Nice, Rod. 

Solar analogue: 

Funny: You of all people, calling someone's postings "mentally unbalanced spam",  That is a crack-up!  :)
I'd go back and examine your own writings with all their Nostradamus-like predictions, and see if any of them EVER come true.

The idea of showing how many "undisputable scientific truths" turn out to be utter hogwash, even though they enjoy a nearly-unanimous concensus from all the "experts", is to point out that we need to be careful what we believe.  Healthy skepticism is obviously required. 

Heart surgeons telling people to eat margarine for example.  Are we to imagine they were intentionally trying to reduce the demand for their services?  That any of them checked any data?  Nope, they just all accepted some public relations lies as science, and went on blithely "doing harm".  OK that is in a field where we all imagine people understand basic facts and know what they are talking about. 

Next you can see that most "breakthroughs" in regular wind energy are complete bunk.  Transition to Airborne Wind Energy where most "participants" have never even experienced, let alone mastered, regular wind energy, and one is best off ignoring most of the "experts", since they can be counted on to produce nothing.  I've been telling you this same thing about "team" after "team", sicne Day-1 and it seems to be slowly revealing itself as the truth.  How many years do you want to go on accepting every new "clean-energy-lie" as a fact?  Or making up your own clean-energy-lies?  Just sayin'...
Clean energy is great, but clean-energy-lies are mostly just amusing, not helpful.
:)

Thanks Roddy:
My take(s) on this high quality rendering is:
1) SuperTurbines(R) that slant upward exert positive lift.  Slanting downward tends toward negative lift, tending to pull the whole thing down.
2) The whole "Mothra" fixation thing is getting a bit overdone.  Seems like it's mostly about pretending Dave S. is doing anything about airborne wind energy as he plays with tarp kites.  As others have pointed out, nobody has really shown the pertinence or applicability of the arch kite configuration over other configurations.  Sure it eliminates a lateral spar in favor of relegating that duty to the Earth, which could be a good feature.  That assumes there is some advantage to a very wide kite in the first place, which there may be, but also maybe not so much...  Unfortunately it loses the advantages most every other kite has, which are natural and passive downwind aim from a single pivot point, and the ability to travel across the wind, which many systems use to increase relative wind.

All in all, while it seems like one of thousands of configurations that "technically COULD work OK", I don't see any compellingly advantageous use of material, use of space, nor any suggestion of superior performance, nor any particular suggestion that it would be easy to deploy, easy to un-deploy or stow, nor what one would do with it when the wind died, or if the wind gets extra-strong.  I do see a large circular track.  That looks expensive.  Reminds me of the old joke about how many idiots does it take to change a lightbulb?  Answer: 1000, one to hold the lightbulb, and 999 to rotate the building.  In this case it's how much material and infrastructure that same idiot might need to allow a wind turbine to change direction, when simply attaching a tether to a fixed point is normally all that is required (just unscrew the lightbulb - wait, just LET the lightbulb unscrew by itself...).  Hey forget re-aiming individual turbines, let's re-aim the whole windfarm!
Roddy you are great at rendering.  Reminds me of the days when I used to say "I could live work, and shop in 3-D CAD", and the 3-D drawings did get me there, to a certain point.  Plus the renderings of an artist from Dreamworks.  Well after enough "conferences", articles in PopSci, PopMech, several green energy and wind energy magazines, a couple of Discovery Channel videos, and getting to meet some of the richest and most influential people in the world, I realized all the hype was just that: hype.  No matter how much attention I was able to garner (and it got boring after awhile), the reality I saw was even companies who understood exactly how to do wind power nonetheless were going bankrupt, no matter how many grants and investment dollars they could take in.  I realized the whole industry, VC people, multi-letter agencies, famous authors, and all the rest, there were only a very few who could actually create a RELIABLE wind energy system, of any kind, that did not break down.  This seemed to be a rare talent, and it further became apparent that it was one more case of "those who talk don't know, and those who know, don't talk".  I decided to skip the hype and develop reliable solutions.  So, render away, blog away, but in the end, a reliable and powerful wind energy solution will need to be constructed, produced, marketed, etc., and all the talk, blogging, internet debates, all the hype, all the conferences, all the grants, and all the multi-million-dollar cash influxes, and even Mothra renderings showing a circular track, will not change that simple fact.
:)
Doug S.

When a kite system holds parts that rotate, then the rotational kinetic energy or angular kinetic energy is a form of stored energy. Flywheels, turbine blades, rotating disks, and gyroscopic rings are examples. Gyrokites and flipwings have some stored angular kinetic energy. Some flipwings add stabilizing rotating disks that do not play to lift, but play to stabilize; such disks store angular kinetic energy. Any of a kite's angular kinetic energy contributes to the net total kinetic energy of the kite system. ~ JoeF

Rod,

DaveS: Keep Mothra and remove SuperTurbine.

DougS: Keep SuperTurbine and remove Mothra.

PierreB

 

 

Consider the laconic note of using two kite arches that could loft ST units and keep the units with an effective near-neutral-lift alpha. Note further that lofting ST in kite arches as lifter could have the torque tube remain in tension (the compression mentioned by DaveS need not be the only case); a tension line could aft-end a ST segment. Simulation and costing analysis might have the options be seen in different light. Hanging many ST units from two kite arches with a way to fine-tune the alpha of the ST segments might be considered. In all, it may be way too early to put a stop to exploring mash-ups of ST-M.

Another mash-up of ST-M is to ground-stake-groundgen the ST with the upper lofted end held by kite arch. DougS already shows platoons of ST units held by buildings; the "building" could be a big M.
CC BY NC SA kPower
~ JoeF

Dave S.:  OK specifically, your claim that "there is no Professor Crackpot" illustrates once again that you are interested only in redefining words.  Like anyone really thinks there IS someone named "Professor Crackpot"?  Son of John and Jane Crackpot?  You mean, there is no family name "Crackpot"?  No, really?  Thanks for breaking that news.  Your level of understanding obviously exceeds most.
"Professor Crackpot" does not refer to any single person.  Think of it as an honorary title, a descriptive tag, a hat that anyone can find themselves wearing if they are not careful.  If someone refers to "a boy who cried wolf", are you going to protest and say "There is no wolf!  And he's not a boy!"?  It's a freakin' figure of speech, get used to it.  That's how language works - it gets colorful when illustrating things in ways people can understand.  After years of discussing various sorts of wind energy systems on the web, which often results in debunking misleading claims, the syndrome is undeniable.  I've outlined all the symptoms, and predicted the failure of most AWE schemes currently being pursued, due to falling into those exact and well-worn slots.  A lot of what you propose, or even try, seems to be in this category. 
I've listened to the proclamations of all the "teams".  I've dutifully taken in all the information, and, given my experience in wind energy, I told anyone who would listen thge paths that will not work, and a few more that will.  I told you who would fail and now you are watching it happen.  "They quietly go away".  My goal is not to cause people to freak out over the title "Professor Crackpot", but to help things move forward by offering honest and well-informed opinions.  It's hard to watch so many resources, human and material, being wasted on obvious impending failure, when there could be great success already.  What good are conferences and web discussions if nobody listens?  Have a day!  :)

Dave S. wrote:  "* Like falsely asserting the Honeywell Turbine was endorsed on the AWES Forum (except as a non-AWE freak collectible for CoyH)."
Dave S.  You are now just plain lying.  Go back and read your own statements regarding how great the Honeywell turbine is.  You can't just erase all that ignorance.  You were promoting it as a good turbine, as evidence that you understand wind energy and that I do not.  You specifically argued with my pointing out that it was a bad product and I finally had to quote a Consumer Reports article to show that it was worthless.  You can make erroneous statements all day, but at some point people will call you out.  Your whole point was to demonstrate that you understood wind energy whereas I was ignorant, and my whole point was, no Dave S., it is YOU making endless ignorant statements.  Just stick with what you originally said: "The Honeywell turbine is a great product" or whatever your exact words were.  Your lying at this point really takes the cake.  You never called the Honeywell turbine a "freak collectible".  It's ONLY after I took the time to PROVE to you publicly that itls a bad design that you even acknowledge it is not a great design.  Stop lying about what you said, it won't help.  Most everything else you say is similarly erronous.  Anyone who listens to you is being misinformed.

Thanks for that Pierre
I do not specifically think an arch kite could not support SuperTurbine(R) arrays.  It is one of many configurations similar to what we have called "grandstand array", which is a slanted surface of rotors on parallel driveshafts, reminding one of the slanted surface of a "grandstand" at a sports arena for example.  Instead of people in the audience, you have a sea of rotors.  But, since the driveshafts themselves serve as tethers, the side-anchors of the arch might be redundant and unnecessary.  Having said that, I don't think it is necessarily the worst idea in the world, if the driveshafts were properly inclined.  But if ever built, it might easily reveal itself as a first stab.  Redundant and unnecessary features tend to get eliminated once one starts actually building and running WEC systems.  The behavior of any system usually involves some surprises.  Talk is cheap (for just about anyone) and renderings are easy (for certain talented people, especially as their "library" of "parts" becomes more extensive), but the rubber hits the road in wind energy where the meter is connected to the grid, or other load.

Ideas: 

My rough first steps: HERE. 

DougS,

 

"  I've outlined all the symptoms, and predicted the failure of most AWE schemes currently being pursued, due to falling into those exact and well-worn slots."

 

To go forwards, an analysis of the failures is needed, like yours, DaveS's, mine or MikeB's. A big problem in AWE is the difficult marriage of wind energy and aviation. To keep the system light enough other spots are used or thought, like reel-out/in, generator at the tip of blades (Honeywell 6500 as current wind turbine is limited due to slow drag blades, and rim drive adding some weight where it is not needed for such a small turbine; but some of these features are studied in AWE projects)... In a word it is possible AWE must take some bad technical ways to exist, and in fine to not exist.

 

PierreB 

Have a collection of kite trains anchored to a base kite arch or Mothra. 

Tried that long ago Joe.  Some people insist on being "impossible".

Let the pole rotate, while supporting a stack of rotors, and you're back to SuperTurbine(R)

Like SkyWindPower, a "curtain" of 4 rotors.  Great idea, with no basic flaws I can see, yet somehow it struggles to get aloft, occasionally being pulled from a truck it's mounted on.
Yes people have talked about "curtains" of rotors for decades, yet somehow nobody ever builds one...
Anyway, I figured my talking about a surface of rotors would have you reintroducing the curtain concept.  Everything that happens on this list is 100% predictable.

Dear JohnO, Dear JoeF,

 

The long debate between DougS and DaveS looks as a debate between an old couple. At the same time this debate is a metaphor of the difficulty to reconcile Wind Energy and Airborne. Some technical indications from both DougS and DaveS are (but not directly) interesting to go forwards, perhaps by a technical transformation of both SuperTurbine(R) and Mothra. But this forum suffers from a far bigger problem than a good mutual agreement in the diatribes between DougS and DaveS:where are posts from companies in AWE (no post from Makani,Ampyx etc.), or discussions with someone disagreeing with DaveS like MikeB? Nowhere, only personal attacks under a false "Ethics" from DaveS (DougS does not make personal attacks but general attacks against some technological fashions designed as "Crackpot") against these persons,making the "Great Debate in AWE" both a non-reality and a pure hypocrisy. It is all the more harmful as DaveS has real and various technic arguments as kite-mastery but mixes them with personal attacks, losing credibility. Now the present forum remains an unique forum of great interest but is by far not in the center of AWE which is not in the center of wind energy.   

 

PierreB 

 

 

DaveS,

 

False arguing again and again, repeated 100 times into various mixes,enough rebutted. You should question yourselves. 

 

PierreB

Some AWES aim to use passive retraction while mining energy 

Is this offer from Japan a cousin of the JF-DS Tipping Boom AWES method? WPI method? OrthoKiteBunch method?   Not sure yet what TAKASAKI TOSHIYUKI is claiming yet. And I have no team report yet. Anyone? Patent is in Japanese, but on the patent is an English abstract.  Patent main document is 49 pages.   [[We do not yet have a volunteer reporter for Japan. ]]  Our tracking folder: http://www.energykitesystems.net/Takasaki/index.html 

Have a note about tethers?  Consider joining the note in this topic thread. 

http://www.energykitesystems.net/Kites/Cluster/index.html