The target height I think was something like 500 meters. At that height the cone will be quite narrow. And yes, you’d still have side forces, less if you choose your tracks based on the weather prediction, but now also probably a heavier and a slower moving cart.
You’d need to account for side forces, and obstacles, on both sides I think.
Syroco and sailing boats would disagree. Although I do wonder how that changes when you start constant regenerative braking.
Erroneous statements that I had to correct were made, starting with the belief that the wagons should go at a high speed (40-50 m/s), which is contradicted by all the documents (including one from KiteGen that I quoted, 5 m/s) and videos (one of which I linked), both for KiteGen and X-Wind carousels.
The latest erroneous statement is that “Syroco and sailing boats would disagree” that the “traction is stronger” by going downwind (what I wrote), “the kite flying crosswind by figure-eight in the middle of the flight window, so in the more powerful zone” (what I wrote).
The traction force should not be confused with the speed of the boat. Furthermore, the downwind configuration with a crosswind kite (which greatly increases the swept area) is not the same as that of a conventional sailboat, which uses only the drag of the sail, possibly increasing the area with a spinnaker.
As sailors know, the crosswind is the fastest, and notably faster than the downwind. This is true for classic sailboats because the sail also uses lift. This is also true for kite-surfing and Syroco, as going downwind with a crosswind kite would lead to chaotic sailing with large jumps, and not to speed records.
Please refer to the comment I quoted about Beyond the sea.
So of course only a proper design and calculation will reveal whick wagon speed is optimal.
But as we are speaking from our «hunches» here, sailboats produce more power (fastest speed in the water, all power produced counteracts hull drag) when sailing crosswind at high speed. Also kitesurfing, its very hard to get a fast and stable sailing directly downwind. This was very similar to the wagon travelling directly downwind.
Why would you travel very slow (1/3 windspeed) and generate a large braking force on the wagon, facing friction problems on the rails and so on, when you could travel slightly faster and get smoother power outpu? Also wheeled wagons dont face the exponentional drag penalty a ship faces.
All leading to a benefit of travelling faster.
The minimum viable wagon speed would be 1/3 wind speed travelling directly downwind. But then maybe speed up a lot going upwind? The maximum wagon speed would be travelling the kite’s L/D ratio times windspeed, then slowed down by power harvesting to 2/3 of that speed.
There is no doubt in which end I would start my design
A direct conversion (kites driving the carousel by a same angular speed) would be more achievable if the carousel and the kite loop trajectory are parallel, as for The Pyramid, leading to a tilted carousel.
The X-Wind and KiteGen horizontal carousels face zero or low power zones during rotation. These zones are more or less reduced when kites realize several figure-eight during the rotation, leading to a slow wagon motion.
I don’t know how easy it would be to turn a standard rail and sleeper to a supersized radial flux generator.
Then there technically no limit to the size potential?
Also?
as possible track layout? It don’t need to be all that tall? Can be just 1m so providing a low optical profile with mine environment impact?
Basically the sleeper would double as coils? It might be possible to repurpose a only shunting yard for this job?
Healey mills is one such site? There uses to shunting yard all over Britain? Though I’d struggle to know where to start in acquiring one? There bound to be a few yet undeveloped sites? The really good thing about this design is scaling. @ Doug selsam was wondering how to deal with over speed? This might be one way? Make it really big? Bigger than any known generator today? You guys were thinking about kw/mw. Really if you found a place big enough then who knows? What would happen? Three gorges dam energy production capacity might just be exceeded?
