47 posts were merged into an existing topic: More laddermill / spidermill ideas
I donāt see a great similarity. Kind of like a tricycle and unicycle are alike
Iām minded to agree with Pierre and Dave on this
Itās the ol fig5
And BTWā¦ Please donāt reference unicycling into another aspect of AWES again 
Itās already a control theory
Ruins the sport for those of us who enjoy the practical
There are several variants of Payneās patent figure 5 which describes two pulleys that are connected to the respective generators, and a tether connecting these two pulleys to the kite flying crosswind:
Kiteborneās variant (on the video) where there are also two pulleys but only one generator.
I sketched another variant with two winches and two generators, one tether being stretched while the other tether being slack, and vice versa.
All these variants are discussed at What is possible with Payne's patent US3987987 figure 5?
I suggest that the currently discussed variant is also posted on the topic above.
I waded through 85 posts and nothing remotely similar. You seem to be making a point that this is an old idea when actually you have not understood what I was trying to convey.
I will accept maybe its an old idea, maybe even I have read about it then forgot. Its not terribly important, but please then just link to an exact match, dont send me to somewhere vague. Also if you dont want to join the discussion for any reason thats ok to. But saying Ā«THIS WAS DONEĀ» over and over just adds noise.
None of the Ā«variantsĀ» you propose have similar functioning.
I stress; this is a pulley drive, not a pulling energy transmission. The kite position should be fixed in this design. It is Ā«nothingĀ» like Payne no 3.
Dave Santos, Rod Read and me find the same thing: it is reported to Payneās patent figure 5. I have linked āyourā system to other variants of figure 5.
āBut saying Ā«THIS WAS DONEĀ»ā: I did not say that, I indicated your design is a variant of figure 5, because thatās what it is.
Ok. Can you explain why you find that?
So I am glad we now agree that this design is a variant of figure 5.
Topic starter wants to discuss this idea, whether it is old or new. Beyond informing the reader the idea might be similar to other ideas, which can be done in a single post like Dave has done, the above discussion is off-topic.
Unclear title though I think, @tallakt.
1 Like
This is what Iāve been saying from day-one: AWE people have no idea what they are even getting into, let alone how to make it all workā¦
Are you saying that AWE is impractical except for engineers with experience in regular wind power?
And how do you explain the relatively low involvement of large wind companies in AWE?
Hi Pierre:
OK this gets repetitive, but here goes:
āWind energy is a magnet for crackpots. Airborne Wind Energy is a neodymium supermagnet.ā
Another Doug Selsam repeated theme is:
āWannabe wind energy inventors think their passing ideas must be breakthroughs because the wind will behave the way they want it to behave, but the wind behaves the way IT wants to behave.ā
I cannot reasonably be responsible for figuring out every aspect of why some people think they can revolutionize an industry despite no knowledge of it, but I will say, any actual experience might be helpful. Couldnāt hurt. Then again, hiring Fort Felker to run the business didnāt help Makani.
Stepping back from the details, any solution will have to stand on its own two feet at some point. We canāt just āwishā a solution into existence. A real solution must deal with the wind on its own terms.
I think the low involvement of regular wind energy people in AWE is a subset of people in general not being involved in AWE. Most wind energy people are not āinventorsā, they are workers, executives, etc. Real inventors are rare, and as we now know, wannabe inventors are somewhat less rare.
Sorry, I forgot to include the REASON wind energy is a magnet for crackpots:
It is simple:
The wind is INVISIBLE.
Since the wind is invisible, crackpots (or people in general) can IMAGINE the wind doing whatever they THINK it āshouldā do (or whatever they wish it would do), but it does what IT wants to do.
I was one of the debunkers he talks about. The problem with energy storage is you have already taken the effort to create the energy in the first place. Storage involves first āun-creatingā that same energy, then āre-creatingā that same energy yet again! Logically then, you could expect that stored energy to cost 3x as much as the energy in the first place cost.
Notice toward the end of this video, where a āstudyā predicts a $50/MWh cost.
What did they leave out? The original cost of producing the energy, thatās what.
And we could predict that their predicted figure is too optimistic, and would really be $100.MWh, and if it costs $50/ MWh to produce the electricity, you now have a wholesale price for electricity higher than retail, leaving no room to pay for the transmission infrastructure.
Bottom line for energy storage is it should logically be expected to cost 3x as much as just generating electricity.
So it may never work out.
Possibly one more pipe-dream.
If anything they should build a conventional water tower for a pumped hydro system. That seems like an obvious thing to look at. Maybe someone has and the cost is a showstopper?
I think your analysis is a bit too simplistic here so that some useful results are probably glossed over.
Having some energy storage will enable more windmills. The energy storage will fill in the gaps during lulls. Otherwise the windmills, even if cheap in LCOE, may not be used at all. And most energy is produced directly to grid with no storage, storage only deals with the remaining energy gaps
Also, one would expect energy storage to be a lot cheaper than producing energy in the first place, because one is free to choose the form
in which to store energy. Also, the energy after being produced the first time, can be cheaply moved, so one can combine a shut down mine shaft at one location with a wind resource at a different location
That being said, I agree that energy storage is quite price sensitive. And some options exist already, like pumping hydropower, that are not utilized today. So probably this is not easy to get right.
OK well everyone agrees that āstorageā would not only allow āmore windmillsā, but intermittency has always been the show-stopper/deal-breaker for wind and solar in general.
Yes my āanalysisā is oversimplistic.
But is it accurate? So far, Iād say it is pretty close to being accurate.
And what Roddy is saying about āarbitrageā is also accurate, but Roddy, you just made my point - thanks.
The fact is, such āarbitrageā has always been possible, since regular power plants like to run at a constant output and never shut down. Electricity is cheap in the middle of the night. Especially when you get to nuke plants, they want to just keep them running 24/7/365.
So time-of-use arbitrage has ALWAYS been a compelling business possibility, IF there was an efficient, affordable MEANS of large-scale energy storage.
None of this is new, as far as the DESIRE for energy storage. Itās just that with wind and solar, storage is NEEDED for further grid penetration, not just desired.
The REASON energy storage of grid-scale has never been implemented is, as I said, you have 3 times the task. First you have to create the energy. Then un-create it. Then create it again! That is the REALITY. There really IS NO actual STORAGE of the actual ELECTRICITY. It is a conversion FROM usable electricity into something else, THEN you have to āgenerateā that electricity (in some way) ALL OVER AGAIN.
What a lot of people suffer from is the āall ya gotta do isā type of reasoning.
As though if it is easy for them to say āall ya gotta do is Xā, then somehow, X is magically easy to accomplish.
But storing energy at utility-scale is not easy, never has been easy, and is not going to suddenly become easy just because of a āwishā.
A lot of the talk about cars going all electric in just a few years, etc. is not realistic.
Thereās nowhere near enough lithium being produced for more than about 5% of cars to be electric alone at this time. And now weāre going to produce enough batteries for the grid to be battery-powered too? So your electric car battery is going to be charged by a battery-powered grid? So your power has to go in and out of two (2) sets of batteries? Losing 10% of it each time, so we lose 20% minimum? Where do we suddenly get all that power? All that lithium? Not to mention Cobalt?
Iāve heard analyses on the financial channels that include things like people hold onto their cars for 12 years on average. Heck, my Suburban is 22 years old and just getting broken in! And how many thousand vehicles can any manufacturing plant produce in a year, and what is the actual market size, so how many new plants would need to be built every year?
And if the electric grid is challenged today and suddenly weāre having regular power outages like some leftist third-world dictator country, how is that same weak grid going to provide enough energy for everyonesā cars too?
To me the answer is for workplace parking lots to have solar-powered charging stations, so when you get to work, you plug in your car to be charged up locally, not even using the grid, or maybe grid-tied but not taking much juice off the grid per se, just producing most of what your car needs onsite.
Even stores could offer onsite solar charging. Our local Super-Walmart has large solar arrays above part of the parking lot, and in the summer everyone tries to get a spot in the shade under the solar panels. If they could plug in and charge up while shopping, it mitigates the need for grid storage.
But all in all, there is a lot of dreaming and unclear thinking in the clean energy space, due to, and I am serious when I say this āglobal warming derangement syndromeā. You can start with just the whole tagline of āgreen energyā. It is a misnomer. Coal is the āgreenestā form of energy (supports greening of the entire planet). Even NASA has now explained how the amount of Earthās surface is covered with vegetation is expanding due to increased CO2.
But the whole situation requires reasoning far beyond what will fit on a bumper-sticker. First of all we are in an āice ageā right now. An ice-age is when we have permanent ice on the polar caps. We are currently in an āinter-glacialā cycle of our ongoing āice ageā. Glacial cycles are associated with a lot of deserts on Earth, which keeps the air dry, which keeps too much snow from accumulating at the poles. If we want āgreenā, we might be wishing for a āsnowball Earthā.
One mystery is why our current āinterglacialā has lasted so long this time(?) Some hypothesize it is due to domestication of grazing animals denuding the landscape. Or people cutting down forests for firewood. Anyway the whole thing is immensely more complicated than any slogan. I just hope we donāt ādegenerateā into feeling lucky when the power is even on, as they do in some backward countries. Get it? ādegenerateā? Into not generating? Thereās a pun thereā¦
There we go again. However your [deranged?] view on this, the truth is that people are moving away from fossile fuel energy. This will enable some of the technologies that we are talking about. Its just about what we believe the future will bring.
For sure, as long as we have coal and natural gas, thereās little market for wind and solar
Lithium and cobalt
BS
Thereās stax of it. And the cobalt is burnt in your low sulphur fuel. Or didnāt you know?
Time you were introduced to Auke Hoekatra
https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra?t=p0HCrwf2M38mZwjKVoP6XQ&s=09
Follow, Read up and get your facts on autos right Doug.
Could all that early lead poisoning have retarded your ability to learn about other reading resources than bumper stickers?
V2G EV cars themselves can be batteries for grid balancing. X 20M cars is a lot of battery.
1 Like
I wouldnāt be so quick to dismiss what is common knowledge in industry. While it is true that lithium is not rare per se, the infrastructure is not in place to expand output fast enough to instantly convert all cars, and the grid itself, to battery operation. Otherwise you would not see the current parade of āProfessor Crackpotā energy storage debacles being promoted on a daily basis.
And most people involved in electric vehicles etc. have flagged Cobalt as highly-problematic due to its sourcing from an undeveloped area using child labor to mine it. In fact there is a huge effort to try to replace cobalt, to avoid this problem.
No I did not know about cobalt being burnt in low-sulphur fuel. Maybe you should explain that to all the people concerned about Cobalt production and let them know you have the answer. Iām sure they will be very excited and grateful to hear your solution. 
1 Like