Like Altaeros, all they need to do is eliminate their main, distinguishing features, for better performance.
Let’s see, you have rotors spinning, and you want to throw away that rotation and start from scratch, with excruciatingly slow downwind travel, intermittent generation, a power-robbing upwind cycle, lots of extra controls and complication, a gearbox, and a winch? Why? Well, at least they greatly shortened the travel distance and cycle times. On the way to eliminating the pumping altogether. All roads lead to SuperTurbine™.
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We need a deadline for research on kite-reeling, for example the AWEC conference 2019. If there is no working prototype for several consecutive days with positive related power curves, researches could easily focuse to a second AWES generation with torque systems.
No.
Here’s a better idea: organize a hackathon for the subject you are interested in.
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We need to let everyone pursue what they believe most in. Then try to inform those who choose a path that is surely not going to work by factual arguments…
Failure is not the same as proving something is impossible.
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Without any significant results from the most studied mode, the whole AWES branch risks being undermined.
There are significant results.
We haven’t seen the power curves, but investors have and they decided to continue funding yoyo companies.
Are there really no power curves published? There must be some in the literature.
https://collegerama.tudelft.nl/Mediasite/Play/1065c6e340d84dc491c15da533ee1a671d : 3’10" from the beginning, kite-reeling compared to flygen…
4/27 instead of 16/27, even as the power by wing area is expected to be the same…
Discontinuous power, expense of energy and time during reel-in phase leading to an average half power as shown on most on the curves like this: RolfvanderVlugt_PresentationAWEC2013.pdf (1.4 MB) although a rigid wing makes it possible to shorten the reel-in phase…
An important advantage of kite-reeling is the generator on the ground, but the kite and the tether should comprise lights…
Kite-reeling remains theoretically possible but the lack of significant result is not a good sign.
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I put again the paper: RolfvanderVlugt_PresentationAWEC2013.pdf (1.4 MB)
The results about traction phase (reel-out phase) looks to show a high efficiency in regard to the formula and compared to Makani wing of 4 m² with 8 m speed (10 kW), taking account of using respectively flexible and rigid wings. But the power during the cycle is roughly half as I mentioned just previously. Concerning rigid wings the power peak can be very high, but not necessarily the average power even during reel-out phase. It is a point for clarification.
The yoyo discontinuity leads to different serious problems.
I think Yoyo may at the very least be seen as a stepping stone into multi wing Yoyo systems that will overcome both drag issues and power delivery consistency issues.
But right now these optimizations are premature, because the field is not evolved enough yet to keep a single kite flying continuously (in a commercial sense). So solving the simpler first step is a natural way to progress to other steps, once the limitations of single wing Yoyo has been observed.
Both the Betz’ limit issues and inconsistent power delivery are not insolvable problems, rather just add cost to the finished solution (a bad thing, but not necessarily the death of a technology).
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Looks like one cycle is calculated to return about 1/10th of a cent worth of electricity.
1000 cycles and you’ve earned a dollar (at 4 cents/kWh).
Maybe someone should check my math on that…
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Is it the end of the story?
I would point out that the 10 kW turbine powering this very windy place can only be financially justified due to the government subsidies. Otherwise you’d be better off investing the money in bonds and use the interest to pay your electric bill. The idea with both wind and solar at this small scale is “set it and forget it”. The economics work out only if it requires almost zero attention. If the turbine requires major servicing, including hiring a crane, it could be replaced by solar panels for an equivalent expense. Any reasonable system for mass deployment needs to be capable of running with zero human input, or else you’d be spending all your time babysitting it.
Its a valid point and the cheapness of electric energy makes AWE very difficult. Its easy to just make some energy rather than making energy at a competitive price.
The reason why companies like Makani and Ampyx sink huge $ into AWE it the realization that, like regular windmills, you will not do generic power generation with AWE at 50 kW scale. It will be competitive at larger scales only, except for small niche markets, if they exist.
What you are saying is probably correct, but still does not change the realities. There are many bright people, who are also not con men, who believe that some feasible solution to Yoyo AWE exists. The fact that you dont belive it possible changes nothing. Another failure does not prove that its not possible.
Ill tell you how to «end our misery», and Id be most happy to be enlightened. Show us a mathematical/physical reason why it is not possible or not feasible. If you cant do that, why not just focus on your thing, and let others do their thing.
Personally I believe many of the proposed «solutions» to AWE have potential for success. It just seems that AWE is a difficult problem (noone managed to do it in a short timeframe at scale). So what. Noone managed to do CO2 storage at profitable cost either. Is it possible? Who am I to judge?
In our time artificial intelligence solves many problems. AWE, of which yoyo method, can be one of them. Automated systems are managing more and more difficult tasks.
Reminds me of people who pan for gold say they are lucky if it pays for the gas to get there.
Yet the big mining operations make money. Sometimes. Wind energy is a lot like mining or drilling for oil.
Lots of hard work and dangerous noisy machinery.
Small wind turbines for homes are notoriously too expensive and most do not last, no matter how much you spend on it.
Wind is such an engineering challenge.
So a small AWE system would actually be comparable to a regular small wind system.
The 10 kW machine on site here does pay our electric bill.
I’ve had to nurse it along. It’s technically not worth the money but with the subsidies it looked good to a previous owner of this facility.
I really was thinking, for a little while, that kite-reeling was starting to prove itself, despite my initial doubts.
That was years ago.
I mean, just because I don;t think something is quite the answer, doesn’t mean it is not going to work out.
I was pretty impressed with the numbers I was seeing, or hearing about anyway…
But you also start to notice when a lot of money and hype are being devoted to something, and yet progress just sort of seems to slow to a crawl or stop altogether.
It’s kind of become a pattern in clean energy ventures. Especially when their first grid-tie project is supposed to start, they go silent.
Anyway, with the number of teams reeling, the budgets, the number of talented people, etc., it seems like something might be happening by now.
I think it’s OK for a new product, a small wind product, to deliver more expensive electricity. Especially for off-grid installations - charging batteries.
There are a lot of off-grid locations that need reliable power and will pay a little more.
Just because windfarms make cheaper power, doesn’t mean there is no market for small turbines.
It is not easy - most small wind companies struggle if they survive at all.
But people buy them or even build their own, and power their homes in remote areas just because it’s fun!
Fun to put up, fun to run. There are lots of reasons to run wind turbines. Some people may even think they’re saving the planet!
Solar: Boring. It just sits there. And just when the sun stops shining, it often gets windy!
There are a lot of good deals in net metering, special rates.
And there is just the idea of showing you can power a facility with your amazing concept.
With all the money being spent, you might think someone’s facility would be powered by their thing that is supposed to be able to power facilities.
Is it a real solution? Why aren’t they using it themselves to power their facilities?
Like a group for discussing airborne wind energy should be able to discuss the most popularly pursued method and ask what’s going on, if it is a real airborne wind energy discussion group.
So that’s why I ask. It seems like sometimes you have to read between the lines. If nothing’s really going on I’m thinking maybe it is starting to show itself as being at least not a slam-dunk. Maybe a fad. Like Disco, the hula-hoop, bell-bottom jeans, pagers, global cooling, ya know. Of course, like with the previous AWE forum, there is that urge to NOT discuss things. Sometimes it seems as though we’re trained by television to only discuss what is being promoted at any given moment, and never bring it up if it stops being “advertised”. I’d appreciate it if the companies that get us all excited would tell us the rest of the story even if it is not so good so we don’t have to guess.
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Disco never died it became electronica and has sprouted a vast collection of genres.
Hoola still spins … Yes there are now loads of variants and more competitor toys in the market.
(OK the jeans are special)
Pagers got an upgrade and became SMS on mobiles (Some doctors still use pagers) Mobiles became kinda good
Tech evolves. AWES is evolving.
How many yo-yo pumping teams have you seen change from soft, to rigid, … from single to multi kite, from sweep to rotary…
The rate of evolutionary change of design from dominant institutions is glacial though
It can only get better.
I don’t think people will ever “get it.” Outsiders to wind energy just have no idea of the brutal reality of wind energy. And the people who oversimplify it in their minds and pick one piece to try to throw into the mix, thinking they are going to change everything based on their overly-simplistic understanding of the art are just following the well-worn path that leads nowhere, which is why they usually just sort of disappear. I’ll give you an example. Yesterday afternoon, we started getting 30 mph+ winds. I was out taking a video, with sound, of the 10 kW Bergey turbine (the leading brand developed with help from NREL) powering this place. Because of a piece of plastic leading-edge tape with a corner peeling loose, the turbine was making a noise like a freight train. A violent hammering sound for everyone within a half-mile to enjoy. I was considering producing a video explaining the entire 8-year torture session I’ve endured dealing with the local scam-artist installer, the uncooperative and noncomprehending manufacturer who wrote all the rules for small wind turbines, supported by the bureaucracy, since without his problematic turbine, they would have nothing to regulate, and hence no jobs, because it’s the only small-wind turbine contender that even has a product that sometimes runs for a few years without a problem. But not always. In 8 years, having gone through two (2) of these turbines here, that supposedly last 20 years at minimum, I’ve never had a single day of 100% quiet, trouble-free operation, although they have generally kept the electric bill here at about zero. Last night I woke up at about 2:00 AM listening to the helicopter-like hammering of the one blade, going like 200 MPH, from probably a loose corner of a piece of tape, that will cost over $1000 dollars to fix, since the local installer prefers to use a crane to do the job. $1000 to fix a piece of tape. Notwithstanding the fact that another installer who I had to pay $500 to fix another noise that had been going on for seven years, and which finally disabled the turbine, which turned out to have been caused by the previous local scam-artist installer leaving a main power wire not properly connected, had declared no loose leading edge tape, even though I told him I could hear leading edge tape noise. He needed two (2) visits to find the loose wire, but after these two visits the turbine is still ridiculously loud in strong winds, even though we did eliminate one loose-wire version of what the manufacturer calls “the foghorn noise”. Neither the manufacturer nor the visiting service crew who found the loose wire believes my version of the foghorn noise is gone. These people are so stuck-in-a-rut they can’t even believe any problem with their product could ever be solved. And they represent the best in small wind. Meanwhile after 12 years of wannabe dreaming about AWE, focusing on kites, nobody even has an autonomous kite or even one that can launch and land by itself. It doesn;t do any good to explain anything to AWE wannabes. They think they’ve got it all figured out, while experienced people can see they have not even started to figure out what they are doing, and have no idea what they are facing…
It can be right, but other operation modes look to be barely better. AWES could compensate bad generation means with large swept areas in high altitude.
Yeah I guess the idea is, if your basic concept is sufficiently bad, you should make it really big, and everything will be OK. Now having said that, I will say there could be some validity to what you say, that efficiency is not the only thing that matters. I’ve long joked when queried about the efficiency of SuperTurbine™ “We lose a little on every rotor but make it up in volume!” (the real saying is “we lose a little on every deal”… it’s a joke from discount retailing)
Really it is cost of energy that people care about, not efficiency per se. And for some situations, locations, etc., people are willing to pay much more for electricity. Probably the most commonly-cited example is islands dependent on central diesel generators. It costs a lot to deliver the fuel to island locations. (A friend who recently returned from a Caribbean cruise just hit me with that common concept again today). Often, believe it or not, wind turbines are outlawed on such islands to keep the diesel genset in business. Heck, you can’t just have people making their own electricity, now can you? (captive audience) But the problem with that “remote island” excuse is your professor-crackpot wind energy contraption, if allowed, still has to compete with regular wind turbines and solar panels. What the neophyte true-believer wannabe-energy-breakthrough-developer imagines is the island is SO tired of paying for diesel, they will accept anything, no matter how useless and absurd, how unreliable, or how overpriced the resulting power. The idea is the islanders are so remote they don’t know about regular wind turbines. Aha! A sucker to buy my crapola! But really, the question of whether your wind energy “solution” is better than the status quo never goes away.
Similar to the “disaster-relief” meme, (which seems to be falling by the wayside lately BTW) which pretends there are no competing options for providing power if disaster strikes. Pretending that their “shipping-container” “solution” exists in a vacuum, that there would be no other options. Cuz a diesel genset in a shipping container doesn’t exist, right? Dream on comrades!