That’s what they always say: Altaeros in remote Alaska, Makani in Hawaii, Skysails in Mauritius. I have a different reason they always deploy in remote places: so nobody can find out how bad they are working. I remember finally calling the newspaper in Alaska that had broken the story, to find out how the Altaeros was indeed doing in their famous grid-tie deployment to help power a remote community, where it was expensive to get diesel. Sound familiar yet? Yes because they all sound the same. Someone like me, with JUST A LITTLE experience with wind energy (knowing how you need to be careful what direction you park your car in a windfarm, lest the doors be blown off, and to keep your mouth closed lest you get gravel and sand in your teeth) could plainly see the “flying donut” was “not ready for prime time” - flimsy and frail, I could see it would not withstand even a decent wind, let alone a strong wind. Anyway, while we on the AWE internet were congratulating ourselves on the “fact” that Alaska now had a working AWE system, the actual newspaper in the actual town where it was supposedly happening did not even remember publishing the story and had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about it. Make a call or two to Mauritius and you will probably find the same result.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, every new person to wind energy, when confronted with the need for overspeed protection, has the same answer: “We’ll just shut it down if strong winds are forecast!” The problems with that approach are:
- If that worked, windfarms would already be doing it. And in a sense they are because they can pitch the blades and even park the blades, and turn the machine sideways, if needed, but normally they just pitch the blades appropriately to keep the turbine properly loaded.
- Strong winds are when you make the most power, so you don’t want the system shut down unless it really is a hurricane. The problem is, when strong winds are forecast, if the winds get just a little stronger than forecast, a system with no overspeed protection will be damaged or destroyed.
But that is just common sense in wind energy. AWE people don’t know anything about common sense in wind energy. They just know they “have the answer” and someday the world will see that, maybe “next year”, just not "this week.
You know I think I’ve reached my saturation point with these typical newbie talking points. You all sound exactly the same. All the “big” (destined to fail) AWE people with their delusional group-selfies and bankruptcies use that same talking point. I’ve just never heard anything so ridiculous. As though you have a system that is completely useless in normal life, and you are then going to burden a disaster relief effort to try to inject your worthless contraption in the middle of a disaster instead of just shipping in a diesel generator with enough fuel to last a few days. Sure, you really want to be waiting for some wind to pick up in a place that has no wind anyway, while disaster victims wait for medical attention and freezing people try to get warm - sure.
It is just one more variation on global warming derangement syndrome, where everything must fall into some politically-correct scenario, nevermind if it is the least bit realistic. Imagine a big mudslide in, say, Guatemala. You have a kite energy system that nobody has any use for, until the mudslide. "Hey this is great - those people are so desperate they will accept anything! They have no choice! Forget sending a shipping container with a MegaWatt diesel genset that can reliably operate 24/7, we’ll send our “100 kW” kite energy system and then watch the news converage lamenting how many people died because there was no wind in Guatemala, or the kite crashed, or the trees were in the way of launching it, or the crew didn;t know how to operate it, or… whatever.
This is the reason why AWE has had no success. Honestly, it is just becuase the people are so stupid. Tired of sugar-coating it. I can;t spend any more of my time trying to talk any sense into wannabe AWE newbies. I am done. Gotta stop participating in these forums. More than a decade later, and people are still saying the same stupid shit. We are not one step closer to developing AWE than we were on day-1 when the original overenthusiastic crop of newbie delusional wannabe-“experts” (now retired with zero results) were making the same errors at the first High Altitude Wind Energy conference in Chico, California in, what was it, 2009?
I have got to stop posting and respondi9ng to posts. It leads nowhere. AWE is the future of wind energy “and always will be”. As long as these discussions are all it has. OK gotta go. Skiing. Seeya! 