Hey Dave S.

I still say if someone has an improved sail, apply it to boats dedicated to sailing.

The answer was found 2000 years ago,

It involves balancing one kite with at least one other to form a rotor.

Of course then as speed increases the cloth is no longer needed.

the way you get the rotation to a generator isk nown as a driveshaft.

Stop trying to reinvent the wheel and start building.

Bob

This idea is very old - a lattice of small wind turbines.

And I think it might be a good idea, but people only talk about it and patent it but never actually build it.

Of course a generator can push a teeny bit of the air around it into the rotor, although that effect is so small as to be mostly ignored.  Now you start talking about specifying pancake generators which use 5 times the material for the same power, 3-D printing these material-intensive generators etc.

I do not know why nobody has built the net-type arrays you mention.

I don't see any flaws in the basic idea.

It probably comes down to laziness.

I think the most turbines I've seen mounted side-by-side is two farm water-pumpers or Aerovironment's failed rooftop parapet-mounted "press-release-breakthrough" concept that fizzled out a couple years ago when it was noticed that (sigh) it produced almost no net power, and cost a LOT.

(Ask yourself if companies like Aerovironment, Honeywell, and NASA are baffled by wind energy and make all the classic mistakes, what chance do YOU really have???

BUT

If you want to develop turbines with pancake generators, that is a different topic.

In fact, since they would be heavier than radial flux generators, pancake generators would NOT be a good choice for airborne.  but they sound good for professor Crackpot because they add unnecessary complexity and cost which can exp0lain away the eventual failure.  the professor needs to make sure every experiment has an Achilles heel to insure failure!

And 3-D printing generators - sure go ahead - once again a different topic.  now you can wait while that gets developed, right?

Can you see how easy it is to start with something sensible, hang a bunch of turbines using a net, then IMMEDIATELY deviate off into Professor Crackpot territory?

You start with a completely sensible idea but instantly SABOTAGE it!

The SMART approach would be to use PROVEN models of small wind turbine.

(Well there are hardly any of those anyway so good luck there...)

The next thing would be to USE them and BUILD what you say, but THAT would require WORK.

So what do you do?

Sabotage your own idea.

Provide reasons why you CAN'T build it.

Whew!  Gosh that excuse of 3-D printing came along just in time!

Otherwise you might have to start shopping for turbines!

Now you can just go back to the all-talk format and lament the lack of 3-D printing of axial-flux alternators.

Nice one.

:)

Dave S. Perhaps the best use of Cryogenics in AWE would be to freeze your brain to reduce the amount of nonsense we are expected to swallow on a daily basis.  I just received another laughing, debunking e-mail from an actual (knowledgeable) wind energy person (as opposed to the ignorant throngs including yourself, with no internal gatekeeper or standards, who will champion any idea as long as it is a bad idea that makes no sense).  It includes a link to a video that looks really stupid.  The idea is a tilting plate, powering pistons - a multiple "push-me-pull-you" design - right up your alley!  reciprocating motion like the reeling kite-pullers pursue.  This one would be called a "short-stroke" machine, I guess.  It's a (even) less-effective version of the old "wall of pistons" idiot idea that will never come close to working, but that doesn;t stop the mental-midget promoters from claiming to beat Betz like all the rest of the complete morons to which wind energy is such a magnet.   Here's the text for your enjoyment. 

"another betz breaking wonder

http://www.saphonenergy.com/si te/en/how-does-it-work.59.html

god only knows where these guys come from??"

Harry:

I've been in Palm Springs when all turbines were operating during a windspeed at hub height of 70 mph.

Often when you see many turbines not running, it's because the power is not needed, at that moment, by the grid.  It has nothing to do with the turbines per se, and I'm not sure what kind of "bypass" would have anything to do with it, but as they say, "good luck with that"!

:)

OK Dave, here's one of your fellow "It works this way because we say so" explanations for their reciprocating system that they explain can net TWICE the energy of a conventional system (which already can net 59% so they are pushing over 100% wind energy capture.  Notice the Professor Crackpot symptoms:

1) 100% solidity

2) reciprocating motion

3) using pistons for power transfer

4) adding a hydraulic or pneumatic system between the motion and the generator

5) Claims of output exceeding Betz...

Geez it's starting to sound like a contraption for Dave S. to defend!

"Where do these people come from???" :)))

You probably think the excerpted explanation of how it works makes perfect sense, so here you go, some great reading material for you.  It abuses a couple scientific terms so you know it must be true!  From the Saphonin website:

Guido,

Congratulations for you and your team for the beautiful organization of AWEC2013 and for your kindness and efficiency.

Among highlights: the Conference itself of course, but also the successful demonstrations of some AWES (Enerkite,SkySails,FlygenKite (me),Roddy and others) at the Tempelhofer Park which would become a main location for AWE.

Best flights,

Pierre Benhaïem

Joe

As a witness to the seldom-seen phenomenon of "Angel Hair" falling from the sky I am onboard with balloon spiders migrating by floating silk strands.  Was this ever in question by anyone, anywhere?  One more time you try and change the subject.  I'm beginning to lose faith in all you guys.  I thought you were a genius but you are sounding more and more just "out to lunch" with every new post.  It is interesting to read your statement that "Kiteboarding is sailing with kite power".  OMG I bother to stop and read that?

Is that some new revelation?  Could anyone argue with that statement?  I mean why state the obvious over and over?  There's no new information in your post.  I'm trying to figure out what you're really saying.  Sounds like the same old clap-trap:  Kites can pull things through water, you COULD add a propeller and generator, power whatever, blah blah blah.  (if you weren;t busy all day on the internet) 

I'd reply with this:

If you guys think windsurfing is Airborne Wind Energy in the sense intended here, why not follow through and start covering windsurfing as a serious topic here?  There must be windsurfing news every day, right? 

It seems like you guys just pull this stuff out of your butts when confronted with the fact that nobody is generating a single useful Watt using airborne wind energy and the fact that there is no reason this should be so, except none of us are actually doing anything about it, but instead we sit here on the internet arguing about word definitions.  Oh and all the well-funded teams insist on pursuing misguided efforts that lead nowhere but pulling kite strings.  Wow a kite can pull.  yeah I think I might have noticed that at 5 years old.  We're supposed to get smarter as we get older not stuck at a 5-year-old's mentality for life.

"Well Doug you are so wrong because technically-speaking, this-or-that mundane and long-known activity COULD be SAID to be a FORM of airborne wind energy."

Hay you're not grasping a straws or anything are you?

Wow we have ANOTHER Einstein - an Einstein a day keeps any progress away!

My response is "Great, according to you, airborne wind energy is a mature art, practiced for thousands of years, so why keep talking about it as though it's new or even interesting?"  Is not a spinnaker a flying sail?  Why don't you guys devote a lot of time discussing spinnakers?  I mean, technically-speaking, they COULD be SAID to be AWE, right?  And isn't that all that seems to matter according to your posts?  Words?  Isn;t that all we're talking about here, empty words masquerading as progress?

I've got a couple more GREAT EXCUSES for you guys:

1) Existing sailplanes already practice airborne wind energy - they use the energy of the wind in the sky to glide around.

2) Flying kites IS airborne wind energy since it takes energy to keep a kite aloft and that energy is provided by the wind and it takes place supported by the air.

So there you go - all we have to do is keep redefining words and we can find more and more instances of AWE being thousands of years old.  I guess  we don;t need to build anything since AWE is such an old ann established art by our ever-evolving suite of new word definitions.  Are you guys sure you don;t work for the government?  I mean this is getting pretty illogical.  Word definitions - maybe you should work on writing dictionaries instead of pursuing scientific progress and new engineering.

My further response is if someone is going to do wind energy in the sky it will need to go beyond arguing about word definitions to try and qualify simple boring 1000-year-old activities as the sought-after breakthrough.

Scientists challenge economics of storing renewable energy

True or false: solar and wind power are freely available and clean, and thus should always be stored when they generate more energy than the grid can use? It's easy to assume that renewable energy should never be turned off, but scientists at Stanford have done the math to find the break-even point where storing energy is better than "wasting," or curtailing, that energy, and their findings aren't necessarily as you'd think.

Though curtailing energy production results in an immediate energy loss, avoiding that loss through energy storage also requires an investment of energy, either through manufacturing batteries or building infrastructure. However, not all storage is the same, nor are the energy demands of creating wind and solar farms equivalent. By expressing all the energy in equivalent terms, the team could compare the return of energy garnered from solar and wind with the energy stored in batteries, per unit of energy required to build either (expressed as EROI for return of energy, and ESOI for the storage of energy).

Because solar panels are more energetically expensive to produce than wind turbines, the EROI values differ by a factor of ten. When looking at various types of batteries, even more efficient flow batteries, all had much lower ESOI values than the geologic energy storage methods studied, which were compressed air energy storage and pumped hydroelectric storage.

Factoring in these differences, the study's results show it’s currently always a better option to store solar energy because of the high energetic cost to recoup. However, the only storage options that are always better than curtailment of wind are geologic methods, with battery storage becoming better than curtailment depending on the fraction of energy being used in the grid instead of being stored or curtailed. In the graph below, you can read the ϕ in the bottom axis as representing that fraction. At the far right, if 100 percent of the energy is being curtailed or stored (i.e., none is going to the grid), then storing it is just barely a better option with any battery type. But at other rates it depends on the battery type.

It seems counter-intuitive that wind energy should be so cheap yet benefit in most cases from curtailment. But Michael Dale, one of the co-authors of the study, compared it to storing valuables in a safe. "You wouldn't spend $100 on a safe to store a $10 watch," he writes. In some situations it may even be preferable, in terms of energy expenditure, to build a new wind turbine rather than build storage for existing turbines.

The authors also make it plain that they’re condensing the question down to comparing one variable: the energetic trade-offs involved. But relying on economics alone avoids these considerations, and can even turn so-called green energy into the opposite. The authors calculated how much the life cycle of batteries would need to improve before becoming a viable option for wind – by a factor of two to 20, depending on the type of battery. But more importantly they also encourage the development of technologies that can use the otherwise curtailed energy in applications that aren’t harmed by being intermittent, such as systems to pump or purify water.

Sources: Stanford University, Royal Society of Chemistry

Dave S. I would get out there and fly that kite lifting a turbine.

Don't worry about "flyoffs" and "conferences"

You are already AT a conference.  A WORLD conference.  On the web.  It never shuts down.

The internet makes physical conferences irrelevant.

I noticed years ago that if I was at an AWEA conference, the main result was I couldn't get anything done.

Running around renting cars and booking hotel rooms is not always a productive activity.

You have everything you need to do AWE.

Don;t waste your time turning it into a mere social thing.

So what you travel across the world to see a bunch of lame-ass wannabe's tell you all the stupid ways they can fail at Airborne Wind Energy?  What's the point?  Either there is something there or not.  If you can do it, do it.  Stop worrying about everyone else's little details of their failures - what does it matter?

Why feel "left out" when being left out of failure is to your advantage?   Failure is failure - why let instances of failure make you feel left out for not wasting a bunch of time and money traveling all over hell's half-acre when you could be in your own domain making at least some progress?  I want to hear how much power you are making when you lift that turbine.

:)

Doug S.

Hi DaveS,

To consider abstract and the poster as an introduction to evaluation of land and space used.On the poster there is also a comparison between four conventional wind turbines and four ("common sense" if you want) crosswind AWES (like Windlift, FlygenKite,Kitenergy etc.). Due to the length of the tether the difference is huge for one unity,important for four unities,lesser with more unities were the length of tethers of only external unities must be added. But another problem for crosswind AWES I mention in the poster is "needed large figures of kites". "Dense AWES array architectures (to precise modus operanti) could have a better maximization of space for this point,but not concerning the tether (at least for large farms).

PierreB 

Notice the pumped hydro storage in this article has been in operation since 1962, yet people still want to talk about it like it's a new idea, always injecting their "opinions" etc.  My first question is, if utilities have used this for over 50 years, why would armchair inventors think their opinion is even relevant, let alone wanted?

Next, if you are going to do airborne wind energy, why fixate on a separate topic, let alone a separate topic that's 50 years old?  It's as though the airborne wind energy enthusiasts cannot stay focused for even a microsecond on their supposedly-chosen field, but are instantly attracted to any shiny object that happens to fall within their glance.  Sure, you can't generate an airborne Watt to save your life, so instead of trying to generate even that single Watt, you deviate to pretending you're making so much power that the grid can't even use it all and you have to store it.  Sure.  Get real.  If you stand for nothing you will fall for anything.

:)

Visitors, 

     To see the attachment Gabor mentions, 

be sure to be signed into the forum online, else the attachment might not be reachable. 

awec2013_poster_v7_Dobos.pdf 

Dr Gabor Dobos,

As wind energy installation the "Un-tethered Autonomous Flying Wind Power Plant" is difficult to implement due to the expenses from and towards storage system,and its important losses.In the other hand as autonomous rechargeable electric plane the system could be promising.

PierreB

Good page and progressive notice by Barresi!

Doug, the following note might be obvious to you, but I place it also for new visitors for the long-haul of this forum, and maybe for a tweaked perspective that might have been missed a bit by some:     Have a flying kite system; let the line out fast enough to get slack line; the wing set of the kite system will loose most of the main tether tension and notice more the weight of the tether system ... as a hung weight; no matter the shape of the wing set, the wing set goes into a hang gliding mode, even if the glide is not pretty relative to sailplane smooth gliding.  Upon stopping the slack, if enough wind, then main tether kiting returns; if not enough wind, perhaps reel in or have anchor system move upwind relative to the wing set position. In all, kite-gliding occurs. Some kiting and some gliding; form the cycles as needed. Form purpose as wanted. Adjust system design for niche tasking.  Classic toy running a kited wing in no wind provides a conversion of anchor-moving energy into adding potential and kinetic energy to the wing set of the kite system. A vast area of exploration can be found in the reverse-pumping sector, phased tugging, stepped towing, calm kiting, etc.  Changing the shape of the wings in coordinate with the state of the wings relative to the tether set may be achieved by various means: mechanical triggers relative to state, radio-control relative to attitude and/or GPS position, aeroelastic sensors and servos, tension sensors and associated servos, ... 

Consider: 

1. Secondary eye-anchor to safety the first main working anchors. 

2. For the Mind#$%^& change on stunting: consider crossing the two lines, but to stay off line rub.  Like having two mirrors to get back to normal view.  

This conference allowed to examine more aspects of AWE, comprising the difficulties and disadvantages of AWE (my poster "Land and space used" is an example among other presentations). On one side it was interesting to see working prototypes. On the other side it was interesting to verify that the way is yet long for an economically viable utility-scale AWES.

PierreB

• Maximized space
• Enough output,Betz'limit not too far
• Rotation  (more efficient,more reliable)
• Crosswind power AND stationary system (one or several rotors,the main tether(s) being fixed)
• Reliability
• Lightness

PierreB