Notes index

March 2010 notes by members

 

TU Delft Course

In the news by author Harry Valentine.   December 2009.
Evolving Trends in Wind Power      
(mentions AWECS)
 

Cat I & 2 sUAS AWE Training (Kite Pilot School)

David D. Lang
Dave Lang on year 2002 provisional patent: Avoid spacebar; password in lowercase: awe     

Colin Bruce Jack found and in contact with AWEIA. 1992 PCT patent:  Free Rotor
Are AWECS players at table with blimpies, aerostaties, kytoonies?

  • Study clip from PDF document: http://media.umassp.edu/mattcenter/cce-2009/CCE09_Notebook.pdf

    The 5th Conference on Clean Energy:

    Financing & Partnering for Emerging Businesses

    110 Startup Companies

    Highest Wind LLC

    Presented by:

    Dimitri Cherny, CEO and Founder

    Company Overview

    Highest Wind Energy Gliders™ harvest the winds a thousand feet

    above the ground – blowing two to three times faster than near the

    ground. These stronger and steadier winds make Energy Gliders™

    cost-effective in the low-wind locations where wind turbines are not –

    more than half our planet. Wind resource maps reveal that less than

    15% of our planet has average near-ground wind speeds adequate for

    producing electrical power cost-effectively. Wind turbines are limited to

    harvesting near-ground winds by the height of their towers – a few hundred

    feet at most – making them cost-effective on only a small fraction

    of our planet. Energy Gliders™ are cost-effective for at least three times more locations on earth.

    Highest Wind Energy Gliders™ produce more than $13,000 worth of electricity annually (130,000+ kWh at

    $0.10/kWh). Designed for the largest 200,000 farms in the 45 US states with winds too low for wind turbines,

    Energy Gliders™ provide a payback in less than seven years with average 30 foot winds of just 8mph. Renewable

    energy incentive programs in our target states reduce that payback to less than three years. For

    farms throughout the US, the USDA’s REAP program reduces payback by at least two more years making

    Energy Glider purchases possible in some states with no cash out-of-pocket – and $13,000+/year of ‘free’

    electricity every year thereafter.

    Product/Technology Profile

    Similar to a child’s kite, patent pending Energy Gliders™ fly - rising and descending - a thousand feet above

    the ground (but below FAA controlled airspace) pulling a high-strength tether to spin a generator on the

    ground. Energy Glider systems run continuously and automatically to provide a capacity factor of greater

    than 50% at a levelized cost of energy of less than five cents per kWh – nearly as low as the largest utilityscale

    wind turbines and many times lower than the best and lowest cost solar PV systems. Our first 30kW

    production unit will produce more than 130,000 kWh at sites with avg. 30ft. winds of just 8mph for a lifetime of

    30 years, providing more than half the electricity needs of the average US farm. With an operational requirement

    of more than 160 acres of land, NIMBY is a minimal concern.

    Officers and Directors

    Dimitri Cherny, CEO & Founder

    Ursula Schwuttke, CBPO

    Diane Bourque, CFO

    Contact Information

    117 Cushing Road

    Newmarket, NH 03857

    603.969.4667

    dimitri@highestwind.com

    www.highestwind.com

    November 12 & 13, 2009

    Hynes Convention Center ∙ Boston, MA

    Startup Companies 111

    Markets and Applications

    Our Initial market is the 200,000 largest farms in the 45 US states with winds too low to make wind turbines

    cost effective - a $14B market. Early marketing and dealer efforts are focused on the top seven states with

    the best combination of high electricity prices, suitable winds, and the best renewable energy incentive programs.

    Initial marketing efforts are specifically targeting the largest dairy farms in those states. While they

    comprise only a $290M market, with the current unsustainable market price for milk, they are eager for any

    product that can reduce their costs and/or provide an additional revenue source. Our market research has

    yet to find a dairy farm unwilling to purchase an Energy Glider.

    Commercial Opportunity

    Energy Gliders™ will be sold through existing networks of regional dealers currently selling agricultural or energy

    generation equipment, all with established relationships among our most likely prospects – farms. From

    a ‘self-marketing’ perspective, Energy Gliders™ are nearly perfect – visible from miles around, we anticipate

    considerable word-of-mouth marketing spreading virally from each successful installation. Our marketing efforts

    will be primarily ‘product-marketing’, helping our dealers identify and sell to our most likely prospects in

    a variety of farming verticals. Broad marketing will be mostly PR-based – riding the ‘Green’ wave.

    Competitive Advantage

    Highest Wind has discovered a “blue-ocean” market – wind power for low-wind locations – that is currently

    unfulfilled by any other products. Wind turbines provide payback periods of longer than a decade in these

    low-wind areas. Solar PV have even longer paybacks. Anaerobic digesters have an entry price fifteen times

    higher. For any type of farm seeking distributed renewable energy, nothing else works in as many locations

    so cost-effectively. Four other companies are publicly developing related Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) technology

    but all are targeting utility scale applications – 1Mw or greater. No other AWE developers are designing

    distributed renewable energy generation systems to serve the agricultural market.

    Future Financial Plans

    Our past year of research has been supported primarily by more than $100k of investment from friends. Our

    next two years of development and certification testing will be supported by the $5M in series-A investment

    we now seek. That money will allow us to build the channel, marketing and service organization we require

    before shipping the first production Energy Glider units by Q3-2011. Highest Wind LLC will remain a design,

    marketing, sales and service organization – our management team’s strengths. We are outsourcing engineering

    and eventually manufacturing to our highly qualified partner organizations - Goss International and

    EOS Research.

 

Study clip from: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Conversations/specialfeature.aspx?ID=53

What About Wind?

Posted 01/23/2010

Energy sources that provide power without producing CO2 are critical to addressing the challenge of global warming. The book Sustainable Energy – without the hot air prompted Bill to ask climate researcher Ken Caldeira what the prospects are for generating power from wind in the upper atmosphere.

Conversation

Bill

I just finished David MacKay’s Sustainable Energy – without the hot air.

He talks about every renewable form of energy I know of except for high wind.

He does a really good job of looking at the potential size of contributions from different things like geothermal and others.

I wonder if he didn’t include high wind because it is viewed as so difficult and unlikely to work or if the contribution potential is so small.

I remember you mentioned some start-ups in the high wind area.

I wonder if there has been any progress in their work.

I guess it is the physics of getting the kites to stay up even in storms and low wind combined with the problem of bringing the power down that is hard.

Ken Caldeira

I have spoken with several people in several companies and they all seem to think different things are the main impediment.

My understanding is that one of the big impediments is tether mass, and there are big tradeoffs with mass of the conductor and insulation versus how high up you can go. It might be that we would require something nearly magical to make such systems really work economically.

(Everything else you mention is also a concern.)

I would say that this is one area in which the size of the investment compared to the size of potential return is tiny, especially when compared with investments such as fusion power.

We recently did a study on steadiness and availability of high altitude winds. The conclusion is that there is a huge amount of power available but that it still is too unsteady to provide base load power without continental (or global?) scale distribution systems, back-up power, or unbelievable amounts of storage.

The other thing we should recall is that if we were to meet future power demand by this source exclusively, we must intercept more than 1% of natural flows. I think when we get above a 1% change in a natural system, we need to be concerned about large scale unintended consequences. Remember, global warming is basically a 1% problem – 1% warming of our 288 K planetary temperature. (That is one reason why solar is so attractive – with solar we are talking about capturing 0.01 % of the energy that hits the ground.)    END OF CLIP FROM http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Conversations/specialfeature.aspx?ID=53

 

 


 

4894554
4073516 Filed: June 6, 1975 by Alberto Kling of Percha, Germany. Wind-driven Power Plant
4486669
4470563
4217501
4450364 Lighter than air wind energy conversion system utilizing a rotating envelope by William R. Benoit of New Hampshire, USA
1717552 Airship. Makes electricity for use on board and for propulsion.

Filed: May 8, 1978 Wind energy conversion device by Endel Are of Florida, USA instructs a two-rotor system where one rotor is clockwise for generator rotor driving and the other anticlockwise for drive the generator stator in order to obtain an effective generator speed that is twice the rpm of either blade. How to "AWEify" this?


1498978 Filed Nov. 10, 1921 :


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Some AutoGyro Kites

 

Application number: 12/505,308
Publication number: US 2010/0013236 A1
Filing date: Jul 17, 2009

TETHER HANDLING FOR AIRBORNE ELECTRICITY GENERATORS

 Joseph A. Carroll

Assigned to BaseLoad Energy
KiteGen begins site construction for non-mobile KiteGen Stem operations.   This is key news for AWECS community.

 
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/204/6/1167.pdf          Body drag of birds.    Nine pages

 
Body drag of kites
Land tug to charge cars' batteries, etc. See group forum    M1321 f    ,     M1329 f       Followup studies are welcome.

 
Another pay-per-view, but its 2004 Japanese AWE, KyotoU again

High altitude wind power generation system by means of a flying kite
Accession number:   05A0121887
Title;High altitude wind power generation system by means of a flying kite
Author: HORIGUCHI SEIJI (Kyoto Univ., JPN) OGAWA KIN'YA (Kyoto Univ., JPN)
Journal Title; Nippon Kikai Gakkai Kankyo Kogaku Sogo Shinpojiumu Koen Ronbunshu

Journal Code: L1194A

ISSN: ____________________

Vol.14.     Pages: 391-393 (2004)
Figure&Table&Reference; FIG.5, REF.3
Pub. Country; Japan
Language: Japanese
Abstract; If a wind power generator could be held to a high altitude in strong wind, a significant amount of natural energy would be utilized. In the present paper, we have proposed a high altitude wind power generation system using a flying kite and have adapted the link model for a kite string to represent its flexibility and large deflections. Two dimensional equilibrium equations for the system are numerically solved. It is found that a single-kite system is not satisfied for its low altitude, while the system is improved by using an auxiliary kite and the newly developed two-kite system will provide sufficient amount of energy. (author abst.)
Also the Chinese maker of the Hummer wind turbine line posted an AWE piece on its website    WHERE?
KitekEnergyList was sent on March 19, 2010, a short note to 105 receivers:
News Release
Commerce notices may be posted in a new folder:
http://energykitesystems.net/CommercialNotices/index.html
Lift to you and yours,
JoeF

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Invite others to this occasional list. Notes@EnergyKiteSystems.net
http://www.google.com/patents?id=mY86AAAAEBAJ

 
  • solar-kite, solarKite, SolarKite   SolarKites that are robust in solar-converting surfaces; some need orientation to the sun; other SolarKites convert light from any direction while kite remains oriented to the wind. Energy from the solar conversion aloft may be used aloft for on-board electronics while tether dynamics drive ground generators. Stratospheric SolarKites obtain radiation from unclouded sun and radiation from reflection off lower cloud tops.
  • see caption 

 
March 19, 2010

My hometown, Austin, Texas, has a progressive electrical utility (Austin Energy) which leads all US cities in wind-energy adoption. Texas as a state is now number one in wind and has a unique stand-alone regional grid. City and state intend to lead the world in smart-grid development. In Austin the Pecan Commons is the technology group developing smart-grid technology. Today I presented an overview of kite-energy to the core smart-grid group at the Tech Ranch Austin & they fell in love with it. As a prototype smart grid is developed in Austin, kite energy is proposed as part of the research mix. An abandoned airport (Robert Mueller Municipal Airport) owned by the city near downtown is suitable for a utility-scale low altitude (~500 ft) pioneering AWE project. Local projects are being organized to qualify for federal green-energy research stimulus funds. Stay tuned![   ]             ds 

Sun Catalytix, MIT research Bob Nocera’s company. Nocera invented a catalyst for electrolysis allowing the production of hydrogen from water vastly less expensive than other methods.
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/kite-energy   March 20, 2010
Correction [ ] [ ] [ ]

2010 March 1-3: Three HAWP companies had booths at ARPA-E Technology Showcase, Gaylord Convention Center, Washington, DC. Investment and showcasing by HAWP entities: Joby Energy, Sky Windpower, Makani Power directed visitors to each other's booths.
otter board, (sometimes found in compound as otterboard). Otterboard is a type of paravane or water kite used in pairs to spread the mouth of fishing nets or torpedo guards or the like.
  Consider spreading as a tactic in some AWECS.  Consider oscillated spreading.    Commentary is welcome:  Notes@EnergyKiteSystems.net
Spread of two coupled kites pulls center of central bridged-held line; bring the coupled kites toward each other to release downwardly the center of central bridged-held line; the central-bridge-held line pulls and releases in cycles to drive sprag-clutched  ground gen. The working line could be springed tensed or worked from another third spreading kite that is timed rightly. This method has not been demonstrated yet.  Inspiration came from looking upside down at a working paravane scene of couple kites and considering the work being done on the object that bridges or couples the two spreading paravanes. The object tensed by the spreading action can be many things like a fish net or ... a line to a buoy that gets pulled down; at relaxation of the spread action, the buoy gets let back up; such action could drive a generator on that central buoyed line; the buoyancy acts as a spring return of the buoy with tautness maintained. Well, and AWECS family of scenes may be designed with this outline as a skeleton of the method.   JpF March 2010.     M1389   M1392
Allister Furey   +> More