Well Pierre, good guess, but again, this has also been discussed in this forum before. I’m talking about a major factor that I’ve see little, if any, recognition or appreciation of, from the kite-reelers.
If this mysterious major factor really existed, we would have already talked about it, including you.
Oh, OK Pierre. Sure. Whatever you say. I should have mentioned, this factor also applies to Makani.
The reason I was initially excited about AWE forums, 15 years ago, was my experience with a real wind energy group preceding the AWE hype, populated by at least a certain percentage of actual knowledgeable people. In that group, when wind veterans chimed in, people, including me, listened and learned.
The results of that group live on to this day, with the participants still providing a vast knowledge base of such basic concepts as how the amount of copper in a given generator design determines continuous output capacity. Unfortunately, that wind energy group expired when the platform for such groups was discontinued, probably as part of the overall effort to squelch the ability of people to actually express themselves on the internet.
What I found appalling from the first High Altitude Wind Energy conference in 2009, was the extreme lack of even the most basic knowledge afflicting most participants, and the fact that, in spite of their level of ignorance, the people were so confident of their abilities, and derogatory toward real wind energy.
I remember pointing out to one of the most irritating people associated with the old forum, already a few years into his ignorant tirades, that he was “a newbie”. He protested that somehow his newbie status was something I could solve. Since that time, he has had enough time to earn a couple of PhD degrees in wind energy (if such a degree exists), yet is still spewing the same sort of complete, laughable nonsense.
The idea that I have ANY knowledge of wind energy, of blades, of generators, of really anything relevant, makes me a “super”-anything, is just an excuse to remain ignorant. As though knowing nothing about wind energy, and resisting any information offered, is a path to success in wind energy.
At some point, it becomes apparent that this forum, maybe worse than the last one, is populated by, at this point, a very few stragglers, who just want to spew their ignorance online somewhere, and the very idea of anyone knowing even the most basic requisite concepts in wind energy is seen as something to protest, to fight against, and to deny, castigating and censoring anyone who actually has a grasp of any reality in wind energy. So it becomes increasingly apparent that I am wasting my time here, wallowing in a sea of ignorance.
It looks like you just described this major factor.
Note that the vast majority of AWE researchers are in the aerospace field, and not in the traditional wind energy field.
Myself, as a hobbyist, I am trying to see what it is possible to do, trying to get you to talk to glean some information about wind power.
And I think that we come up against something irreconcilable: traditional wind power must be heavy, while AWES must be light, as for example are reeling-kites, which, as we see, do not have the efficiency of traditional wind power.
Can you, on another topic, outline solutions?
Huh? I did? Oh. I had no idea. Anyway, no thanks. I’ve wasted enough time and energy here. 
I don’t think anyone who can’t understand how motor size relates to power capacity is involved in any engineering field. Most researchers are not participating in these forums.
OK here’s a joke for you:
Question: “How many AWE researchers does it take to have nothing running on a regular basis after 15 years?”
Answer: “All of them.”
Gotta go – seeya!
"Autonomous Airborne Wind Energy systems: accomplishments and challenges" , figure 15, reports an average value of 92 kW with a wind speed of 12 m/s, “during flight tests at the SkySails Power site in northern Germany in Spring 2021”
It is a good result, perhaps the best value for a tested AWES. But now it’s been almost three years and we don’t see what is next. This is not a good sign for the kite-reeling story which could end there, despite and perhaps because of favorable results.
In fact this could indicate that the mode of operation is too problematic, and for reasons which have been mentioned: discontinuity, probable rapid wear, management of the two phases…
I think you should not put too much in it. Other than, if they had further progressed you would know
You will never get the confirmation that reeling cant be done. Because it can hardly be proven that it is not doable.
The only thing left for you is at what stage you decide you dont think it is doable… if that time is now, you were more optimistic than most. Though some of us still think its possible
Seems a proven fact that it is “possible”. What’s missing is any indication it’s worth bothering with. We don’t know what the problems are stopping it from being used on a regular basis. Quite often, even bad wind energy designs operate for at least some time before failing. With the kite-reeling, beyond the press-releases and claims of future success, there just seems to be a vacuum of information around which to even form an opinion.
After a while, the vacuum of information eventually becomes an information.
I think this just reflects your need to get timely information. In fact the information may or may not become available in the future. Your waiting is not important.
It could be important for individual companies involved. And the success of these companies may affect the progress of the field altogether.
But I do feel like you are standing in the 80s killing the electric car, because it is not commercially available in 1985 after being promised by someone by 1982.
2 Likes
Hi Tallak:
I don’t really even understand what you mean by most of what you wrote. My waiting is not important? to whom? We’ve ALL been waiting, for a decade, and nothing ever seems to change.
It looks, to me, like an unfocused attempt at some sort of accusatory personal attack on me for noticing that one more alternative wind energy scheme doesn’t show any evidence of panning out. It seems like one more example of a well-worn typical desperate last gasp attempt to slightly change the subject, called “shoot the messenger”. Oh well.
Well said, Pierre. That sums up what I’ve been thinking for several years now. Sometimes it’s not what people say, so much as what they don’t say, that carries the most meaning. We all know how eager any team is to publicize any positive developments. So the saying “No news is good news” has an opposite twin aspect - in many cases “No news is bad news”.
Woops - I just noticed it would have been more like a personal attack on Pierre than me.
Sorry about that. Anyway, we’ve been wondering this same thing about kite-reeling since long before this new AWE forum. So it’s not a new, or even recent theme, but one of the oldest questions in AWE.
Not meant to single anyone out, and certainly not meant to influence anyone or group who knows they are onto something good, but just isn’t publicizing it yet. I did say recently I like the airplane of the effort you are involved with - I always forget which name applies to which effort, but it looked like a nice plane.
Not a personal attack. Just observing that you seem keen to take the call that «by now reeling AWE is proven to not happen». And that point may come, but its a highly individual and subjective.
You can decide any time you like, the world will keep turning all the same
1980 is also the date of the seminal crosswind AWE publication:
An extract page 106 (first page of the document):
A kite’s aerodynamic surface converts wind energy into motion of the kite. This motion may be converted into useful power by driving turbines on the kite or by pulling a load on the ground.
Kite-reeling and flygen are discussed and tested since 1980 at least, as crosswind kites. Almost 44 years later, what is on the market or close to being?
1 Like
Wow, that was way back during “Global Cooling”, the last time we had decent music on the radio. I think I’m going to flip on my guitar amp and play along to some “Poison”, as the sun comes up here in Southern California!
1 Like
Though when reading this paper, the problem has been fleshed out a lot since then