Looking at the program for AWEC 2021, I made some statistics.
There are 96 talks and posters altogether. I broke them down by topic in this way
Control 26
Business 18
Dev Update 13
Aero 10
Mechanical 9
Site 7
Tether 4
Novel 3
Software 2
Now to something that has been discussed a little bit for a while, how is the balance of talks relative to educational level. I was not able to get all levels for all speakers, some I guessed.
61 oral presentations, 59% of speakers have PhD level
23 poster presentations, 53% of “speakers” have PhD level
This seems quite right to me, expect a lot of PhD speakers to have a lot of work to talk about, compared to people in more normal [development etc] work.
If I was to point my finger at one thing, it would be that as AWE is still quite unproven, why is there not more activity to get us past that hurdle? I’m thinking advances control strategies and business plans (the two biggest of my categories) to not contribute a great deal to achieveing this, as a community.
If we look at what the private companies are talking about, they are mostly looking at
Tallak, do you mean 2022?
Personally, I don’t really understand what is the point of so much “talk”.
At some point, what is there really left to say?
Seems like too much talk may be just a waste of time, when it is action that is required.
And if someone has a useful system, there is always some place where it could be run.
Sure, use a tether’s angle to measure wind speed. Great idea. Add a scale printed on a sheet of material placed next to the tether, and you would see the wind speed readout like an analog gauge or meter.
I did not come up with the name. I guess as it was delayed dt covid19, they kept the name awec21
Theres always some good things about conference; meeting people, exchanging ideas, etc. I think it would not be wise to think that I had everything figured out better than so many people thinking about a similar issue.
Also, a conference like this sets the stage to get people involved in AWE. For the private companies, recognition translates quickly to funding (hey, 60 PhDs cant be wrong?). For universities, novel problems to be solved lets them get published papers.
Its all win-win. Though the only bigger issue I see is that conferences stimulate travel, which in turn generates pollution. There is still a fair chance all of AWE will be carbon positive if it doesnt catch on
Would be nice to see you there @dougselsam but it seems you dont see good enough reasons to attend…
I could not agree more. AWEC2021 (june 2022) will be the year of rotary torque transfer AWES with @Rodread and @someAWE_cb. @dougselsam could complete the picture with SuperTurbine ™. Questions of TRPT versus rigid shaft could be asked, among other questions concerning lifetime and some others.
Yes Tallak, I used to attend many wind conferences, but would end up wishing I was back at my shop building things. Hotels, rental cars, taxis, airline flights - who needs it? What is the point? At one Windpower conference I noticed the leading manufacturer of small wind turbines, Bergey, did not have a presence. I wondered why briefly, but then realized they probably had stuff to do - productive stuff, not wasting time and money running around the country “preaching to the choir”. Although at one conference Mike Bergey offered me a job, and I do have a couple of their turbines here powering this place. And I did find one nice inverter at a conference, but the manufacturer went bankrupt, and Bergey bought the rights to the inverter, which he had been the catalyst of, and will not sell them to me since I am considered “a competitor”.
Of course, how could 60 PhD’s be wrong? Well so far they all have. It goes back to the outhouse graffiti “Eat s***, how could a million flies be wrong”? Some people define PhD’s as people who stayed in school too long. Maybe to rise to a tenured position where you don’t have to do much besides administrate, with no actual results expected? And “getting funding”? What are the results so far, of all the funding so far? Seems silly to me. If you have something, build it. Run it. People will want it if it is any good. Otherwise, it is not. All win-win? Well if you have no chance of success, and just need to convince people to give you more money anyway, that may be true. But by this point in time, I assume if any of these highly-publicized and highly-financed schemes were working out, it would be apparent.
Anyway, the fact remains, “All roads lead to SuperTurbine™.”
Well, I guess there is a certain amount of $ one must have to make AWE happen. Makani thought this number to be a huge amount, so does Ampyx and I guess most of the other “household names” in AWE.
Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you find people like the KGM1 group https://www.f6s.com/kgm1#!. People who will do this at a very low budget. You may recognize some of the people involved.
Its safe to assume that the minimum funding required would be somewhere between these two extremes, and the goalpost would be to A) generate power in a meaningful proportion to the effort invested, and B) do so 24/7 even in bad weather.
Unless these two are covered, there is no real way to make money. Anything before that is funding from my point of view.
Yes well, very kind of you to invite me, and when such wind energy events are in, say, Los Angeles or Las Vegas, both nearby, I’m more likely to attend. Lots of wind up here this time of year. It’s paying the electric bill.
Statistics for time taken to publish AWEC Milan 2021 presentation videos…
Number Published…
Reasons given for delay…
Equivalent in frames per second… @rschmehl
We know you’re busy… we need these videos published
Please can you pass the job on or just publish raw footage somewhere?