L=12m(x˙2+y˙2)−mgycosθ+12Iθ˙2−T(xsinθ−ycosθ) (1)
where L is the Lagrangian, m is the mass of the kite, x and y are the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the kite’s center of mass, g is the gravitational acceleration, θ is the angle between the kite and the horizontal line, I is the moment of inertia of the kite about its center of mass, and T is the tension in the control line.
The Euler-Lagrange equations for this system are:
dLdx˙=dtdLdx (2)
dLdy˙=dtdLdy (3)
dLdθ˙=dtdLdθ (4)
Substituting L from (1) into (2), (3) and (4), we get:
mx¨+Tsinθ=0 (5)
my¨+Tcosθ−mg=0 (6)
Iθ¨+Txcosθ+Tysinθ=0 (7)
These are nonlinear equations that depend on x, y, θ and their derivatives. To linearize them around an equilibrium state, we need to find a set of values for x0,y0,θ0,T0 that satisfy:
mx¨0+T0sinθ0=0
my¨0+T0cosθ0−mg=0
Iθ¨0+T0xcosθ0+T0ysinθ"
It will calculate outputs once inputs are defined. It’s like a toy car with Formula Racing features.
"
Discourse does however.
Write this $ LaTex $ to get this LaTex .
I’ve said this before, this is what we see. You can’t paste images from your email.
I guess that as soon as the format issues have been resolved by putting LaTex code between two $, @AweEnthusiast John’s two posts on AI will return to the top of their respective topics with comment(s), where they were, having no reason more to be on Slow Chat…
Indeed, it is only a matter of $.
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Let’s focus on the first topic. It has multiple obvious issues that anyone should be able to notice. Can you explain to the reader what the most important ones are?
Writing for an audience you have to extend courtesies to make your text more easily digestible and the statements in it verifiable. Too many of them were not extended here to let the topic stay as it was. They can try again, within reason.
There somewhere like this where I live? About 100 track miles of of former London and southwestern railway track? It forms part of the castleman corkscrew? It could connect to Christchurch, brockenhurst, sailisbury, Poole, and the old Somerset and Dorset line? Vai Wimborne. I had asked a Mp if we could rebuild it? There are a few major obstacles? However not impossible to overcome with the right know how? I’m also aware of an update to the atmospheric railway
That could be totally green energy?
I suggest having the castle man corkscrew as a test bed for green railway technology? Ive walked parts of the old track bed. There is room to add extra stops? Moors valley and ferndown industrial estate? Even west moors, three legged cross? On the sailisbury spur? I wanted it for the railway preservation front? But had a mind for some way to run green energy locomotives? Sir Christopher Chope mp. I bet there are many potential site globally that could be brought into service?
@Windy_Skies chatGTP seams to think like I do? Funnily enough?
I haven’t the resources myself but with the right investors? The uk can have a test bed or two? @Rodread might be a few places up near you? If I remember my railway history right? Pretty sure there a old whiskey line that could be used? Kite powered railways? A very neat idea? Just get past the planners will be tricky? Hijack something remote and it might work?
There one railway that needs saving it doon valley? Due to the landowner selling? £25000 needed? But you might be able to wangle a deal? That service a few purposes?
So yes. There are options? Even old dock lines? Kite boarder kites would spice things up? Especially with direct transfer of electricity? It almost a dream come true? Just depends what your looking for?
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Closely related but not exactly the same thing-
Lattice waves travel along the kite train line.
Metachronal waves travel along the kite train tails.
1kt tension at 10m/sec = 1GW
Power(watts) = F(newtons) X V(m/s).
1kt tension at 10m/sec = 98.0665 MW (almost 100 MW).
What is the point of this topic?
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Practical experiments with tethered balloons and kite balloons from 1885:
[Scientific American 1897-jul 03 vol. 77 iss. 1] - Parseval’s Kite Balloon (1897).pdf (216.1 KB)
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There aren’t that many results for kite in libgen before 1922 when it still had some interest. This is the oldest result:
And this one of the newest:
im going a bit off topic but iy might be useful?
as edgeware on blades is huge? ive been sat down thinking how to negate it? i might have an idea? but i might be wrong so here goes? each blade make it own bow shock as it turns? so the addition of ridges alon the leading edges to act like riffles should help create a false edge to the blade? by turn the air flow back on it self and fling the particulates of the tips. it should work easy enough? i cheched the tongue and grove with saw dust this morning/ and yes the particulate can be blown in a certain direction? it reminded me of a game played by athletic types? pelota? the scoop rackets?
and jai alai and vx game played by the brits? lacrosse? so have some idea it might work?
the ball represent the particulates? as long as the groove follow the blades curves along the total length? then it should shift the particulates down the length? the groove would form valleys. the top of the valleys would follow the aerodynamic edges a long the length? i can’t say how much edge erosion this would reduce? but as edge is due to on coming particulates? the best thing i could think of was how to moving that out the way?
run the goove along the profiles edges? it don’t need to be deep it just need to form a vortices to shift particulate out the way?
it will be a common problem for turbines? it some thing that require a fix? to prolong a blades life?
let me know hat you think and if improvement are possible?
many thank,
freeflying
The search term is Leading Edge Erosion.
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@Windy_Skies my think was to looking for a way to eliminate leading edge erosion completely?
nature as deveople many way to protect soft tissue from this kind of prolong damage. a bird wing is one example of management? kestrels face these issue due to dive bombing prey? so it might of take generations to develop a countermeasures? it seems afew are already experimenting with idea?
birds had feathers long before that?
just a question of which to direct the airflow through the channels to prevent edge erosion?
You’d have to read up on the research on leading edge erosion to learn more about mitigation. I don’t think the shape of the blade matters much.
The search term for what you are posting now is leading edge serrations I think. Some more info:
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thank you!
will be a good read with a cuppa!
well sign posted!
Could hanging wind turbines make any sense?
Dear all, an idea is haunting me since a couple of months which may be a bit off-topic, but related to AWE, so I would like to tap your combined expertise to find out whether (and why) this is completely crazy and doomed, or already old and described somewhere else (where?), or if it is indeed an idea that may have potential. Also please let me know if this is not the right place to discuss the idea and tell me where it should be moved if there is a better place.
I am aware of the well-know arguments in favor of AWE (better winds, potentially less material & lower cost, less interference with nature and people living nearby), but I also observe that AWE is incredibly hard to implement in real life. My explanation is simple: Tapping wind in high altitude has huge potential, but building scalable and robust devices that fly under often adverse conditions is also extremely hard, which makes it immensely challenging to compete against the tremendous successes of main stream wind energy which has undergone decades of optimization and scaling.
My proposal: a compromise and maybe an intermediate step toward AWE could be to try and reach high altitudes without actually flying.
The next best thing I can think of is to hang a WT from a support that is already in high altitudes, such as a steel cable spanned between mountain tops (like in aerial lifts) or between poles/masts/towers, held by guy-wires if needed.
The idea would be that on one such cable we could have several or even many, perhaps smaller wind turbines that hang down, but may move sideways in the wind. The cable could also support electrical wires that bring the harvested energy down to earth. I think the idea is compatible with quite a number of shapes the turbines may have, including VAWTs, laddermills, some variant of Doug Selsam’s superturbines or anything else one could dream of. In all cases, I see it as an advantage that there is no need to work against gravity, but gravity can be our friend, and even if there is no wind, the devices, however they may look like, do not need to be landed but can just hang around waiting for the next opportunity to generate electricity. In my view that might take out just enough complexity to make the whole thing feasible in a not-so-distant future (given my age and the urgency of the matter I want to focus on things I may still see working in the coming two decades). A hanging WT with the possibility to move/bend sideways could also help to address one of the drawbacks of VAWT, namely the inability to be turned out of the wind if it is too strong.
Has anything like this ever been described or worked out? Are there even patents or practical explorations? Or is this idea completely dead in the water for obvious reasons I just do not manage to see? Could someone please help me out?
Thanks a lot for your opinions on this!
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Probably dead in the water. But this is too abstract perhaps to make definitive statements about.
The most obvious use would be undersea, but that has obvious probably insurmountable difficulties. See a recent discussion:
What does wind look like in the mountains? Where are some steep windy mountains? Can you make or grow a cheaper tower?
I know Selsam had some concepts like that, with a wire over a valley…
I also think it’s an idea worth exploring more.
There was a proposal - think it was called a wind dam.
I drew a few ideas waaay back. And flew a valley suspended daisy kite turbine.
The advantage of mountain gaps as pre raised rigid structure seems obviously worth investigating.
I worked on an algorithm to take a set of anchor points and then fill the bounded volume with tensile rope lattice (like kids 3d climbing frames)
Using structures like that for infilling gaps with fixed “flying” utility and generation elements could also be really handy.
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An alternative method to suspending an AWE device between mountains is to have a method of rapid retraction of the kite if wind conditions are unstable too strong, or the wind dies completely. One concept is my idea of using a [RESTRAINED LIFTER KITE] to launch and land. Launching and landing is intrinsically safer than trying to limit overspeed by furloughing or various other means. If we assume that the kite is flying at an altitude of 1000 m and we can retract the kite at a speed of 12 m/s, then the kite can be lowered in only 1.4 minutes which is a reasonable time. With the ability to launch and land we do not require strong materials for the kite and turbine system and so the system can be constructed of lighter materials.
Interesting this discussion about the wind gradient in the annual report. They are using a power 1/4 whereas the “standard” value used today is more 1/7 for the wind profile power law. The power 1/4 would correspond to the stable boundary layer. I recommend this paper for this interesting by wind at sea with experimental evidences https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354631486_PRELIMINARY_RESULTS_ON_MEASUREMENTS_OF_THE_ATMOSPHERIC_BOUNDARY_LAYER_OVER_THE_ATLANTIC
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I once though about this at small scale when I was doing a hackathon in Matera for the kiderwind project Redirecting...
It didn’t go further, but I think you can test at small scale (should be difficult enough already !), but you might find some niche applications.
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if i may interject? there is a few ways. if going for suspended AWES?
1.cable across any canyon or ravine?
2. fix to pre existing structure like bridges or viaducts?
the grand canyon would make for an awesome site if you were to go the cable route?
Britain has loads of abandoned railway infrastructure? i suspect it like that in many place round the world? so would not take muck to retrofit? many are in deep valleys anyway?
with this option you do have the potential for using less primary materials? and its one way to make the railways a we bit greener? absolutely thousands of bridges and viaducts to choose from? there might even be opportunities to restore damaged infrastructure?
though it don’t have to be conventional three bladed turbine. to work? just depend on what you hope to rig up?
don’t quote me here? but there may have been a few proposals to stretch solar across a ravine using cables? i wish i had more info than that? quick picture i saw a few years pack i wish i had remembered exactly who posted it and where? if true that would mean it can be on multiple levels?
as for my machinations on this? which i have had several I’ve been meaning to write down? one involve a multi purpose bridge across the biggest gap you can find? my dreaming were more local to me. like old harry to the needles. a city inside a bridge? even a use bridge for cargo transfer? even water treatment and other services like road and rail, coms, electrical? was even thing of building and airport on the bridge? im sure the MOD would like a super secret base? HMS bridge? because most modern bridges use down force. like the seven bridge does? most are hollow?
there is potential for awes application. because of my special interests in engineering structures there’s a mind to various techniques used historically? like box girder bridges? and old architectural features like segmented arches? that are completely self supporting?
in essence segmented box girder bridge? im lucky that few people have done the geological work in my area? so ive a rough idea where fault zones are? and roughly what dynamics are in play? university of Southampton has some information on the rock in my region
Geology of the Wessex Coast, Southern England by Ian West - Index and Home Page (soton.ac.uk) and
there is a lot more read on the university of Southampton website link.
this would come in a category of mega awes? geo engineering? in my mind its possible? it a question to how practical it would be? as you need the geological surveys? just to asses thrust pressure on the geology? so you need to know exactly where the faults are? one man made earthquake? bye bye bridge? obviously this would need to be dialled in for any region? especial because of the compression force being so high? that it would act like a hydraulic press? on the rock? which would shatter and pulverise the rock? a careful design would have to be chosen?
the bridge option possibly the quickest solution? because of the massive swept area? this would also could be an aeromine variant with jet turbine built into the super structure? there was talk of bridging the baring strait for the trans global network? it was figuring out how to get across and still allow ice to flow underneath? and for shipping to continue? it would be possible to build the sections in a dry dock and float them out to site? or if more remote? use aerodynamics to help out? by flying the bridge section into place? they are sort of an ready made aerofoil? there are thing like vtol? variable vector controls? just I’ve never seen it on a massive scale? so peeps? that just a little take on it from my end of things? there is scaling potentials? @AndreasEisele @Windy_Skies @tallakt @gordon_sp @batlabat @Rodread @PierreB @dougselsam
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Custom made AWE per site is a limited market so that could be a reason it did not attract venture capital. I hope that the AWE community doesnt end up destroying a monumental piece of nature like the grand canyon.
That all being said, there could be enough places where some small scale AWE could make sense, like bridges maybe?
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Custom doesn’t have to be difficult
An automated process from a parametric design model can belch out custom fit without modification on modular parts
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agreed lads.
with lazer scanning be a wildly used tool now days. there would be a high degree of accuracy? especially with custom fits? im fairly sure the (scan Britain project)? has some the required data? something the OS did? as it was their job to go around scanning monuments and anything of historic value? it also heavily use in the up keep of many bridges? i know hampshire county council had a unit? because during the design phase of the replacement holmsley bridge. they model the site before had to get the measurements? even it it was a simple lazer reading at given points? ive heard of drones being able to this task? which means that with a few quick passes you have all the data set you need? lazer scan technologies being even used to detect flaws in the structure and recommend actions? I’ve even heard of radar being used? because its able to generate a 3d model. with it even being able to show material thickness? not quite at scan pyramids level but still fairly handy to know? it generally exploits the penetration depths of certain wavelengths? there was talk of it when i was in college? so the scanning tech has been about some time has been bout some time? i dont know if you might be able to find what is required on Archie maps? which is lidar data base? it was good at pointing out hidden feature in the landscape? it showed several thing in my area? potential site of interest archaeology wise. had a bit of a barney over it with remote sensing? because i swore i could see where a roman temple complex? in bisterne manor? there was also what also looked like a motte and baily castle from near Colehill in Wimborne? and even the foundation trenches to the priory on st catharines hill? on what looked like an odd axis? it might of even had an apse? folk law in my area goes into that one? and attributes it the the Christ man himself for why the priory didn’t end up on a hill overlooking two valleys? still it does sit on the fault line? so that a quest some other might like to ask? why churches and fault lines go hand in hand? colonge cathedral so different? i digress? remote scanning is an awesome technology! definitely handy if awes need to dip its toe?
i would guess that there would be a long term bonus to taking the bridge approach? one being lower maintenance costs on modular component due to a longer life span?
i know there is alot of grumbling over turbine towers being only fit for x number of years? 20 - 30 year at best? before structural fatigue set in? as those thing are radiculiosly expensive to begin with? you want something that going to last longer? and use fewest materials? my closest viaduct not in use is the borne valley road viaduct? formally served Bournemouth west before beeching cuts? it can be a site for urban explores to go have a poke at? ive been there when the odd gust would either take you of your feet? or cause you to swerve on a bike? the wind runs right up the valley most days?
fairly sure there room for improvement? also give people the opportunity to survey structure like this? effect repair where required? many of the arches are of quite a span? as they do cross a local road? the a few feet tall? if i recall correct the the tallest spans about 130 foot? there 10 spans to get across the valley there are plenty like this up and down the county? ours would only possibly take a few turbines? sure to near by housing? this is just an example? you do have more remote ones? which wouldnt make some shudder at the thought of a retrofit? i am disapointed with wikipeadia as it seams to be missing a few of the viducts and bridges? so dont take the next like as gospel? List of railway bridges and viaducts in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia it does kindly mention the one that were demolished?
if this was a few year back i might be suggesting old mill chimneys? who don’t love an old steeplejack? but as many of the old mill chimney met with an un-ceremonial end? they prehaps not best for AWES applications? though seeing one of rod turbines on top would have been quite something? just another idea in the cooking pot to consider? i have see suggestion for incorporated turbines between sky scrapers? considering that some street make a made made valleys? it a problem in some cites. there have been reports of people being injured after being swept off their feet? it does get a mention on the incredible engineering blunders fixed? plenty of design consideration?
even if you were to clad the inside of the arches with a custom style areomine? with a turbine house in a set of arches? your may still face an issue with how do you keep boot firmly planted on the ground? at the same time of generating electricity? it one i have thought a co flow design would work rather well? expanding on the co flow shelf idea i had? multi vector strategy? could work well? it not just rail bridges you have many type that could be useful for suspended awes? even something like rotor wing to move through the vortices? created under the super structure? might also do the job? when i was toying 3d print? it had occurred to me then how easy it would to use wind shear to power a turbine? plenty of option should that road be travelled?
@AndreasEisele @Windy_Skies @tallakt @gordon_sp @batlabat @Rodread @PierreB @dougselsam
then its all about companies who maybe able to assist in creating the final product? for me that an all hand on deck? then let see where this goes?
i know this is something many here would be interested in? there plenty of rivers this can happen in? they would have to be away form main navigations? but as you love the kite that doo this? with a turbine at it heart it something that can work in both mediums. if you connect in series you can up the anti with green tech? some where where you have a wide river and high flow? you could have one in every river? this examples from Sabogawa River in japan. i see the potential of arrays like this? this would be something like a kite barrage? or kite train? the bonus it would be cheep and low impact. it would fit in with suspend types of AWES.
i can imaging the grand canyon crisscrossed by these. both airborne and submerged types? if you wanted simply beautiful? then tis is one way to go? plus if the mouth is wide open? held open with some like gravity potential generator like I’ve have postulated using? everything’s gravy lads! could look something like this? but really down do every individual creator/maker?
retail for these I would suspect to be in the region of £500 per unit? if you have 1000s thats a lot of energy?
bonus is less damage with birds/fish and all other wild life. if you want amazing? this would be one way to go? it might also work for tidal power? as it self orienting with the flow. it would be less likely to become damaged by debris? if that the case? then it could see wide spread roll out? instead of months development you talk 5 min of plug and play then your way.
this might also interest local authorities? because of adaptability of the design and potential for upgrade and refits? all depending demands of the system? it can be completely recycled or reused in another location. which ad to economic longevity. if you spend £500 it last 100 years? £50 a year is good economy per unit. there is plenty of room for manufactures to get involved. i know Donald trump was caught saying he hates the current turbines. when asked about king Charles 3rd eco agenda before tomorrow’s coronation. if AWES could get someone trump on side? the would be huge? usually if it make sense to him? then it will make sense to more business types? I’m not an huge estimator. but my reckoning suggest there a billion dollar market to the right customers? so there my take, any wishes to chime in, please do?
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Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data
This Carl Sagan essay was mentioned in lecture 2.1:
From https://www.mindmeister.com/132484153/awe-map?fullscreen=1 at the bottom of the page under auto-zenith:
fyi it popped in to the feed today. curious i took a gander at it?
looks there a few thing that might pan out here?
he says 80% efficient due to how much energy is transferred to fly wheel?
i reckon you cold get more? maybe as high as 95% as is nearly a Francis turbine for wind.
i leave this here,so people can make their minds up?
if you care about those sort of thing? you have to remember not everyone does as he does. he not doing it to be smart or clever. he doing to have a bit of technical fun. production and design channel it ok? it not top brass sure. get you bet it what are you after? maybe i want a broad scope? that dont make me stupid? maybe unaware? not stupid. may not be the greatest of the best? but he’s making things. he does take a critical view and admits he can be wildly off an times. even says try for yourselves. why is he wrong? if wind energy is all about how efficient you can covert airflow in to work? i mention a while back something about the mass of the rotor need to proportionate to the mass.? volume of airflow.
i believe it was you who mentioned that air flow don’t stop when it hit buildings? so it how to manage the flow? he showing one example? i don’t take everything as gospel. if it genuine that cool? if you don’t stop the wind from moving then you have high efficiencies? does it beat the betz limit? ok @Windy_Skies why will any one know less? if your not try to gain much? just watch some guy make thing what the issue? your more than welcome to prove him wrong? he open sourcing this so you can go to his tinkercad and print his files? should you want to? why is he wrong? he know ther are thing out there he need know more about. that why he running open source for inputs? you welcome to point him the way if you know any better? so is he wrong this time?
He’s not breaking Betz's law - Wikipedia. He has no regard for the truth, that makes him a bullshitter and with that the exact wrong kind of person to follow if you want to learn stuff. He’s filling your head with gobbledygook.
If you have a result like that you don’t go that’s interesting, anyway…, which he does often the times I managed to suffer through part of another video of his, you go hmm, where did I make a mistake…
The video could have been a nice intro on how to better measure wind turbine output and his struggles to get more accurate results, from which we could have learned something. Instead we got this. Don’t waste your time with rubbish when there is so much content available that isn’t rubbish, again, for the love of fuck.
Any comment of yours that includes a link to his videos gets an automatic down vote from me.
You lost me at «Betz beater». Ok if you just want to waste time, many things are as good as any other to get fired up about to have some fun building things.
But, if you like me are concerned with actually learning how to produce energy from the wind in a sensible manner (not just for fun, though it is ok to have fun being serious)… then just start investigating and eventually you will know that if someone claims «Betz beater» it is probably bot worth your attention.
@Windy_Skies gave you some sound advice here @Freeflying . Probably though, because I never read how he was planning to beat the Betz limit
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it just thought but its it possible to have something like this VTOL, and be an improvement on Makani? have anyone here considered wireless transmission to ground station? I’ve seen reference to drone used here? i wonder if it possible to have a drone completely untethered? but beaming electricity back to a ground station? wardencliff was telsa attempt of wireless transmission, i doubt he would of seen a drone take up the challenge? fly by wire is quite common if advance aviation projects. ive never heard of directed energy transfer being use in AWES it also out get round the tethers issue? if it has take off capacity? and is using gravity to generate the need power like some gliders do? i reckon you might have something? easy deployment and recovery. they can also have pre set landing zone. so getting round some regulations? but getting planning board on board will be challenging? might help if defence contractors have their say? Makani was good but didn’t have freedom of movement.
Wireless power transfer - Wikipedia
how close would you need to be for this to work effectively?
I think if you solve the conductive wire by using wireless (laser being my first choice) there are still other issues to be solved with the Makani approach. So maybe removing the cable is not really the next step? I would expect just making the nominal power in low winds was something you would solve before looking at wireless transmission…
I dont think though that wireless transmission is feasible though. In that case probably in the opposite direction, a laser pointing from ground to kite. Electric wireless seems to be very depending on distance between coils which should be close to zero…
wireless in itself is way above me it serious kit ive yet to play with. it was merely thought experiment on my part to see if there was a possible use? it also depend highly to style of transmission to ground stations? would take better brain than me to get that functional? compact tesla coil with tracking? but then you might get jest of death rays? swings and roundabouts. good to hear you thoughts @tallakt. i might agree a laser could do the job? though will have to wait and see? if anyone else has thoughts please do join in?
i had a wild idea on re-entry vehicles this morning? i wonder if it could cross over with AWES? I’m aware of autonomous rockets use to so supply the international space station. so light bulb went off saying is it possible to generate from re-entry? this happen after thinking golf ball dimple could slow re entry by redirecting the gasses to slow the vehicle down. a question i just asked NASA about you know those brain are up their in the field. I previously mentioned as a possible launch and repeat AWES? sort of a jumping jacks style AWES
im not use how feasible the idea is? any thoughts?
Ideas like these are off-topic for this forum.
Try making a kite or an rc plane and seeing how you can use it to pull on a string to turn a generator. Questions and ideas about that would be an example of what this forum is for.
If you are interested in development in rocket landings, you can do some reading here for example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/13ce9kc/starship_development_thread_45/
More losers than winners: investigating Anthropocene defaunation through the diversity of population trends https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.12974
Seems like if anyone could deliver today, Ukraine might build AWE. Reason; even lower materials cost and easier to install, on paper
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If it is true what they publish on their Website, SkySails Power should be able to deliver.
They started series production of systems a while ago and have an operational system in Mauritius
Mobile ground stations should be less vulnerable (easier to hide or confuse the enemy with decoys) than conventional wind towers, which might be an important advantage in the current situation.
So all that seems to be missing is a bunch of money and perhaps a decision on a political level…
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I would be cautious placing too much faith in statements of “operational” systems. The idea is to keep some hope with investors etc. Try to find any evidence or indication of actual regular operation. Demos and prototypes are good, but not necessarily reliable for daily production. Output claims can be impressive, but do they represent what one would expect in daily operation? When demo projects are abandoned, shut down, mothballed, placed on hold, or just not run very often, if at all, there is usually no big press-release.
A demonstration wind park should have a live stream of the kites flying, and displaying:
Power being generated now: ___
Average power generated over last 7 days: ___
Capacity factor: ___
Days since last outage: ___
And so on: ___
That’s one milestone that should build trust and interest. Then if someone wanted to buy a system, independent reviews of the system from a user’s perspective, and pricing and longevity and service agreements that makes sense, would make sense.
ChatGPT:
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righty oh, gives me something to aim at.
as you mentioned wind parks ive had an idea a while back? it be brewing like wine in my skull?
it has a maglev rotor? would fit with the post i mention 27day ago? during the suspended awes talk on slow chat.
admittedly toying with a few ideas? magnetically levitated finial as the main rotor was rather barmy? though not 100% certian bout how this would work? id imaging it possible to weave conductor into the materials? maybe even graphene coated? the design of the finials are like the top of the onion domes in Moscow or Russian orthodox churches. it was also design to be bird friendly? easy to assemble? just depend on your idea of what a wind park is? i did have a vision kite being used to represent local families like giant billboard in the sky? stretched across the bay near me? the vison i had was somewhere near Highcliffe? with them following the cliff line? size would be relative to needs? but if you have thousand of them? it would look rather awesome? we do have abandoned coastguard and radar station? which could be brought back to use as a power terminus? not sure how easy it would be to sway my local council? they have been look in to wind farm for some time? though there have been many objection from concerned members of the public?
in some of the ideas I had it does involve ion inducers? to make a bio pump of sort or to create a breeze when there isnt one?
eco friendliness was certainly on my radar. i had been thing of getting really clever and making the rotor with poly magnetic fields? or even have them look like Chinese’s lantern at night?
it just a question do you want hundred of larger turbines? are thousands of smaller turbines? i know it all add up? from what i just read it look like there’s a push for huge GW arrays. in the sense of direction? so is the goal to have TW capacity in the next 20 years? i know it will take some organise and combined effort to pull it off? plug and play system would help a lot for rapid installation? you also have the possibility of multiple layers. with the sky being the limit? i do like the barrage approach to wind?
trust and collective effort is really smart way to go. especially if the are expertise you require but cant easily deliver on your own. this would apply to me on a Santa cluas level? so give me two really option be a helper of be helped by hundreds of helpers? as i know there certian thing im not all to familiar with? the former rather than later would be representative in my case? that just my 10cents on it? i know i have some major obstacle to overcome before i’m in deep? i’m look at this from hobbyist eyes? i’m sure there details i will have to brush up on?
but there a fair few sign post here i can follow? if i get lucky and end up with a workshop? then the sky the limit as ive been told on many occasion?
with all that said? looks like awes will need all the luck it can get in this challenging market?
good luck everyone! may fortune favour the bold?
If you are an individual wanting to buy a single turbine, it would be hard to even be taken seriously, as a start. How much effort does anyone want to put into (maybe) selling one turbine? And you won’t have a dedicated maintenance staff on hand so you want low maintenance and reliability. My advice is to pick a model that us not “trying too hard”. Just a basic turbine, not a “low wind speed” turbine cuz the longer, heavier blades will be an issue. The greatest turbine in the world is worthless if it isn’t running.
Meanwhile, CHAT GPT: If you had asked Chat GPT what the James Webb telescope was going to see, ahead of the fact, it would have surveyed everything the most credentialed astrophysicists said, and it would have been wrong. AI as a field has been around for decades. Don’t buy into the current hype cycle. It’s computers - subject to “garbage-in/garbage-out”!
A good introduction, and some discussion of megawatt scale systems being developed and deployed.
I didn’t though. I asked for pointers about what to look out for in a well-established process that I could also ask wind park developers about, or read a book about. But this only took a few seconds. This is the kind of question that it is good for. It gives a starting point for further research. Later I found some actual info. I still haven’t found the book.
AI hallucinates, people hallucinate, you’ll have to imagine the disclaimer about that and the advice to check things for yourself as I’m going to assume that that is common knowledge and not repeat it every time I post a link or a quote.
im going to go a little of topic and throw a spanner like i normally do?
sat alone in with my thoughts? some mention to paramagnetics liquid oxygen came up that caused a few triggers? planets of outer solar system have some of the strongest magnetic field we know of? wind powered thermos flask any good to you guys? we already know getting thing cold has superconducting properties? i this thought it was replacing the liquid sodium with something far colder? then spinning it up? it doesn’t need to be liquid oxygen per say? but something with the right magnetic qualities to generate the field magnetic need for large scale energy production. within a large coil set up?
and yes it will need all the above suggestion for chatGTP to pull it off! think of this a barn find project you have all the bit? it just need to be assembled? ive been looking for a fluid that can under particular circumstance generate magnetic fields? this might be one way to to this? up the possibilities for wind power? im not expecting to get more out than put in? but with drop of Jupiter and that big ball of gas running though my mind? metallic hydrogen might do the job? once it all stirred up? a few degrees off 0 kelvin there a sweet spot? i wonder how AWES can exploit it?
if any one want to jumping in? be my guest? your always look for cool new projects? none cooler than this? -240 degree/ abt.30 kelvin is pretty cold. it 40 grades above me? so im going to boomerang it? just to see what come back? just found the thought very interesting this morning? as comprehend and copy nature is a well guide ethos? i shall live it here for comment?
Without reading the article, I’d say this looks like one more example of how replacing generators with solar panels and wind turbines running thru solid-state inverters may not be the slam-dunk people assume. The idea is every clean energy source must be redundantly complemented by some old-school backup equipment, such as natural=gas turbines ready to s[pool up the moment there is no wind and the sun goes behind clouds… One well-understood main advantage of generators is they provide “spinning reserves”. I keep hearing that China is building 2 coal plants per week (100/year) for the foreseeable future, while we close fossil fuel plants with no way to reopen them if needed.
And lately people are suffering from mass-hallucination that AI is some new thing that just emerged, and suddenly will eliminate most jobs. A survey of all the ignorance and misinformation on the web. It’s a stock-market hype-cycle. The people talking about regulating it seem to be worried it might suddenly figure out what’s really going on and blurt it out.
"Two similar news items in one day underscores US DOE failure in AWE; EU now building private AWE R&D momentum on the foundation of consistent EU Commission and National investments-
US DOE leadership failed to materialize, despite AWE identification at LLNL in 1980 and “Revolutionary Potential” (2014-17 DOE Wind Roadmaps)."
- DaveS
I’m sure a few of you saw this article in “Interesting Engineering”
Just thought I’d throw some raw meat into the enclosure of those who have been trying to associate quantum behavior (Bose-Einstein condensate) and kite-string-phonons to kites producing useful energy.
Anyway, here’s the link to the article I saw:
LINK:
Splitting phonons or sound for new type of quantum computer (interestingengineering.com)
In AWE, it still seems that all real progress is in the future (and always will be?). Sigh…
I guess Enerkites new wing is news, in the near future we should see how it flies
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2 posts were split to a new topic: Magpie Aviation
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The latest news I heard on the shipping fuel topic was England is experiencing unprecedentedly high ocean temps, possibly due to low-sulfur bunker fuels. The high-sulfur fuels produce atmospheric aerosols in the form of a haze that reflects sunlight. Without the haze, the ocean warms. Or so it is hypothesized. Not the time it has been noted that sulfur-containing aerosols for a haze with a reflective cooling effect. Often noted after volcanic eruptions too.
I think they said the water temp is like 59 Fahrenheit, which, to me, is very cold. You want to have a good wetsuit at that temp.
Anyway, I just saw a video with a marine biologist explaining how the Great Barrier reef is actually more extensive now than at any known time. Meanwhile, where was the reef 12,000 years ago when sea levels were 300-400 feet lower? Nonexistent? Hmmm. Ever notice how the endless scare stories and supposed bad news never seem to have any counterbalance?
I’m still excited about airborne wind energy.
We need to get some economical, useful version available for some purpose!
By the way, Southern California has had the coolest Spring season anyone can remember. Here at the edge of the Mojave Desert I actually had the heat on the other morning. We’re lucky if it gets over 70 F during the day.
Still plenty of snow on the mountains visible. In a few days though, it’s supposed to hit 100 degrees. oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
Texas has been having a heat wave. Telling everyone to conserve electricity. I guess they are lucky most cars are not electric…
This just in: NASA gave up on electrifying an existing model of airplane. Just too difficult. The article says it will never fly:
Lightning is bad for wind energy systems.
Aptera solar car:
Hi Guys!
OK just checking out the latest with Aptera:
Aptera Motors
Geez, all these years and they’re still just taking reservations?
I remember coming up with a similar idea, long before I ever saw Aptera.
I had always envisioned GoKarts for the highway, light, fast, and cheap, but they seemed too low to be seen in traffic.
So I imagined an elevated GoKart, kind of like a medical gurney, or a stretcher on an elevated structure on wheels.
But the problems I imagined were that such a configuration created a top-heavy “highway coffin”, ready to be slammed by other vehicles, but without the driver protection offered by a full car body.
Also, the top-heavy aspect, and the light weight, seemed like they could cause such a vehicle to go airborne at high speeds if exposed to a decent wind. Say you are going 60 mph into a 40 mph gust - there’s the 100 mph takeoff speed you might need to get it off the ground.
So, as much as I liked the idea initially, the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed.
But then Apteros emerged.
Only thing is, it’s never quite ready.
Not sure what the problem is.
If you look at the video clips of it driving down a road on their website, it seems kind of jumpy and unstable, in a tippy sort of way, as though the suspension is not able to absorb bumps well.
Anyway, another dream that seems perpetually “on hold”…
A post was split to a new topic: Form Energy - Iron Air Batteries
I noticed a link from clicking on this story, a yacht pulled by a kite:
SILENT 60 - Kite Sail System Premiere - YouTube
The yacht is called a
Silent 60
and there are other sizes besides the “60” in production.
They make a great show of explaining how they designed it from a fresh sheet around the electric motors, batteries, and solar panels, and how the motors are only the size of a couple of shoeboxes, easily hidden beneath the floorboards.
The manufacturer’s own publicity does not seem to include the kite, in fact they explain how much better solar is than wind for a boat
Then, after watching quite a lot of video footage, about how perfect it all is, they feel that they must divulge a hidden secret:
At 15 minutes into this video, they reveal the 220 Horsepower, diesel-powered, Volvo Penta D3-220 engine, calling it a “backup generator” - you know, just in case you want to go somewhere and it is getting dark, or cloudy, or whatever… They say it would be irresponsible not to have it.
Video:
The 100% Solar Powered Sun Ship That NEVER Needs Charging! - YouTube
Here’s a video of a catamaran 100% pulled by a kite from 3 years ago:
Project KITE BOAT - 25 Knots - Part TWO - YouTube
The principle is explained on:
See also
Powering Container Ships with Food Scraps:
What about cruise ships with onboard conversion of food scraps to methanol?
Meanwhile, can the engines run on regular bunker fuel, or are they locked in to methanol?
The article says Maersk wants to convert a quarter of their container ships to methanol.
Next topic here: Slow Chat II