Sorry for my precedent message I put again without automatic repeats I hope.

Mike Barnard at http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/03/airborne-wind-energy-platypuses-instead-cheetahs/#Ped6HU1cegPSeyu2.99: The only potentially viable in-air generation technology today is a small wind turbine. Makani puts eight of them on the leading edge of its hard wing as a primary example of the approach, while Altaeros puts one in the middle of toroidal lighter-than-air device".

So congratulations to Makani. As Open AWE Forum we enjoy progresses of any AWE teams.

 

PierreB

As AWEIA's appointed treasurer I am offering to tally the votes.

DaveS,

 

To lie on a public forum is not a good thing.

 

Here is again my post because you do not know how to read.

"Mike Barnard: on

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/03/airborne-wind-energy-platypuses-instead-cheetahs/#Ped6HU1cegPSeyu2.99

"

..."

 

 

PierreB

DaveS,

 

"It was not clear that Mike Barnard is your source..."

And on the same post: 

" It really is amazing you do not see MikeB's weaknesses as an AWE expert."
You should clarify your (lack of) ideas.

 

PierreB

To Vote for John Oyebanji for President of AWEIA please email Ed at

A masters degree student might explore the load total of power-kiting: snow, ice, land, water: where the wind is used to move people here to there. The time spent under tethered wing might be saving fuel (the pilots are not driving fueled vehicles during the hours of self transport; they are probably choosing their activity instead of power-vehicle runs).   The count of participants?   The amount of wind energy converted to the transport?  

Yes I have also been curious as to what this actually means.  I'd be interested to hear of what candidates there were to choose from, what the term is, what the duties of the president are, what challenges a candidate or incumbent has faced and/or overcome thusfar.  It would be nice to hear about some qualifications such as "candidate X has accomplished Y in the field of airborne wind energy", or perhaps an agenda "If elected, candidate V promises to accomplish W".  If I were voting in an election, I'd like to hear much more input from the candidate(s), more info about the candidate(s).  As it is, I second John's statement that Joe's relentless and steadfast willingness to keep archiving hundreds and then thousands of references to AWE schemes, going back 100 years or more, is the main effort being taken.  It almost seems that the reason to include other names may be a reaction to the fact of a one-man effort on Joe's part. That effort has shown that the thrust toward AWE is very old, and that what appear to be entirely workable scenarios have been published beginning in the early 1900's if not sooner.  What remains seems to be that the history of AWE involves at least a century of good ideas, with very little follow-through.  We seem to have a hundred years of people seeing the potential of more wind at higher heights, thinking up great ideas, then not building them.

Baptiste: You have a point: I was thinking more of the energy lost to actually lifting the apparatus, (the lift part of lift/drag) than the drag.  Still, if you take a sailplane as an example, for a given weight, the larger the wing area or wingspan, the longer it would remain airborne in still air, implying less energy used to keep it aloft.  But it would see, that you are right that at some point, one would have made the wing so ridiculously large in proportion to the 1 kG weight that other factors might predominate.

I would not count data logging as energy transmission, in the sense we talk about energy transmission to make a meaningful contribution to providing for energy needs.  To do so would be to further trivialize the actual production of energy even beyond the recent low bar claimed, to the point of meaninglessness.  Data transmission, if considered at all in calculating energy transmission, would be a parasitic loss, yet so negligible as to hardly warrant mention..

My understanding:   

Dave S. please forgive me for continued back-and-forth of questioning each detail of each others' statements, but as a lifelong skier and snowboarder, I don't remember a diesel ski lift.  Aside from primitive rope-tows of the early years powered by gasoline V-8 engines, ski lifts are electric. 

As popular as kite-boarding has become, I see no evidence that it has replaced water-skiing behind a boat.  Waterskiing ideally takes place in calm, since rough water pretty much prevents good waterskiing which seeks out "glassy" water, whereas kiteboarding takes place at windy sites where waterskiing would be difficult at best.  If anything has replaced waterskiing, it's wakeboarding, in parallel to snowboarding currently substituting for skiing in many cases. 

I also see no evidence that Kansas is "suddenly more attractive than Aspen as a winter playground."  Can you provide any backup information on that?  Last I saw, Aspen still enjoys the same winter-resort-of-choice status, with 0% impact from Kansas. 

Also, what do you mean by "The paleo-winnowing AWE case"?

Dave S. I took an opportunity to illustrate how most of what you post here is erroneous, misleading, or outright wrong.  The three statements you said in your post were simply 100% wrong.  Since the comments were not about AWE, we shift from mere opinions, to easily-verified facts.  The points I made are valid.  Almost nobody uses kites for skiing, and it has zero effect on Aspen.  ZERO.  You instead stated that Kansas has now replaced Aspen as the winter report of choice.  That is simply not true.  If you ask 1000 people where the winter destination of choice is, I doubt you would get a single answer of "Kansas".
Then you implied that this shift from Aspen to Kansas has resulted in diesel-powered ski lifts being replaced by kites.  I am pointing out that few, if any ski lifts are powered by diesel engines.  I doubt if Aspen has any.  I've skiied Colorado many times, and never seen one.  The last time was at an NREL-sponsored ski day at Arapahoe Basin as a matter of fact.  It was in June, still plenty of snow, and one kid from NREL was almost crying, saying we would not be able to ski in Colorado much longer, due to global warming.  Anyway, I've never seen a diesel-powered ski lift anywhere.  It was to be expected that, rather than admit you made a wrong statement, you would divert to saying ski lifts are powered by electricity, which you then somehow rationalize as being "the same thing".  No it is not the same thing.  Vail resorts now claim to use 100% wind power.  If, say, 3% of US electricity is from wind, then ski lifts are probably about 3% wind-powered today.  Diesel power is not used in power plants in the U.S. for the most part.   Jiminy Peak in Massachussetts, where I have also skiied, installed a wind turbine to help offset their ski lift electricity usage.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/27/ski.wind.turbine/
Perhaps you are thinking of the large banks of diesel-powered compressors for snowmaking?  Virtually ALL resorts employ large banks of diesel compressors to make snow, and virtually NONE to run ski lifts.  That is the actual fact.  Kites have not changed that fact.
And you stated that kite-boarding has now replaced water-skiing by powerboat.  I say that is a completely incorrect statement.  My guess is that you have confused water-skiing with windsurfing.  Kiteboarding seems to have largely replaced windsurfing, not water-skiing, which is challenged by wakeboarding, not kiteboarding.
So here we can unmistakeably see, in fields where there are really only facts to work with, and no room for argument or opinion, that if we dissect your post, statement-by-statement, that nothing you say is true, and it is all wishful thinking, describing a fantasy world.
So you made 3 statements, and I have clearly shown all 3 are in error.
The "AWE is a newborn baby" thing is also easily shown to be in error by Joe's exhaustive research showing that people have been avidly and consistently publishing and patenting AWE ideas since the beginning of the previous century. That would make the topic of AWE a very senior citizen.  What I have pointed out is that people new to wind energy believe it is somehow "a new art", since they themselves are new at it.  Instead of studying what has been learned, they attempt to shortcut their preparatory education, and instead re-live all the past flawed assumptions, usually going back at least 100 years, and quite often going back over 1000 years, then attempt to inject their newly-formed opinions into an ancient and well-established art.  That is usually a mistake, since they are repeating what has already been shown to not work well.

Dave S. I do not think I was mistaken.  I think you are mistaken to equate/substitute a soft parafoil with a rigid sailplane wing.  Let's compare apples to apples, OK?  If you compare two sailplanes of similar geometry, and similar weight, but one is larger, the larger one will have a slower sink rate than the smaller one.  What I did NOT imply was that a parafoil, by merely having more total wing surface area, would have a lower sink rate than a sailplane.  Sailplanes have glide ratios much higher than parafoils, correct or not?

No Dave S., believe me, I "get it".  You just say whatever you want to say, regardless of the facts.  If challenged, you will attempt to "redefine" what you said before.  The consistent thing is almost nothing you say is true.   You may be the latest one, but there have been many before.

Roddy:
Check U.S. Patent 6616402 and you will find quite a few double-helix versions of SuperTurbine(R).  Some of the further SuperT patents build on the basic double-helix structure.  The reason for the double helix is that the same elongate helically-wrapped vertical-axis-type blade simultaneously accomplishes torque transmission to the ground, while capturing more wind energy by the Darrieus effect, while wrapping the entire structure against centrifugal forces.
Meanwhile I'm still trying to grasp what anyone is talking about re "paleo AWE", especially in the face of trying to claim AWE is suddenly, after at least 100 years of published patents showing workable configurations, a "newborn baby".  What is newborn is a new generation of people who ASSUME it is new, claiming that tomorrow they will conquer it (just not today).  But, as I have pointed out, it appears that, ironically, the more straightforward and likely to work the idea, the less likely anyone seems willing to build it, and vice versa.  Some things are just beyond explanation.  :)

Hi Roddy
In thinking further about your latest post, I wondered if your protest of "disregarding signalling" was in reference to my statement to you that I do not regard microwave transmission of onboard performance data as a bona-fide transmission of energy.  Data transmission is one thing, and transmitting power to the ground for another use, is a different thing.  Once again, I say we should be able to think together, beyond slogans short enough to fit on a bumper-sticker.  Unless the real game here is to merely redefine something every day to fool ourselves into thinking we've already conquered AWE.  If a wind-powered aircraft or airborne machine were fashioned for the sole purpose of transmitting data, such as acting as a satellite repeater or airborne wireless hub, etc., then one might claim some sort of AWE victory.  Even then, it would not really be accurate, really quite a stretch, any more than claiming an airborne solar energy farm is powering the grid, if a kite used solar panels to power a radio repeater.  Even the parasitic wind-powered APU's on fossil-fueled airplanes often cited by Dave S. as "airborne wind energy" come closer to real AWE than a wind-powered airborne radio repeater.  Sure you are using energy from the sun or wind, up in the air, but so what?  Using a solar-powered calculator while sitting next to a window on an airliner fulfills that goal, and proves nothing except you could afford $1 for the calculator and many times that for a ticket.  I certainly would have no reason to "disregard signalling", but for a wind turbine to merely provide data pertaining to its own performance is not considered power output.  Never has been and probably never will.  It kind of makes no sense, really, to think that way.  Performance data is just performance data, and that requires almost no power, and does not power anything else.  To have to explain this is seeming kind of weird all of a sudden so I only hope I am mistaken and that is not what you meant.

On hot seat:   Sink rate for sailplanes does not depend on largeness or smallness of the sailplane. 

Draw some attention to how weak are the terms "largeness" or "smallness."  To fully analyze sink rate matters, more careful determination of what is meant by "larger" or "smaller" between two sailplanes. 

This topic thread invites long-term recording of the arts and sciences of converting wind energy by energy-kite systems into the task of transferring information.