Welcome @sunny. What you describe looks to be something like dynamic soaring:
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Thank you. Correct, no tethering to ground station.
ps: From a product perspective, I am dreaming to have small laptop sized AWES, with internal miniature battery storage capacity for my daily need, that is charged in air. It flies out, expands, captures energy, stores internally and returns to base. Then I can remain off grid.
Subject and verb all present and correct. I missed a full stop. Still a sentence though.
I am impressed with @PierreB
Coordinating loads of kite matter in the huge, flowing, wibbly void which is the sky and wind …
Needs more than just reeling and not-reeling kites, flygen and not-flygen kites.
The coordination can be greatly assisted by network designs.
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Welcome @sunny ! 
That system sounds a lot more complex than the common awes architectures.
Apart from it being very complex and hard to develop, I doubt there is a market for that product. Batteries do a good job for laptops and such at a fraction of the price and volume. Anywhere one needs to have a generator is probably also remote and one can find an area to set up a tethered awes, which is always more efficient.
Free flying AWES schemes have previously been proposed where 2 x gliders work reeling soaring against each other to produce on-board energy… as for the stored energy packet delivery… hmmm
So I guess it’s safe to say that nobody knows anything about the status of the most commonly pursued AWE method, right? Nobody knows a thing? Zero information from any project or team? This whole field of endeavor is getting to be a big joke. This conversation sounds just like the idle musings of 12 years ago. Flygen? Groundgen? Let’s go all in: JoeBenVirt? Corwin? Skywindpower? Magenn? Saul Griffith? Cristina Archer? Ken Caldiera? McConney? Which do you think will be first? I’m left with my initial assessment from several years ago: “Kite-reeling: hmmmph!”. Gosh and I didn’t even need to read any “papers”, do any math, or attend another “conference”…
Yeah Rod, two inter-reeling gliders, microwaving power to base-stations. That was the theme promoted by Wayne German at the first High Altitude Wind Power “conference” in 2009, although the word “conference” implies one would have to let other people speak…
Ir’s a great idea, as long as you don;t mind combining several completely undeveloped technologies, and get it all light weight and reliable enough to fly in gliders and be 100% safe. Oh and it’s got to be cheaper than dirt… By the way, from kite trains setting altitude records, to stacks of kites, to Laddermill, to SuperTurbine™, to “line-laundry”, kite “networks” have always been part of kites and AWE. It’s not a new concept. What’s next, promoting “Quantum Phonon Bose-Einstein kite condensates”?
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Something like a glider that rises on thermals and when it dives it charges the capacitor with its propellers? Or using dynamic soaring?
Doug: Apart other methods, between kite-reeling and flygen methods, what would be your choice?
That idea of dynamic soaring etc,. and storing energy onboard a glider, was promoted years ago on the old forum by a guy named Gabor.
Gabor’s preferred method of onboard storage was “liquefying air”.
As usual, one might consider whether liquefying air is even a good method of storing energy in the first place. Seems like idle AWE brainstorming entails a few “go-to” ideas that will probably keep repeating until maybe someday they actually become possible. But by then other things will also become possible so maybe today’s go-to ideas will be obsolete by the time they become possible. Meanwhile, from the type of people who keep insisting on staying “on-topic”, what about kite-reeling? Is anyone still trying kite-reeling, or has everyone given up? By the way, normally, wind energy wannabe innovators tend to “quietly go away” after a brief period of high publicity.
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Doug is confused about the core lessons of these stories. In hindsight, the villagers should have taken all “Wolf” warnings seriously, rather than disastrously call a false-positive. Doug overlooks the child was NOT “always a liar”.
All observers saw Emperor was naked; the child only helpfully prompted- “he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last." If Doug is claiming to call AWE R&D naked by the same logic, the world is simply not agreeing. Neither story fairly applies to AWE as Doug reasons.
kPower: Reeling will be found to have been an AWES stepping stone architecture, not a dead-end, much as the propeller biplane was the critical path to the jet monoplane. Reeling is not the straw-man distraction Doug poses.
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Ah yes, daveS can’t contain himself on His own forum, but has to drag his typical “Doug is confused” ramblings over here. Anything to deny “Doug”. We now have His daily proclamation of the future (always in the future, eh Dave?)
DaveS, here is the deal:
The Boy Who Cried Wolf is any supposed AWE company thusfar having proclaimed to be powering grid X using technology Y by date Z. Who believes it anymore? You?
The "emperor’s clothes refers to efforts by today’s versions of “emperors” (huge corporations and “too-big-to-fail” universities), which can be revealed as not living up to their hype by even a child. Or by anyone who chooses to look.
Well, you’re just not very good at applying the actual lesson of the stories, making logical shortcuts that have to be amended.
Yes, I really believe the 2030 AWE timeframe claims, and may even have been first to cite that timeframe, and I still believe so. Let the reelers have their moment. A kid who cries wolf is just being a kid, but far worse, a crank who complains is just that. AWE is going nicely for those who fly the most.
OK You’ve been billing yourself as (among other things) a “domain expert” in the field of AWE. Kite-reeling is the most popular AWE method these days. So, as a “domain expert”, you not only have zero information, but you don’t think people should ask?
What if someone were, say interested in airborne wind energy. Do you think they should ask what’s new with the most popular method?
Doug, I am a domain expert in kites, based on a lifetime in kites, including seven years as resident scholar at the World Kite Museum, and personal training by many of the greatest figures. Only if kite expertise is AWE could you say I am an expert in the sense you wish.
You seem confused by the pull away from reeling even as the number of ventures in reeling stays high. This is explained by overall exponential growth in our community. “The most popular method” is the power kite, however its applied, reeling or as Payne fig 5 shows. The ST is all yours. “What’s new” with it?
This topic is not about you. It is asking how are things going with kite-reeling.
Doug, you started with my “domain expert” status here. I provided the best overview of reeling until you lost the thread.
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OK back in your cages boys.
This is a forum for content on Airborne Wind Energy please.
We all know Ampyx… yes… (?who)
Oh Yeah… a real reeling company… They’re serious about it as their honest appraisal of their tether system suggests…
https://www.ampyxpower.com/ap3/tether/index
Specifications:
Material: UHMWPE (Dyneema)
Diameter: 8-16 mm
Breaking strength: 6000 daN (kg)
The tether is composed of DSM Dyneema fibers (Ultra-High Molecular Weight PolyEthylene) that are braided into a rope. The tether is designed to withstand the loads that are experienced during all possible environmental conditions! Although the tether may look like a simple system, there is more to it.
The tether is a potential source of noise and air drag and is characterized by different fatigue mechanisms. The bottom 200 meters are continuously exposed to bending cycles over the drum causing internal friction and wear. The top part of the tether is exposed to varying tenstion cycles (creep fatigue) and contributes the largest air drag. To obtain the proper AP3 tether a trade-off is made between noise, drag and cost.
The horizontal progress indicator underneath the figure shows how far along the production and testing of the AP3 tether is progressing.
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The test “will I get an answer on the forum where there are five regulars with interest in awes, that is satisfactory to me” is not really indicative of the progress in kite-reeling (or yo-yo as it’s called most times).
What evidence would you like to see to be convinced, that kite-reeling is a viable awes architecture?
Normally in wind energy the first test is showing power output.
Then, energy collected over time.
Then, if costs can be contained, it might be competitive.
I would be happy to hear ANY info. Silence is not a good sign, in my experience.
You notice they are very talkative right up to the point when their stated grid-feed projects are scheduled to begin. Then, sudden silence. I guess we’re left letting the silence speak for itself.
Why not trying reeling in SuperTurbine ™ style?
Yoyo system comprising a ground station (6), a main tether (5), rotors (1) on their respective tethers (2). Said rotors (1) provide thrust. The separators (3, 3’) allow to avoid collisions between the rotors (1), so allow to maximize the space even by using small elements like the small rotors (1), avoiding mass penalty. A kite lifter (4) provides a permanent lift.
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