A search for goodness, kite, and tether gave me these results. The first few talk about goodness of fit:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/we.2343 LiDARâbased characterization of midâaltitude 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 4â5¢/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 Makaniâs technology didnât 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 MacGregorâs 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 didnât 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 Fullerâs idea for his dome. It uses a pattern of self bracing triangles for maximum structural advantage. âI manipulated the cables in many configurations until I came across what I thought, was the correct number of cables crossing at the right locations,â says Lux.
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Like Led Zeppelin said, âThe Song Remains the Sameâ. 
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 youâve 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 âŚ
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 âresearchâ such as Dabiriâs. Endless attempts to ârescueâ 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 âgrasping at strawsâ to try and ârescueâ 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 âFlowdesignâ (later called âOginâ) turbines with a funnel would not work out. They maintained âThis time itâs differentâ because their particular âProfessor Crackpotâ 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 doesnât stop people from saying it is the answer. Elon Musk begs to differ. Seems like an emotional derangement syndrome where facts just donât matter, while the lemmings run toward the cliff. A big part of it is if investors donât 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:
âWhereas 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.â
Pierre, in wind energy, there has never been a shortage of clueless people who spew never-ending nonsense promoting âalternativeâ 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. Iâd say if this guy were accurate, youâd 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 âtable 1â but Iâve never heard of anyone calculating power density in this manner that âappearsâ 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 Iâve 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 âwishâ 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 heâs so smart and they are so dumb? Iâm sorry but after the Altaeros charade, MIT is losing credibility with me. Good talkers can make almost anything sound reasonable to people who donât 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 âon-paperâ to inexperienced newbies who donât 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 âcropâ. 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, letâs 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 âenquiring mindsâ canât 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 âfreshâ 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. Thatâs 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! âHello, may I thpeak with Profethor Crackpot pleathe? Thir, we have an emergenthy!â
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 âeveryoneâ 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 âthe too-low density in a farm of HAWT is a crucial problemâ, 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?
Letâs 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 âground levelâ 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 ârepoweringâ windfarms, which means plucking out the old, smaller turbines and replaciing them with modern larger turbines. Iâve never heard of a repowering effort that left the old, smaller turbines in place. Why might that be? Iâve 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 Dabiriâs every misguided notion? Well, maybe. Or maybe windfarm developers do know their art fairly well, and it is Dabiri and our chat groups donât 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, âthe too low density in a farm of HAWT is a crucial problem.â
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 âThe too low density in a farm of HAWT is a crucial problem.â Funny, Iâve 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 âobservationâ, on the level of something a first-grader might say, before the basics of wind energy were explained to him.
Hereâs another one for you. Iâve 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 doesnât mean Iâm not also attracted to the same types of designs you point out, including giant vertical-axis machines. Iâve thought of most of them for years. Remember âLaddermillâ? 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 âspar-buoyâ 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 Iâm 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 Gâs 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 âout of the airâ, without a complete analysis is how the âProfessor Crackpotsâ of the world like to operate. But you canât just pick out a few favorable aspects to consider - the whole picture must be examined. I like the âideaâ of coming up with this âideaâ, but at some point, we would need a complete âideaâ to consider, not just an idea for an idea.
Hi Doug, I donât 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 Gâs (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:
Iâd surmise such a thing would âworkâ, Believe it or not, I spend a good amount of time thinking of such configurations myself. Itâs what happens when you suffer from CSIS: (Canât Stop Inventing Shit). Oh wait, I think my mommy said it should be âCanât Stop Inventing STUFFâ. (Canât stop inventing FLUFF?) (Marshmallow Fluff?)
As Iâve 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 âworkâ but how many people want to bother? What about blindfolded with a guide dog? Maybe a tricycle? It could âworkâ⌠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 youâve 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.
Iâd say letâs 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 âarmchair-geniusâ link you provided:
Note the requirement for the âfloatingâ 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:
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 Iâm 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 4âŚ
Below is an article (see 1 about âextremely wide VAWT (a low rotor-aspect-ratio)â) 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 (canât 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 âtalking-point-demoâ 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 youâre doing is just reciting the long list of âtalking point-insistenceâ by vertical-axis advocates, who are never short of âwhy wonât anyone listen to me?â type âreasoningâ but who can never come up with even a single house powered by their âhighly-advancedâ, âwhy wonât you listen to meâ insistence on listing all the various brainstorming ideas they can come up with to âproveâ the world is just not âgetting itâ with regard to why vertical-axis âare reallyâ 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 âare reallyâ the âonlyâ answer. At some point, the cartoon character of âProfethor Crackpotâ, âthpraying thaliva ath he thpeakthâ, cometh to mind - he ith not rethtricted to wind energy - he ith everywhere!. Look up âMass MegaWattsâ 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 Dabiriâs 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 ââthe 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 âactve liftâ 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 devilâs 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 anyoneâs home, as far as I know.
I guess everyone is now supposed to wait as these reeling systems go into âproductionâ and get shipped to a small number of volunteer-guinea-pig âcustomersâ. The numbers cited always sound tantalizing, but then we wake up and it was âjust a dreamâ? Time will tell I guess, but weâve 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 âActive Lift Turbine VAWTâ and âThe gear which does not rotateâ, 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 âknowâ the wind direction. Of course it could be accomplished by other means.
This is the first typical knee-jerk adjustment to try and ârescueâ the vertical-axis concept. Itâs like extolling the virtues of a two-wheel vehicle, but then adding more wheels to âstabilizeâ 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 âdoesnât need to aim - responds to wind from any directionâ.
But as the problems are pointed out, they change their tune: âOh, 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.â
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 âgoodâ feature - now it needs to âaimâ.
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 âworks betterâ.
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: A Seaglider Story
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 MinestoâŚ
Googleizing âSkysailsâ, I found this in âNewsâ from 2 days ago!
You can find out all about Makani, Altaeros, KPS, and kPower!
(First time Iâve 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 âreportâ this company as a ripoff!)
More âidiots, idiots, idiotsââŚ
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 wellâŚ
Iâll pass on this report for now
Hello Tallak:
Thanks for reading my post. I hope you caught the flavor of sarcasm. Iâm continually amazed at the results when you search for AWE news, these âreportsâ 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 donât 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 Harropâs 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 canâŚ
Update: today, a couple of days later, I am unable to pull up the article from the link. It just doesnât load anymore. Maybe someone else noticed it was just silly and took it down? Who knows, the internet can act weird sometimesâŚ
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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 itâs a comeback Zhonglu High Altitude Wind Power Technology - ä¸čˇŻéŤçŠşéŁĺĺçľććŻ.
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Pierre: Succeeds at what? What do you mean?
âŚsucceeds to announce a new board of directors.
They are so unremarkable, I forgot they even existed.
[Edit: They may be amazing, I just havenât heard of it]
Decidedly itâs 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 websiteâŚ
What this âindustryâ needs is more teams ârenting office spaceâ and publishing âgroup-selfiesâ on the internet, more âresearchâ into âartificial intelligenceâ and especially, announcing more 3-D printed components! Also it would be nice if we could increase the number of teams pursuing âkite-reelingâ, the great underrepresented âindustryâ sector.
Also, it would be helpful if the âindustryâ could âsilenceâ any people asking any unwanted questions, like, if a highly-funded AWE âcompanyâ 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 spaceâ , more âresearchâ into âartificial intelligenceâ and more 3-D printed components
Yay
I scored 3
Oh did I forget, âmore people fixated on controlling what others say online, to move or delete any post addressing reality versus fantasy.â
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 âŚ
I canât access the ResearchGate discussion. I tried to archive it, with limited succes
Anyway, sources needed.
Iâm not sure if I care all that much about his âtrue recyclingâ. I care about this:
You can say that about anything, until you canât.
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 canât 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 Iâm a bot. I donât care to prove them right or wrong.
The French preciser != the English precise. A better phrase here would be Iâll point out thatâŚ
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. Iâm not following or donât 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 âwasteâ 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 downâŚ
- 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 ârecycledâ plastic containers end up in landfills after all the paperwork and rebates are finished. Nobody wants them.
- Itâs 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 âbinsâ, 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 ârecycledâ plastic to the final destinations, which is usually a landfill - the funny thing is, itâs gone from âdonât be a litterbugâ to âweâre saving the world from global warmingâ, but the facts donât bear out the hype - the ârecycledâ bottles are seldom even recycled these days, just thrown away like most everything else, making the entire complicated ârecyclingâ 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 Earthâs 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 weâre not trying to solve plastic recycling here. I think more concrete questions, that will yield more concrete answers, are: youâre using a lot of this UHMWPE rope, how can you use less of it (see Kitewinderâs and Ampyxâs 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 donât 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⌠Iâm very happy for their existence. I wouldnât be able to do what Iâm 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 âallâ of the âexpertsâ âagreeâ 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 Iâve 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 âwhat if this?â and âwhat if that?â. 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 ânext yearâ. To me, it is a great comedy. Oh well youâve 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 âauthorsâ 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! Itâs 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 âdrag racingâ. Her reply: âMaybe because they have to drag their feet to stop?â I believe the real answer is they were racing on âthe local dragâ meaning a strip of street people âdragâ up and down âtrollingâ 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 âlift modeâ and âdrag modeâ 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 âdragâ. The tether is âdraggedâ 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 âliftâ to generate electricity as a âdrag machineâ (because it âdragsâ its propellers through the air) is, I would say, about as astute and accurate as my young momâs musings about âdrag racingâ being so-called because the driver drags his (or her) feet to stop - just not accurate.
Really, to my way of thinking, and Iâm not saying it is correct, just my impression, all these âscientificâ âpapersâ 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 âthe bestâ or âmost reliableâ turbine in âsmall-windâ 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 âscientistsâ 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 canât 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 âengineerâ or âscientistâ had ever solved the furling cable failure issue. It was only recently that someone noticed the problem was the turbine trying to âpushâ the flexible cable into its âjacketâ or conduit. As the old saying goes, âYou canât push a ropeâ. 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 worldâs leading âscientistsâ, 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 manufacturerâs tech support would tell you âAhh, donât worry about the furling cable - you donât need it - they always break anyway - we just added it because at one point some municipality wouldnât allow an installation unless it had a way to shut down the turbineâ - 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 âindustryâ 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 âfarmer with a welderâ. Seems to still be in play. In my experience, the role of âscienceâ 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 donât even know what to say.
Roddy I would not worry about what anyone âsaysâ. Talk is cheap. If something works, it works. If not, then not. No idle bystanderâs opinion will change that, no matter what their supposed credentials⌠Donât 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 âdraggedâ 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 âthis time itâs different!â 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 âsmall windâ, 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 âextraâ 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 âtalentsâ produce nothing useful for any purpose. No small wind company who expects to survive would be issuing press-releases about ârenting office spaceâ. Such a situation of needing to support that many âoffice workersâ 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 canât power a single home with AWE, why would anyone believe they are about to power hundreds, thousands, or millions of homes? Well as Iâve 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 âDr. Pater Harropsâ 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 âHelionâ. If fusion gets traction, AWE and many other clean energy efforts might be doomed. But donât worry too much about Helion. How can we tell? They have a group selfie! Youâve seen the rest of that movie!
OK this is in âNews Coverageâ because even though it is positioned as ânewsâ, 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 âstoryâ checks all the boxes: âfight climate changeâ âhydrogenâ,âzero emissionsâ âa quarter the costâ, âincreased payloadâ - well if it were powered by AWE, it might be zero emissions. Anyway, maybe they should add â3-D printingâ, âprovides broadbandâ, ya knowâŚ
Now, Iâve 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: Iâve 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. Theyâve all sounded âvery excitingâ with no apparent reason why they wonât actually happen, but they never do. In our somewhat similar field, we are used to this. Itâs always the same thing: big press-release, followed by⌠NOTHING.
Iâd like to think this one will be different, but the pattern is 100%, and undeniableâŚ
Oh well, itâs fun to dream. I hope this one comes true. (But I wonât 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 âdisaster reliefâ?!?!
Seems like every press-release breakthrough has such obligatory âattributesâ.
âJust in caseâ it is not useful for its intended purpose, they have a âplan Bâ (providing wi-fi - think âAltaerosâ - 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 regionsâŚ)
And âjust in caseâ Plan B doesnât work out, they can deliver hydrogen as cargoâŚ
And âjust in caseâ that falls flat on its face, they will be available for âdisaster reliefâ! Did they miss anything? What about a group selfie? I havenât 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) âŚ
A âdesignerâ solves wind energy⌠againâŚ
Article includes a quote from Mike Barnard.
Know-nothings, âimprovingâ an art about which they have not the slightest clue.
Some things never change.
The designer led to Robert Murray smith designing a whole bunch of experimental designs. The original didnât 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 anythingâs 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 âflying carâ 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, Iâm 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 Godâs sake, stay away from the darn jet stream, before you really get hurt!
Oh also, as long as Iâm 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 âpapersâ use the term âdragâ to describe a machine that uses lift in many ways. In wind energy, the term âdragâ as applied to any device or design (such as a Savonius cup-anemometer-type machine), traditionally refers to working surfaces being âdraggedâ (or pushed by brute force) to travel downwind, to distinguish from the normal use of âliftâ (airfoils) to produce power directly. I do understand how the newbies think âdragâ refers to âdragging a propeller upwind through the airâ but the term âdragâ or âdrag deviceâ with regard to wind energy is already long-established. It means working surfaces traveling downwind, NOT upwind. A closer design space to a traditional âdragâ machine is kite-reeling, where the lift of airfoils is nonetheless used to create a âdragâ type of machine (working surfaces travel downwind). Reminds me of my momâs attempted explanation of the term âdrag-racingâ - âbecause they drag their feet to stop?â Nice try Mom!
True, but the technology of AWES is different. Almost all the scientific publications are based on M. Loydâs seminal paper: âCrosswind Kite Powerâ. 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, Iâve 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 Iâve been saying for 13 years, if you have to SAY âcrosswindâ 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 âdrag-basedâ, since the generator causes âdragâ, 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 âdifferentâ. Just like the stock market - there is a well-known saying in investments: âThis time itâs different!â. 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 âthis time it;s differentâ. Iâve 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 Iâve 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 ÂŤDownwind AWEÂť and ÂŤBraking AWEÂť 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: Hereâs 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 âcanary-in-the-coalmineâ 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 âliftâ be pushing the blades forward? Shouldnât 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 Iâve 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 âdragâ machine.
Just wanted to through this out there. As I know it has potential uses in Awe.
Be that VAWT, HAWT.
Newtonâs 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. Iâm 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
Iâm not sure if AWE has a magnetically coupled design. Iâve 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 shouldnât 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. Wasnât 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 doesnât 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 Startedď˝2015ď˝News Releaseď˝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. Iâm thinking more about lower maintenance cost.
Standard bearing will ware over time. If thereâs only a single point of ware. It much easy to fix in the field Than running back a forth to a shop. Iâm 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. Iâm 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. Iâm 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 âthe comedy sectionâ 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 donât know anything about making power, they are easily distracted by âshiny objectsâ, 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
Iâm 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 âmaglevâ sounds âscientificâ. In reality, it is âa solution in search of a problemâ, and a true âno-brainerâ 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, Iâm 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 sayinâ⌠Always good to be curious and want to advance a technology, but so far all Iâm 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 canât quite tell if your bragging or not?
But hey oh what do you know? Fair enough Iâm little greenhorn when it comes to wind energy. however when it come to assembling things. I live and breath that stuff. I wouldnât have called it nonsense though Iâm just viewing this much like Lego. To me donât sound like a bad idea. Owing to the fact that like you say
I was trying to come from that place even if I wasnât all to aware of the day to day. Iâm only putting together what Iâm 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 havenât encountered or donât 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. Iâm 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. Iâm 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 itâs 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. Iâm 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 didnât matter because it was easier to produce. At various point during that war the American out stripped German production many times overâŚthe same was true for soviet Russian and their main battle tank.
Btw Iâve come close to hand gliding on a few occasions as former air scout. Iâd like to hand glide at some point as Iâve 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 donât know and learning from them. Glad for the pointer. If I had a few million to throw at it I wouldnât be using duck tape. I would be using something far more clever. far more homogeneous in design. If I canât bolt it together in an afternoon it simply not worth my time. Like I said before Iâm taking what I have and running with it. If I get something 
if I donât 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. Iâd 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 âanything goesâ 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 âteamsâ that seem to regularly emerge, tell the world how many houses they âwillâ power ânext yearâ, 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 Iâm making is that for most AWE wannabeâs, generating electricity from the wind is just a wish, a talking point, a fantasy, not a daily reality. Iâm trying to remind people that wind energy is a real thing, not just a fantasy talking point.
When we had a yahoo group for âsmall windâ, 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 âbadâ 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 worldâs best supercars.
Now Iâve explained this many times to all the AWE newbies, but Iâll 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 âmaglev bearingsâ? How hard would people laugh? Youâd be lucky if someone didnât 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, thatâs 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 âseemsâ like âa great ideaâ. 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 âintroduceâ 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 âbig newsâ is the supposed purchase and shipping of AWE systems. I guess weâre 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 canât reach there target audience. Iâm 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 doesnât make for the lightest of turbine. I definitely wouldnât 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 Iâve 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. Iâve seen plenty of memes with Aladdin at the indie 500 racing a magic carpet. I donât see why a converted wheel barrow would be any different. Plenty of mech tippers to choose from. Would be much like wacky racers. I donât believe there ever be a hovercraft entry to the indie 500 let alone one with eco credentials. Colin furze might even have a go. Heâs even got a wind powered tumble dryer so who knows?
As for controls for over clocking. Iâm 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. Iâm 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 donât. 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. Iâm tempted to mention solvated electrons or isothermal coolant. but I will leave that for another day. I wouldnât 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 âall ya gotta do isâ 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 Iâm still wasting my time on these âopenâ 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 clueâŚ
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 âŚâŚ
Iâd 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 doesnât make it invalid in the slightest. Without those will to make inquires Awe will stagnate. So you Canât find riches without digging a few holes somewhere. Is a say Iâm reminded of. Iâm like this because of fact based inquiry. If I donât know something all too well. the only way I have to learn is to seek out those who know and speak with them. Iâd admit it been a pretty long road. Up to here. Iâm 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.
Iâm definitely hyper focused on how can you build the bloody damn thing. To Have that meaningful impact. Iâm 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. Iâm 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 donât consider anything I do to be absolutely brand spanking new. Nope. In fact itâs quiet the opposite⌠I like to use a core of what is tried and tested. Iâd 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 engineeringâs Iâve 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 donât think Iâve ever met engineer who doesnât 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.
Iâm 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 âthe real world of wind energyâ 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. Iâve 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 Iâve 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 âProfessor Crackpotâ 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? Donât know, but there probably are some. Other than that, most of this stuff is âon the listâ. Itâs 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.
https://www.kjmagnetics.com/calculator.asp
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.
Heâs looking for resistance and distance. To calculate the forces you first must know the variables Which he doesnât 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 forâŚ72.3lb 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 itâs 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 questionâŚI donât have a BOT and BOT TO BOT COMMUNICATION IS A GRAND WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGYâŚI 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?
Hi @makingtuk, to combat SPAM, new users first have to show some activity on the forum before they can reply to posts. You can post and comment now.
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 isnât 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 donât think I know anyone that wouldnât 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.
1 Like
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. Iâd say you got a legend up that way. Better to keep hold of that.
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Explanations but waiting for a prototypeâŚ
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.
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 wouldnât take much to adapt. The bonus is a veritable levels of skill set could be used to achieve it. Iâve 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 âpress-release breakthroughâ, which has yet to show true success.
This phenomenon is certainly interesting, but experience shows that merely being âinterestingâ 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. Iâm 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 âimproveâ 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
Iâm still waiting to see one for real.
Also there was a wind tower design that was designed to used the Bernoulliâs 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 donât 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 someoneâs 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/mÂł 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. Iâm sure there More point to raise With design. even things that Iâve yet to consider. Being the spanner monkey I am. Success and failure definitely walk that invisible tightrope. You donât 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 Iâve 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 âmonkey at the typewriterâ, 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 âartistâ 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 donât get me wrong, Iâm 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 âmust beâ 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 donât know any better. The last guys running an AWE forum (like âthe inmates running the asylumâ) could not, in 12 years, come up with anything that could even make measurable power, no matter what. Before they âquietly went awayâ, 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 itâs 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. Itâs 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 âbreakthroughâ. No, every passing thought is not another breakthrough. Itâs just an active mind bored and in need of focus. OK now Iâll 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 ÂŤtough loveÂť, Iâd 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 ÂŤnot impossibleÂť and ÂŤa good ideaÂť. 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. Itâs a simple as hiding behind a buttressed wall. Well aware there nothing new in this regards. Perhaps it wonât get as far as some of the other mentalist. as I donât have the funds or resources let alone the reach. It how 7m/s gust round a building can be amplified. To 30-40m/s. Iâm 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 donât 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 donât know what your looking for or even where to find it. You will be choked off. And wonât even get airborne. I was all way told it what is the goal? And build a picture from that. Now success broardens itâs metric. It the greatest sin of all design engineeringâs to go âlet reinvent the wheelâ. 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.
Iâm 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 âlet have some funâ 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 Iâm 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. Iâm 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, âinnovationsâ like DAWT have all failed for HAWT. You have to wonder why it would be better with AWESâŚ
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 Iâm 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 donât think Iâm going braking the bank anytime soon. Experimenting as I said. target production materials cost shouldnât exceed ÂŁ500, be lucky if it break ÂŁ100 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. Iâm 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 donât 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. Iâm not kidding myself to think Iâm the one to do that. I Canât 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 ÂŁ100 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 donât 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 didnât 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 donât wonât 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 Betzâs law. True innovations are far from fancy âtechnologiesâ 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 âthe newsâ said the new world trade center building would have wind turbine built in, Paul Gipe and I immediately countered, exclaiming emphatically âNO IT WILL NOT!â 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 âreally smart peopleâ 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 âidiots, idiots, idiotsâ and then be censored with the reason âYou canât just say âidiots idiots idiotsââ. Well the problem is, what if it;s true? I just canât say what my years of experience in wind energy tells me? Nope canât say the truth on the internet, as long as âthe really smart peopleâ take control of the conversation and delete anything THEY canât 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. Iâm 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 spannerâs and have fun doing it. Iâm 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 ânewbie talkâ 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 didnât follow the betz coefficient. More like Venturi. Much like steam turbine do. With 20â30MPa 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, thereâs 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. Iâm probably being a massive techno geek. But Surely thatâs 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 wouldnât know.
Iâm 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 Iâm happy considering due to my apocalyptic resources. Being as scant as they are.
Definitely give me lots to think about and chew on. Iâve had this many time over the course of my life, he never make it then they freak out when I do. It ainât 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 hadnât 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 ÂŤoptimizationÂť. This is just a beautiful/ugly sculpture, but has nothing to do with lowering energy priceâŚ
It did remind me of the angel of the north. Near Gateshead.
I hate to say it, but in most such cases Iâve seen, you might substitute âbrainlessâ for âbladelessâ. 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 donât even need to approach the âstuck in the muckâ 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 spannerâs I am impressed. Didnât 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 ainât 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? Iâd 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 Iâd 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.
Itâs 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 Iâm coming at this the wrong angle for you. Canât really knock the effort though. Because thatâs 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 ectâŚ.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 Iâm 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. Weâre really not here for just a bunch of nonsense. I donât wanna throw the baby out with the bathwater, but really, youâre 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 âsentencesâ 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 - âCan he even spell?â âDoes he have the attention span to craft a full sentence?â, etc. Now I donât expect any of us to have perfect English at every moment, and I will admit I see misspellings and grammatical errors in most âprofessionallyâ-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 Iâve 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 wonât 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. Iâm 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 360â much like swing at the park but full 360â. 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, Iâm struggling to realise. I will probably go quiet. Head aches and all. Then go techno stealth ninja đĽˇ. 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 âchecking all the boxesâ.
OK is that a real sentence?
Donât worry, exploding your head couldnât make things any worse at this pointâŚ
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 Iâm making. for the million attempts made. It only need one to succeed. It doesnât 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 Iâve 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 canât 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 ainât 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 donât 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 havenât had anyone with Sufficient knowledge to ask? till recently. Totally missing a phd quantum mechanics guy To ask. In all its knowledge thatâs 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. Iâm 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 dogđŠ 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! Iâd bet ÂŁ100 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, âdebunkingâ it would not be necessary. It debunks itself. Yes it is a trap, and it even has a name: Itâs called the âLook, it wiggles!â approach to wind energy. Iâm embarrassed to say I am the one who so identified it. Weâve 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 donât 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.
ObviouslyâŚ
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. Iâm also not coming from a purely wind background.
I hope your familiar with involutes,
as even I know you donât 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 Iâm aware it works for most fluid dynamics systems.
To explain further
A trick most engineeringâs and one point or another have tried
1.225 kg/m3 At 15âc 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 wasnât 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 Iâm 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 didnât think I was too far out with my thinking when making suggestions. Spent most of Covid trying to learn about wind energy. Iâm 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 donât think so. As I said before, and mention again. âtake what Mother Nature give you and make the most out of it.â 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 hasnât been a joyous task. Nope no fun there.
been keeping an eye here because itâs interesting.
He got it to spin under 2m/s. t doesnât have a large swept area. Which I thought was good. Didnât 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 âcootiesâ
These kinds of âfluffâ videos always have some âdumbâ aspect.
Windmills have used shaped airfoils for 1000 years, for example, and are not restricted to âmodern wind turbinesâ. (DaVinci, Wright Bros., etc. never noticed.)
And what they call âflatâ blades on, I assume, farm windmills, are still usually curved (bent).
Their illustration of a âflatâ 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 âupwardâ, never explaining that the blades are pitched so a component of lift pushes them forward in a circle, nor that the suction on the âupperâ 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 âfor a yearâ.
Outsiders, especially âjournalistsâ, almost always say that! âFor a year!â What happens when a year is over, the turbines stop working? Warranty expired? What happened to the 20-year+ design lifetime?
âGenerating enough power every year to power 750 homesâ. 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? âSorry, your year is up. Showâs over. Nothing to see here, move along⌠What do you mean you want more power? Didnât you watch those ladiesâ video? Itâs for a freakinâ year! Now get lost!â
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 âpowerâ is already defined as energy per unit time? What does âyearâ have to do with anything? They just have to âsay itâ, because they heard someone else âsay itâ. Itâs 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 âfor a yearâ? That your car can get 20 miles per gallon⌠âfor a yearâ? That candy tastes good⌠âfor a yearâ?
There it is again: âWith a rotor diameter of 220 meters, just one of these turbines can meet the annual power needs of 16,000 European households.â Annual. Not monthly, not weekly, not just today, not just this moment - they need a whole year. Then itâs over.
âGerman 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 windâs energyâ
Wrong.
It is not because âsome wind must remainâ, 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. Iâll bet they at least understand power is proportional to swept area, for example.
Iâve been toying with the maths.
After being verbally brutalised. Iâve 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 wouldnât 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 itâs 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? Iâd appreciate it. Thanks 
Just to let you know if I do not respond it is because, at a certain point, I just canât 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. Itâs an inequalities of scale if you will. Displacement being the key factor here. In the design of the rotorâs 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 Iâm 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 Iâm 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 swordâŚ
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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, thatâs stroke length. thatâs 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 donât 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 todayâs 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. Didnât 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. Iâm 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 donât quote me on that. North of the airport it extends further.
Well, actually, you do NOT ârecall your science rightâ, and the word is âfareâ, not fair, and itâs âtwo carsâ, not âtwo carâ. âScienceâ 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 donât 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. canât 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 donât 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! Iâm might not be the best. but Iâm still trying! As people used to say, they do love someone who tryâs.
Btw what are batteries? Iâm 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. âWith never made a watt in my lifeâ. 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 canât compete with the big boy yet!
Some of the worlds biggest âretardsâ, 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 spannerâ.
Correct me where Iâm 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 âa wallâ 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 âadvantageâ. 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 Iâve explained many times in the last 14 years of AWE popularity, my experience in debunking âwindsanityâ goes back much longer than that. How? Well, please pay attention to this because Iâve 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 doesnât necessarily do what you want. It does what IT wantsâŚ
- Airborne Wind Energy is a Neodymium Supermagnet for crackpots. Why? Because with the introduction of a true unknown, seemingly âanything goesâ - in many peoplesâ minds, âthere are no rulesâ 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 âEinsteinâ, âThe Wright Brothersâ, and really ANY and EVERY passing âgeniusâ 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 âAirborne Wind Energyâ. What it would NOT say is âWelcome to the Happy Valley Mental Hospital.â
There is a saying: âIt is good to have an open mind, just not so open that everything falls outâ.
Now before you say the analogy of a mental hospital is farfetched, please consider, This âdiscussionâ has been going on since 2008. In that time, weâve had many companies come along declaring that they âwillâ develop airborne wind energy, often giving dates by which they âwillâ 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 âwillâ 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 âpeopleâ he is âtalking toâ are really there! He is âout of touch with realityâ⌠Some people would just say âcrazyâ.
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, arenât the key personnel almost as âcrazyâ 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 âcrazyâ, yet, like the guy walking down the street gibbering to himself, they canât understand the reality we see. They just say we are âclosed-mindedâ or âmeanâ, etc.
We know, they donât.
It is that simple.
Weâre familiar with the âmental disorderâ from which they suffer, having seen all the âsymptomsâ many times over, long before âairborneâ entered the fray of âimproved approaches to wind energyâ. We know all the symptoms, weâve heard all the âargumentsâ. We know what they are going to say before they say it.
They âare the next Einsteinâ,
They âwill disprove the Betz coefficientââŚ
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 donât know how to make ANY power, yet they think Betz is what is âholding them backâ
But they âare like Einsteinâ, so they will ârewrite the rulesâ. 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 âcrazyâ, so donât 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 âthe old forumâ. Ironically, that in itself seems to occasionally be one more âsymptomâ of âthe crazinessâ. A way to âfeel likeâ 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 âcorrectâ post deleted, and pretend his âincorrectâ 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 âhas never made a Wattâ 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 wonât be able to have any new wind enter the area. Now that sounds pretty logical, doesnât 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 âcrazyâ. We know it. They donât.
If one person says âWe are developing airborne wind energy and will power X-hundred homes in location Y by date Z.â (which is usually ânext yearâ) we can say they were âmistakenâ when it doesnât happen.
But then when ANOTHER guy comes along and says THE EXACT SAME THING, we might start to notice âHey, didnât the last guy, who turned out to be crazy, say that exact same thing?â.
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 âa syndromeâ with long-recognized and well-defined âsymptomsâ, 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 âWelcome to Happy Valley Mental Hospitalâ, 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 âeverything is falling outâ, 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 âfalling outâ of their âopen mindâ.
It is a much more simple common delusion than you suggest Doug
Itâs 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?
Thatâs 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, thatâs 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: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/hs-physics
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.
Iâm good for a ground based test run.
Even if I had wait awhile for some bits to become available.
Shouldnât 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 Iâd find my way here. Or anyone with some degree of knowledge. Knowing it wasnât a task I can take on alone. Not without guidance from those who know. YouTube is helpful. without it Iâd 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. Iâm not the guy to do that. Its just one big meccano set. Just waiting to be bolted together. I know thatâs 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. Itâs is a feature they all share. Yes many of us can do quite well. And are quite bright. But were social awkward. I know Iâm 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. Iâm sorry if I donât come off the way Iâd hoped. It is a pain in my backside. No doubt about it! I donât 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. Didnât 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. Iâm 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 onâŚI didnât 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 , Einsteinâs 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 donât know Dave Santos. Or why you rib him mercilessly? I donât suppose he mentioned torsion spring as part of the winding mechanism? Much like a tape measure?
Oh, I never said Iâm Einstein equal. Just had his sort of problems. I thought I was the one who had the problems. in the end It donât matter. Itâs 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. Iâve 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 donât 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 ainât the first rodeo! I doubt it will be my last. Reality is a messy ball of string. Iâm 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 Iâm happy for you.
I just think there room for micro generation in awe. Iâm 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 Santosâ giant kite from tarps:
Seems like everyone I know in clean energy claims to have some challenge:
ADHD, OCD, âanalâ, âdyslexicâ, âthe spectrumâ, âlazyâ ânot in the right circlesâ, âbrokeâ, âno timeâ, âunorganizedâ, âno toolsâ, âno fundingâ, âtoo busyâ, âstuck in neutralâ - sometimes our worst enemy is ourselves - welcome to normal.
Iâm still waiting for someone to simply claim: âI am half-crazed and there is no reasoning with meâ.
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 âwindtowersâ (meaning wind turbines, which used towers). By the end, they were relegated to merely claiming that âjust flying a kiteâ 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 donât know if it was an original idea, but the arch kite is a known kite festival feature:
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 âmaking powerâ.
As I recall, after about ten years of endless gibberish with no meaningful power generated, the story became that the industry was âtoo dependent on power metersâ 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 âlike a hurricaneâ 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. Itâs like, once theyâve invoked âEinsteinâ, they are compelled to declare Betz as probably invalid, and when knowledgeable people finally stand up and say âenough!â, they almost HAVE to claim to be a victim, calling the experienced people trying to clue them in âmeanâ, or whatever. Weâre 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 âEinsteinâ 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 âTalk is cheapâ and âProve itâ. Excuses are everywhere. We all live in a sea of endless excuses. In wind energy, excuses donât matter. It is results that matter.
Everyone does that. And not everyone is going after you, thatâs Doug mostly. He likes to do that. Donât 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 Dougâs comments crossed the line, but we donât always get around to dealing with them. In your user settings you can also âignoreâ users so you donât 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 wasnât 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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Taking what I had about me. Iâve 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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Theyâll 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 Iâm waiting on reply. as of yet, havenât heard anything. What Iâve 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? Iâm completely open source.
Iâm 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.
Iâm 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 ÂŁ150 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!
âA comment goes over the lineâ - yeah sure, whenever someone speaks truth, you are âthe victimâ. They are âbadâ, 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 âeffortsâ 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 âX-hundred homes in Location Y by date Zâ 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 âairborneâ 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 âfantasy-worldâ that, like some drug, could ârescueâ 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 ânewâ (usually old, unknown to them) idea is going to âchange everythingâ. 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 ârun the gauntletâ of directly confronting the endless parade of âidiots idiots idiotsâ 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 âidiotsâ, we reasonable people can seem like a lonely lot, by far outnumbered by the âidiotsâ 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 âthe patternâ 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 âidiotsâ, 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) couldnât possibly happen, in which, no matter how many times the delusional âidiotsâ watch every wrong statement of âfuture successâ 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 âblame the messengerâ of truth than to admit fault. Well, Makani failed, but I donât see them âblamingâ me and Paul Gipe, do you? Hmmm, why not? I think a major part of it is people thinking their battle is with âcorrectingâ 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 windâs energy. It is far easier to sit at a computer typing how some helpful truth-teller is âbadâ, as âthe answerâ to taming the capricious wind. They say they âwillâ 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, donât 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 âspare the feelingsâ 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 youâve 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 Santosâ âblink-and-you-missed-itâ videos. I think this group should therefore declare him âhead of the classâ, or maybe âthe second comingâ. and put him in charge of this entire operation. That way they can just âcut out the middlemanâ and let him directly censor anything he doesnât agree with. (I tried to be nice but it doesnât 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 âjust woke upâ, 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 canât form new memories, but canât 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 ânormalâ.
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 - donât 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 âa screw looseâ 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 âdevelopedâ, âon the marketâ, âshippingâ 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 theyâve 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. Iâm 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 1970âs. 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 windâŚ
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 âidiotsâ.
Just because someone is smart and talented doesnât mean they canât 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 donât take it personally, and it doesnât apply to everyone.
For example I don;t think it applies to you, because you havenât 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 todayâs practitioners donât know what they are doing can only be called âidiotsâ 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 âcrazyâ? Or maybe âHighly insistent pathological nutcases suffering from the delusion that every wrong thing they say is a breakthroughâ? Too complicated. âIdiotsâ is the actual word used. And sometimes âcrazyâ. Theyâve 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) âstoryâ
youâd have to admit there must be a lot of idiots involved somewhere!
Since I have been castigated by many âtrue-believersâ for confidently using that term from day-one, I feel validated at this point.
Before it was âHow can he say that?â
Now itâs more like âWell, yeah, maybe he has a pointâŚâ
You have to understand, as Iâve 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 âIDIOTSâ.
WIND ENERGY HAS ALWAYS ATTRACTED NUTCASES!!!
As Iâve 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 âwhat they wantâ.
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.
Hereâs 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 âshoot from the hipâ 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 youâre 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 youâd like to sell toys you could look at toys youâd 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. Iâd start perhaps making it a self-assembly kit made from thick paper so itâs cheap to send over the mail. Even if that goes nowhere itâs 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? Itâs 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 heâs good at what heâs does. Even if it is a quips some thing awful. I should know some point next week as heâs busy right now. Iâve 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 bladeâŚstl (130.6 KB)
Tinkercad. I believe Iâve 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 ÂŁ1 for 250 lolly sticks. 4mm plywood or cardboards rather cheep. ÂŁ15 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 ÂŁ5 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 youâre not expecting any different results from âascendingâ to a âpositionâ of gleefully and judgementally deleting other peoplesâ 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.
Letâs 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 todayâs 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 ânext yearâ.
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 âhandsâ instead of unproven âfeetâ, 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 1980âs 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 letâs 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 letâs say when you tried to explain the well-established treble and bass clef, they WANTED TO ARGUE WITH YOU and somehow say âWell, when you are playing a piano with no legs , using your feet, the terminology is differentâ
How stupid would you then see these people as being? Unbelievably stupid? So stupid that the word âstupidâ was not even sufficient to describe them? What would you call them? I think âidiotsâ would be on the milder side. Youâd probably want to strangle them, and the only thing stopping you would be you might injure your hands.
Please stop bullshitting. You donât know. And we can see from a mile away that you donât 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 â although to be fair many of us are also not.
Anyone trying new things needs to accept that there are many things they donât 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 âplayerâ 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 donât 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 todayâs technology.
I am not aware of a single wind energy person involved with any AWE project. (Maybe Iâm forgetting about someone) Even the idea that any AWE effort ever contracted with an aerodynamicist with wind energy experience is just a âmaybeâ as far as I know. Of course, just because I donât know about them doesnât mean they donât exist, but I cannot recall ever hearing of any real wind person involved with AWE.
You know whatâs funny? The spell-check on this thing doesnât even understand the word âaerodynamicistâ. At least it understands âtreble clefâ.
My apologies if thatâs the way I came off. Itâs Noted. Wasnât 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. Iâd 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. Didnât 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 itâŚ
One of these âidiotsâ, as you say, produced an average of 92 kW, far ahead of many other players.
That doesnât make it a viable device, though.
In a classic Research-gate energy forum, I donât 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 Iâm not aware of any wind energy person involved in any AWE project. I didnât say they donât exist. But maybe they donât. Out of thousands of kids in the group selfies, maybe there is a wind energy person somewhere. I just donât happen to know about them. Certainly it would be more the exception than the rule. If wind energy people were involved, they wouldnât 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 Makaniâs 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 donât believe me?
https://e-magnetsuk.com magnets are pre rated.
If this dip stick can figure that out. From a mental picture. It donât 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 wouldnât 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 doesnât brake the bank to find out.
I hopefully cleared that one up. Anymore questions donât 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 âidiotsâ were in attendance? OK I am kidding.
Wait, is this a joke, like âWhy did the chicken cross the roadâ? (Still kidding.)
Iâm 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 âWell this is weird, and so am I, and I donât really fit in anywhere else, so maybe this is for me.â 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 âWell, kites are fun, windsurfing is fun, and I sure like having fun, and these people seem pretty confident we will solve global warming âby next yearâ, so this job is for me.â
So you really canât 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 doesnât 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 Iâm 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 âall the answersâ, all day every day, for that company specifically to fail in such a disappointing way after all that hype, wellâŚ
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. Weâre 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.
Iâm sure they did not use the term âidiotsâ in their assessment, but I know that is what they were thinking. Iâm 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 âProfessor Crackpotsâ of the world. Usually it is another âdragâ machineâŚ
Now just because NREL etc. donât jump on the hype bandwagon and start gleefully promoting it out of proportion doesnât 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 donât think they have any AWE project or even a favorite technology.
So I would say, donât be a wise-ass. Itâs 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 âwinâ whatever served as one more âcrackpotâ âargumentâ 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 âfabric working surfaceâ 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 ladiesâ cloth-covered blade project.
Coincidentally (what luck!) I met GE Windâs 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 âin touchâ with the NREL personnel charged with looking into the whole AWE subject, and Iâm 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 donât hear from those guys anymore.
Santos was always very impressed by âauthority figuresâ, and I suspect the NREL people âshut him downâ. Like I kept saying about the âcrackpotsâ, eventually, they âquietly go awayâ.
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 âa factoryâ and âfirst AWE system shippedâ, but how that was over a year ago and we havenât 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 â300 companiesâ pursuing âAWEâ, and that they were totally disgusted at how stupid they all were, and that half of the concepts were âdrag machinesâ.
I interpret that to mean half were âkite-reelingâ (which, of course, the unwashed âidiotsâ call "lift machines). Anyway, the word I got was that the NREL people were basically disgusted at having to field so many âcrackpotâ 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, Loydâs 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 promiseâŚ
How many blades? Well âŚâŚâŚ
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? Iâd 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 weâre still explaining basic things like what type of wind turbine is good for what use, on this âmost advanced in the worldâ 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 guyâs 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. Iâve 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, Iâm 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 âbuilt environmentâ. 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 â30 feetâ 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 âexplainâ everything THEY DONâT UNDERSTAND, thinking the whole time they are âeducatingâ 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 canât 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 energyâŚ
Oh, and as for using high-solidity, steep-pitch water-type rotors for wind energy, no, they canât 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 Iâm 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 Iâm sure. Have fun, thatâs the most important thing!
Oh, and whatever you do, make sure you never learn anything about wind energy! That would spoil all your fantasies!
Iâm 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.
Wasnât 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 donât often have the time of mind to reinvent the wheel. Its worth considering and enquiring down all avenues. Iâm obviously to stupid to comprehend by your standards.or even comprehend why you sometimes disparage engineering as a whole? must mean Iâm 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 donât 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 donât think Iâve seen you back up your sources? I wasnât 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 Iâm a beginner? eating fish dinners. The point here is Iâm 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? Iâm fresh out of biscuits. What milks on offer? Iâm sure this will cause a few laughs! But hey oh there we goâŚâŚâŚ
Might help to learn to spell âbusinessââŚ
You seem to always put the âiâ in the wrong place.
When I first started responding to this post I mistook the symbol for Roddy.
But then I started noticing, Roddy wouldnât 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. Itâs just new to you. Itâs 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 muchđ 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 ÂŁ50. if Iâm incredibly lucky not much more than ÂŁ20. well worth the money. as I can use it in multiple projects. Got a few more bit to add but weâre 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 donât 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. Canât wait to have fun with it.
I saw the picture and immediately knew who it wasâŚ
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.
Canât say how well it work? on the larger scale. but if what heâs 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 âhundreds of homesâ powered by AWE systems ânext yearâ.
BTW, the guy in the video is off on a tangent.
He doesnât really âget itâ.
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 ÂŁ50 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 whatâs 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. Weâre 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. 
Itâs called harvesting wind energy by the teaspoon.
Very clever Pierre! On the one hand, Iâll 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 doesnât 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 âplatedâ to look like metal.
High-class plastic "silver"wareâŚ
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 itâs 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 itâs used on mass to plate 1000s of parts in an instant. Iâve 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 itâs is a very neat process.
See for example
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And now, back to our regularly-scheduled showâŚ
Speaking of spoons, somehow Youtube just spoon-fed me this:
Harmony Turbines
Hmmm, somebody didnât go to Windergarden!
(Especially the investors! - ouch!)
Doesnât exactly make power yet - well theyâve only been âworking on itâ 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 âLook, it spins!â 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 theyâll be shipping their 4 kW product in 2007.
Iâm excited.
For newbies or people not yet born back then, Magenn was the original âposter-childâ 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 âidiots, idiots, idiotsâ, 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