Judicious government policy can create a market for AWE.
Germany passed a law which stipulates that homeowners can return excess electricity to the grid at a cost greater than the utilities charge. The result of this law was that within a short time a good proportion of homeowners installed solar panels on their roofs since it was economically advantageous for them. This rebate system can be extended to AWE where small farms or locations with adjacent open land can install systems and can feed back electricity to the grid. More profits can be made with AWE systems than with photovoltaic solar systems since there is an economy of scale with AWE as opposed to a modular system with photovoltaics. In addition AWE systems can operate during the night which balances the grid. Development of a distributed system like this would strengthen the grid and make it less vulnerable to adverse climate events or sabotage. It will also enhance the entrepreneurial spirit of people since they will become more self-sufficient. If electric power becomes almost free it becomes advantageous to build saunas or hot tubs which enhance the health of the population. Energy intensive reverse osmosis systems can also be installed to purify the water. The possibilities are endless.
this is something i have been thinking about even dropped a suggestion or two? this should be a standard system as most people are dependent of what they have going out. this could benefit manufacturing with a over access to cleaner energy sources? it could even be away of reducing the tax burden? depending on which route used? with all renewables on the table? I agree the possibility are endless. however will and motivations are still quite limited? the real question is one of economic structure? though iâm not up to speed with what the brits are doing here? to see Germany take some step toward this style of economic model is encouraging. it certain way it could help in developing a more sustainable economy as long as stars shine you have the necessary mean for technical and scientific advancements. you also have potential means to control the climate? making it more dependable and reliable? I donât know if anyone did the sums on how much energy you have to extract to get regular cooling effect? if this is even possible? then it would help quite a few people in the long run? no market? real question is what type of market to you wish to set up? with renewable you do have limitless potential? the shines the wind blow the seas wax and wain? i have to ask exactly where the breakaway threshold is? how much of x will get you out come y? when and where would the economic switch occur? there are very few resource like wind wave and solar? material based economies have always suffered the rise and falls. often as often as interests wax and wain. with the right methods i wonder how many can be give a new lease on life? breaking free of the ages of bondage to the money markets? I truly wonder what it will take to achieve this? if it is a basic faculty of life then everyone must have an income? then what must be done to achieve that? i know bit coin was one attempt to break the dependency cycle? failed because it was dependent on finites vectors. central digital currency wont be any different? if you have means to make electricity the many issues commonly face would be at least mitigated? well done Germany for getting the ball rolling! would like to see this go global? who know where this might go?
There are several interesting things in these reflections, and which concern avenues to see if AWE can progress towards something marketable.
Letâs start with the last two sentences, and especially the last one.
I was not present at the last AWEC, but we know that @Rodread particularly details the developments of his achievements, whether in official publications, conferences, and especially test videos which suggest the positive aspects (which are numerous) as well as the difficulties of the moment.
Does this mean that it would be desirable for other projects to benefit from such a detailed approach to enable AWE to increase its progress if possible?
Perhaps yes for other projects that have also reached a degree of feasibility.
For example, SkySails produced prototypes a few years ago that could produce 92 kW with 12 m/s wind speed, figure 15. Maybe a few units were released, but at the very least the market didnât explode. What would be the difficulties encountered? Land and space use? Reeling pumping mode being too demanding for the material?Other?
The first sentence sounds like an echo of @dougselsam 's âidiots, idiots, idiots.â
The paradox is that Mike Barnard questioned the reality of AWE although and because very smart people were trying to implement: even brilliant minds could not save AWE of its inherent non-viability, according to him.
Maybe then everyone could agree on looking for something simpler and more functional. But what does that mean when this something simple should include flying elements, tethers, ground stations, generators, control systems�
Hello Pierre:
The whole problem STARTS with this endless âvery smart peopleâ theme. And why stop there - letâs use the term âbrilliant mindsâ. I once had a conversation with a person expounding what he said was a nascent project about to take place in a certain country, which will go unmentioned, to install several vertical-axis turbines there. I tried to get in a few little facts about vertical-axis turbines, but he had the standard comeback: He told me, almost disparagingly, âYeah, well these are really smart peopleâ, as though HE was the one who knew, while I, an actual wind energy practitioner, was just expressing a worthless opinion, because I could not possibly be as âsmartâ as the âidiots idiots idiotsâ I knew he must be talking about. Of course the supposed âprojectâ never happened. At some point, obviously some actually knowledgeable people must have overruled the supposed âreally smart peopleâ.
Later, I realized I should have pointed out that what he had said was basically an oxymoron: âreally smart peopleâ developing a project to install several vertical-axis wind turbines. Like, to anyone who knows anything about the subject matter, it was a nonstarter. It was a supposed âprojectâ that I knew would never happen, but all these supposed 'really smart people" believed at that moment. (Sigh).
It comes down to this: Just because someone had reasonably good grades, or maybe scored high on their SATs, doesnât mean they automatically know anything about any particular subject. And wind energy is famous for making abject fools out of people who think they are âreally smartâ. Part of it is that people who THINK they are âreally smartâ assume they have nothing to learn, BECAUSE they must already know everything by their gut instinct (being so smart), and so they are not interested in getting up to speed on a topic, thinking they are too good for that.
And so on and on it goes in "The La Brea Tar Pits of wind energy, which is a fruitful place to dig up the dead carcasses of failed wind energy ideas and companies, but not a good place to plug in your car to charge it up. You canât save people from themselves. You want to try, but it seldom works. People just go on acting as people do, never learning from the past, always repeating the mistakes of history, over and over, always thinking âthis time itâs different! We can run across the tar surface and survive - we won;t get stuck like all the others, because weâre 'really smart people! Wheeeee!â ⊠
Hi Doug, I remember that you appreciated one of my experiences. Yet it was a concentration of solutions which generally fail: Magnus bottle(s) to turn a VAWT. And I would be presumptuous to think otherwise, although higher pressure inflatable blades and balloons could maybe improve the situation.
Now letâs get this straight: in your opinion, does AWE for electricity production people fall into the category of âThe La Brea Tar Pits of wind energyâ? Please reply âyesâ or ânoâ.
If your answer is ânoâ, you can take a look at the following questions.
Do serious wind turbine people think about making wind turbines fly? Are the superior resources of high altitude winds worth trying again, although one can be almost certain that it would not be possible to achieve the efficiency of HAWT with equal swept area, unless you have a huge and expensive flying lifter, not to mention space and security problems (air traffic, ground activities, etc.)?
My idea is AWE can be a possibility if relatively simple and reliable machines are implemented, capable of sweeping large areas of wind, the lower efficiency (power coefficient Cp) being compensated by the higher resource and frontal swept area.
When I no longer think so, I will stop posting.
Thats just my memory failing. I did mean «idiots, idiots, idiots» or whatever he is saying.
No. Failing at complex does not mean the simple things work. Probably the simplest possible design is quite complicated in AWE. The fact that many people failed still doesnât mean anything more than «its probably not easy to succeed».
A tiny piece of cloth moving in the wind is not likely progress. Something giving power output more likely is.
In my comments I was not trying to explain why Kitemill is falling behind the progress expected by @dougselsam, I was simply saying that my inside view of the company made me think he was not really understanding why reality is what it is.
I think though that his assesment of slow overall progress in AWE [all companies] is fair, and the communication vs results gap is real.
I would explain that with simple human psychology; when estimating a task, we tend to estimate our prior understanding of what the task is. But AWE hits you like a brick wall, complexity goes quite deep.
The solution; we need to demonstrate progress in small steps. Eg. generate a small amount of power production, but over time. Dont demonstrate utility scale first.
Emphasis; my private opinions, Kitemill has itâs own separate PRâŠ
Unfortunately the market is also what government research priorities and then corporate investors dictate it should be.
Government can take a more risky bet on something which isnât yet cost competitive on energy but which shows promise.
Youâre not going to get many chances to test this unless you are institutional.
Corporate sponsor investors donât have time for you to spend on a pet project or multiple developments you must have a very clean mission.
By the time youâre looking for VC investment you better have something absolutely rock solid.
In the case of AWES
Even simple systems are complicated
There are still a huge number of unexplored options
I agree with this statement, and have said the same thing the whole time.
Itâs hard to prove a negative and say AWE canât work.
In fact we know it can work, to some extent
As Iâve always maintained, there are unlimited ways to make SOME power, at SOME cost, from the wind - the question is whether any proposed scheme can produce useful amounts of power, reliably, at a competitive price.
That was supposed to have been the key to AWE - âobviouslyâ it will be far cheaper than the 3.5 cents per kWh the windfarms are paid from power purchase agreements. How did we know that? because kitesurfing âseemedâ to âgenerateâ a lot of power, and it was fun, and all it took was a kite? So how hard could AWE be?
Wasnât wind energy simple, and the only thing holding it back was a lack of new people with new ideas, who could see how simple it was, and start substituting software for hardware? Wasnât the key to wind energy some fresh blood, who had never built or run a wind turbine in their lives, with little-to-no understanding of the art, who could thereby overcome the stagnant ideas of 1000 years ago that required a stupid tower to lift their âkitesâ?
Wasnât it possible that a new paradigm, never before envisioned, was the answer - perhaps the âLook - It Wiggles!â design approach? Wasnât it obvious that wind turbine designers had never grasped the immense power available, but not utilized when a street sign wiggled in the wind?
Or was it possible that this was actually a very old idea, of the âprofessor crackpotâ nature, that had never panned out, at least from a ground-support standpoint?
Anyway, the name of the topic here, âThe No Marlet Hypothesisâ has always bugged me. I mnean, what a freaking weak excuse! To have spent over a billion dollars during one-and-a-half decades declaring the ability to undercut the price of wind energy, and thenm, with a mere shrug of the shoulders, suddenly declare âthere is no marketâ? Does that even make any sense?
How about the âWe Failed To Meet The Challenge Hypothesisâ? I mean, if there was no market, why is the wind energy industry still expanding? Well there are the subsidies, combined with the fact that all of the large manufacturers are having trouble producing reliable turbines at the low cost necessary to compete. So there is a quest6ion as to whether wind energy in general truly has the actual âmarketâ originally envisioned.
Many people warned about the âintermittencyâ issue, which limited the amount of wind energy the grid could absorb during periods high winds and low demand, but there were always a quick answers to that too:
- AWE would reach up into more consistent winds, and expand the usable wind speed window by sweeping more area;
- Energy storage would be the answer, even though, because the power needed to be produced (by wind) then unproduced, the re-produced yet again (by batteries, for instance) which could logically be expected to yield power at 3 times the cost of just producing it as it was being used?
The first reason almost demands the lisp of âProfethor Crackpotâ:
âMore conthithtent windth, and exthpand the uthable wind thpeed window by thweeping more area!â
Anyway, I just donât see how âThe No Market Hypothesisâ makes any sense unless you are talking about there being no market for wind energy in the first place. The who;e idea was to supersede and outperform current âwindtowersâ. The dreaded tower, consuming 20% of the cost of a wind turbine installation, was to have been a main factor! 20%!
Iâd have to go more with the âWe Didnât Grasp The Magnitude Of The Challengeâ Hypothesis, or maybe the âWe Never Had Any Idea What We Were Doing In The First Placeâ hypothesis, or how about the âWe Didnât Even Know The Difference Between A Lift Machine And A Drag Machineâ hypothesis?
In the case of the clothesline-reeling groundgen system - what was the name again? It might merely mean there was no market for a system of any kind that produced that level of power, under those conditions (camping?picnics?) at that cost, weight, size, and level of effort to implement? âNo marketâ for that particular product, as nice as it was as an interesting prototype, but not necessarily no market for ANY product?
Anyway, if there were âno marketâ for any of what weâve all been chasing after the whole time, nobody would have been chasing after it in the first place. The whole idea of this term âno marketâ sounds like more of a âsour grapesâ type of excuse than anything else, to me anyway.
There may be a market if an AWES presents significant advantages and no prohibitive disadvantages in its area of ââoperation.
It is enough for AWE to be able to increase the energy total in complete peace of mind.
To achieve this, the technologies and/or designs implemented should improve significantly to pass the marketability threshold.
As any AWES depends on several technologies, it may be enough to improve one of them (for example the robustness of the automated control, or/and the implementation of a design meeting all of the many requirements) to unlock the set.
I think you make some good points. The market is obviously there. The failure is in making it an attractive option in the market.
The «not marketable hypothesis» is maybe a more accurate name, indicating that AWE is probably never going to be a first choice
âThe no market Hypothesisâ, the «not marketable hypothesis», âthe market Hypothesisâ. Other combinations?
A useful and reliable AWES should be marketable. But the path is long.
Thatâs a good question you could ask about a product, not so much about an entire product category if you donât know the extents of the product category yet. You canât be more expensive and also break down constantly. To focus on the second part: Can you as an OEM get insurance against your warranty claims and how expensive is that going to be? The kite crashing should fall under warranty, and the warranty should last some significant number of years. If you canât get insurance, how are you going to manage that cost yourself? Can you also insure against the risk of the kite hurting someone or damaging something?
Iâd say itâs more like âThe Not Workableâ hypothesis. There is apparently nothing to market. Maybe it should just be admitted that the reality is âThe NOTHING hypothesesâ. Nothing to run, nothing to use, nothing to offer for âdisaster reliefâ, and nothing with regard to the zero homes powered by AWE after over a decade and a half of trying, and a billion dollars spent.
With any new energy technology, nobody necessarily expects early prototypes to be more economical. But at least they are expected to actually run. They need to be able to demonstrate reliable operation, on a reliable basis, be continuously dispatchable, always available, and in continuous use year-round. Once it is proven they can run on a regular basis, then they can be refined and optimized for economics. Instead we have huge promises, lots of handwaving and happy-talk, followed by a bunch of non-use and excuses, or just embarrassing silence.
It is completely untenable, after all these years, to have not a single system in regular, daily operation. In fact, it is a complete joke. The sad thing is that some people have pointed this out the whole time. Itâs the worst and most abject failure in the history of wind energy.
At least vertical-axis turbines, as another example of a largely-failed wind energy design approach, have many examples of systems up and running for a year or more. If you know where to look, it is possible to find a still-working system, somewhere, until it shakes itself apart. You can buy one on Ebay - yes it will be all complete lies regarding the nonsensical and indeed scientifically impossible output fantasy numbers claimed, but you can buy one that runs for at least some period of time, once installed.
Not so with AWE. I think the first thing AWE needs to do is to get rid of the âreally smart peopleâ theme and realize they are the biggest dummies in the history of wind energy. Then figure out whether there is any AWE direction that could possibly be successful, following the math, not just their emotions.
AWES models and self driving cars have both existed and been demonstrated to work for over the last ten years. Models not products. There is a colossal difference between device and product.
Yeah Self driving cars are ahead for sure .
The work I see other AWES companies and AWEurope doing on public acceptance, engineering rigour, reliability, safety, integration, âŠseems to be the hard but correct direction
I tried easy - the really easy - nah unless a Daisy is camping scale - even easy AWES is hard