A note of caution for those looking for official certification:  The U.S. FAA has a reputation for making trouble wherever possible, whereas Canada's DOT tries to work things out when rules have been bent.  Perhaps experiments should first be established and certified in places where aviation is seen as an essential service with marginal economics and growing pains

Bob Stuart.

Bob,   As you imply, avoiding the FAA is not a long term strategy. The US is a haven for aviation R & D within its experimental, ultralight, & sport aviation classes. These frameworks provide the AWE developer guidance to safely & successfully compete worldwide.   Here is a concept to avoid the risk of "vendetta" & "Inquisition" AWE certification politics that DaveL unidentified. Lets combine preexisting certifications & "boilerplate" from the following models & sources-   Wind power industry certification Aviation certifications Financial/investment auditing standards Electrical & structural engineering codes Business ethics codes Insurability standards Etc.   We need only add bits of AWE industry specifics. There is even opportunity for someone to found an independent AWE "Underwriters Laboratories", or AWEIA might take on the job,   daveS   PS If you want to avoid diligent Federales, Mexico is hard to beat.

DaveL, you asked-

Dave S.:
Could you be serious for a moment please: Can you point us to any evidence that anyone is using the product(s) you purport to have in commercial production to produce power? A link perhaps to a happy owner? A track record of performance? Any photos of any installations of your equipment? Testimonials? Performance data? Time in use without damage? Warranty info?
Windpower veterans? And you think I am a tough sell? Windpower veterans would be unable to respond to you because they would be unable to pick themselves off the floor from laughing. And they are a grouchy bunch - not easily prone to laughter.
:)
Thanks
Doug S.

 Welcome most recent new AWEIA member 

Risto Silvennoinen
Tampere University of Technology (TUT)

Structural optimization
of the pumping kite wind generator 

Ivan Argatov

· Risto Silvennoinen

http://www.energykitesystems.net/RistoSilvennoinen/

Welcome, Risto !!!

Hi Pierre:
The answer is yes. I just returned from testing a machine with 15 rotors. Yes Superturbine(R) technology is designed to replace the existing "hunter-gatherer" model of commercial wind energy (like Indians planted corn - a plant here, a plant there) versus true WindFARMing: mechanized repeating identical rows, filling an entire area: a new insight that is in reality, low tech, offering better economics in toto. Mostly this business is about lowering installation and maintenance costs per unit swept area. The relevant aspects are cost of fabrication including facilities, tooling, materials, & labor, then transport costs, installation costs, including especially the electrical interface with the grid, then operation & maintenance costs (how many crews, how much training, how many trucks?) 4 cents/ kWh and below is where the money is.
Doug Selsam
http://www.USWINDLABS

 

 http://www.win.tue.nl/casa/meetings/special/ecmi08/pumping-kite.pdf 
 Mathematical Modeling of the Pumping Kite Wind Generator:
 Optimization of the Power Output
 Team Leader: Joachim Krenciszek of TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
 Saheed Ojo Akindeinde of TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
 Hans Braun of TU Kaiserslautern, Germany
 Clement Marcel of University of Joseph Fourier, France
 Eric Okyere of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
 Instructor: Dr. Ivan Argatov of Tampere University of Technology, Finland

Doug,   Its OK to laugh at KiteLab's pitiful sales figures as the products have not been promoted except for notices in our circle. The plan is to attract production & marketing partners over time while the products continue refinement.   Joe Faust is a "customer" (beta tester) of the small flygen offering & may provide you some feedback. Of the dozen or so products so far developed some have just been announced & some are still not public. Don't confuse the launching of products with final sales history.   There are also revenue streams being established in consulting, testing, training, & custom design/build. Kitelab Group includes a handful of new AWE developers also bringing product to market. There seems to be no competition yet in the personal scale AWE market we have targeted. 10kw rated systems & components are in the works. All this is just the learning curve to utility-scale.   So laugh away, but not for long...   daveS   PS Let me know of any other player further along in real AWE product launch. Most starts have little more than grandiose goals.

Let me know how you and also your entity wish to be listed and linked.

TetheredFlight 

Be sure also to subscribe to the AWE Sector! Join ==

Rework of files and wikis is a target, inviting help from all.

The challenge of AWECS classification system persists. A robust clear classification of AWECS methods  is wanted. We don't want to leave anyone out of the presentation; and we would like visitors and investors to be able to see matters clearly.    First era files, collections, and wiki expression beg evolution into a clearer classification scheme. Consensus would be neat before editor revamp.     So, perhaps this thread could be a working field for grinding out a classifiction scheme. We have touched on this matter in the group and out of the group space. PierreB has been a steady committee member on topic. I keep wrestling with the challenges, as I do not want to leave out potentially fruitful methods. 

In subscription space are two fuzzy files:  (Easy to subscribe, even internationally)

File 1:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/0/methods/index.html
File 2:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/0/KITESA/FAQelectric/methods.html

When proposing, check to see if the proposal captures all AWECS methods known.

Thanks for being part of the working committee here ...   : )

Please consider uploading and releasing some images, drawings, charts, photographs into the world via WikiCommons, so editors have such to call into articles.  It is best if rights holders enter the images themselves.   Great extension can come from such inputs.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Upload file

Right now, there is an inequitable paucity of images regarding AWECS. 

Then, once you or your company or entity has uploaded the image, simple post to us here the files' URLs there in WikiCommons.  Then editors around the world in many languages could begin to insert images about you and your projects into wiki articles and other articles.   A few minutes and a sharing could win super presence around the world forever!     Set someone on your team on this matter and win.

http://www.cnbcmagazine.com/story/turning-the-tables/1177/1/

 

Makani Power continues to back down from its claims. It took them millions to figure out the stratosphere was way too much for them, but they could at least drag an extension cord to 500m, the latest lowered altitude target. Its website still states the goal is" to produce energy at an unsubsidized real cost significantly below that of the least expensive coal-fired power plants." Now the goal is "producing energy close to the (mean) cost of coal." But they need five more years & 20 million more for a single 35m WS prototype, which would still be far from a real production model. They do make a new claim; their aircraft "will extend the developable terrestrial wind resource area by five times, to 80% of the US land surface." Thats an aweful lot.   The whole rest of the AWE world is disposed of in one sentence- "Although Makani has a clutch of competitors in the airborne wind turbine space, Hardham is confident his company is well ahead of the pack in terms of both technology, and commercial rollout." Now thats overconfidence. Funny, Joby Energy announced a flygen with the WS of a 747 for roll-out in 2012. Could Makani be smart enough to see through Joby's claims? Not likely, they must have missed that announcement.   Now Don Montague merely "operates in an advisory capacity". Saul Griffith "polymath inventor" is gone, but left his finger in the money-pie ("retains a shareholding"). The staff is down to "14-strong", less than half its early peak. Geoff Sharples, a Google hack ("energy investment expert at Google") recycled from Clipper Windpower's marketing dept. opines- “In many ways, Makani represents the end game of a wind turbine”. Its an end game that Makani/Google seems to be losing to many far better motivated & qualified teams in AWE.   If only Google was willing to broaden its AWE investment it might still succeed. There's still a cool billion in the kitty.

This from Loyd's classic 1982 paper Crosswind Power-

Like I've been saying, stick a wind turbine on a hang glider (large high speed kite)and stop talking about it - that is what they have done with 15 million dollars so far. Looks good. Probably could have been done for less $ but...
"You have the least amount of material providing the most energy.
Sounds like they at least "get it".
Doug Selsam

Thanks, that looks like a good reference.  After doing a few calculations along that line, I figured I'd only be starting an argument about my assumed voltage, etc.  Perhaps advances in magnets and capacitors have opened the possibility of using a single conductor at high frequency and very high voltage to save weight. 

Bob Stuart

"using a single conductor at high frequency and very high voltage to save weight."   One problem is with impedance of conductive tether coiled on the reel in many operational modes.   The weight of UPS batteries (as Joby intends), transformers, speed-controllers, etc. all add up to rival the generator mass itself. Add avionics, actuators, etc. & it starts to be a high wingloaded aircraft prone to stall & unable to perform in common boundary-layer lulls.   I have been calling it "cubic scaling penalty" (CSP) of any airborne component of 3-dimensional bulk growing in mass at the cube of its characteristic lengths. So a small flygen can fly OK but a far bigger one is in real trouble. A quasi two-dimensional membrane kite substantially escapes CSP to scale far more.   The increasingly sharp tone of the latest flygen critiques attempts to arouse a debate from those players. They should have due-dillgence analysis in-hand to refute Loyd & his partisans, but one suspects they chose the flygen path from laziness, not willing to do the work to master the "other means of power transmission". Loyd's three-phase three-line crankshaft solution is genius that spans the spectrum from theory & numeric modeling to mechanical cleverness.

In 2006 AeroVironment was on track to be a major player in AWE. Its legendary founder, Paul McCready, saw the potential & began to map an R & D path, but passed away, leaving a huge leadership vacuum at the company.   In aerospace, military R & D is the easy money, & the company dipped deeper into that market, with weak plays in products like small shrouded rooftop turbines. Its current "vision" is to add lethal capabilities to its surveillance UAVs, further expanding military revenue.   Its no surprise that the following management distraction emerged-

For lightness, I'd skip the insulation on that tether-conductor, so we could keep current out of the coil on the drum.  I'd still prefer to invest in mechanical transmission myself, but there's always new possibilities.

Bob Stuart

It might indeed turn out to be inland-specific.  Doing the calculations on those losses is currently beyond me.  (pun discharged spontaneously)

Bob

Flying Tesla coils? Who cares if it even transmits the power, just the site of a flying SuperTurbine snaking in the breeze from a giant sled with a Tesla coil for a nose would be awesome at night and if it actually does a good job of transmitting to ground based coils it would be AWE-sum.
-brooks

I can no longer find any reference to wind energy from their main website. They didn't have much to begin with. A gooseneck aesthetically-pleasing(?) rooftop mount for a conventional small turbine, combined with a very dubious, likely not-enforceable patent that essentially claims any turbine on any roof with parapet walls. But many people had been mounting turbines on parapet walls for years before their patent came out, including us! We are always glad to help.
Doug Selsam
http://www.USWINDLABS.com

Good point to remember about the coiled tether and inductance, with regard to AC in general. One more complication (sigh).
The cubic scaling penalty is well-known in wind energy:
As a blade is made 10 x longer, it sweeps 100x the area, but weighs 1000 times as much, for a net loss of 90% of the energy per unit mass.
That is exactly why Superturbine(R) was invented, with an order of magnitude improved power per unit blade mass, combined with naturally higher RPM that reduces or eliminates the need for gearing.
Doug Selsam
http://www.USWINDLABS.com

Newest AWEIA entity member:   

LEDshift

 

There is a translation button.  In the site's idea box is a concept and five page document in German with graphics on jet-stream turbine concept. A Google translation can be reached:

Place:  the following URL as text string in the Google translate field:  http://www.ledshift.com/Jetstream%20Turbine.pdf
Translate tool page:  http://translate.google.com/#

The idea box there welcome AWE ideas.       Also, have an interesting time herein and to Notes@energykitesystems.com posting your ideas on where LEDs will play roles in airborne wind energy, tethered flight, tethered aviation, ...

 

JoeF

 

Hopefully, NASA would become also
scrupulously clean of "lobbying/fraternization"
by portions of the unconventional AWE  entities.
JoeF

Another item stemming from the  pages at LEDshift

Add lifting wings to the up-going member ...

http://www.airborne-wind-turbine.com/schwebendes_windrad_deutsch/schwebendes-windrad-start.htm

DougS, seems like a cousin here.

Mark,   The LSA ASTM model you recommend has been identified on this forum as promising. Other partial models include pending FAA sUAS regulations & precedents in ultralight rules (Part 103). Part 101 kite rules are suited to many proof-of-concept & science experiments (& an entry to aviation safety culture). Part 77 obstruction regs lately emerged as a topic. Shielded R & D trials in downwind proximity to established antenna farms is seen as an early opportunity with minimal FAA concerns. The growing Airborne Wind Energy Industry Association (AWEIA) is promoting the rapid evolution of a healthy regulatory framework.   NASA's expertise is also needed to help with technology gaps such as-  Establishing both a vehicle certification process, as well as the airspace regulations are critical gaps to almost all AWE systems from being deployed, (or being viewed as credible energy systems).  Having been involved in on the sidelines of the Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) ASTM regulation process that was developed over the last 5+ years, I think this is a very good process to emulate for AWEs.  I say this because this type of consensus standard enables manufacturers to self-certify without new tremendous FAA oversight – and because consensus ASTM standards have stood up to litigation far better than government imposed regulations.  However, that would only cover the vehicle certification; the airspace regulations are a completely different matter, and there is no question that statistical evidence will have to be accumulated below 2000’ (as ground obstructions through Part 77), prior to any operation at higher altitudes.  But Part 77 itself is quite limiting, so there is much work to be done to get most AWE systems meeting some form of airspace compliance at almost any altitude (due to the non-stationary attributes of most of the AWE systems that do not meet Part 77 intent).   I would like to encourage all perspectives to be voiced to me during this system study, as it is critical for me to accurately represent all the perspectives in this emergent field of research.  Up to this point AWE systems are not well understood – and it is critical that all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle can be viewed together, in order to achieve any future investment support.   Please feel free to contact me, I appreciate constructive dialog.   Mark Moore Mark.D.Moore@ NASA.GOV   From: Dave Lang [mailto:SeattleDL@ comcast.net] Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2010 1:44 PM To: AirborneWindEnergy@ yahoogroups. com Cc: Shaw, Robert J. (GRC-RA00); dave santos; Moore, Mark D. (LARC-E403) Subject: Re: [AWECS] Call for NASA AWE Feasibility Study   Mark Moore at NASA Langley is already embarking on an advocacy for AWE to assist us in any way possible. He is an excellent potential resource for us all, and is well aware of the struggles we are all having regarding obtaining any support whatsoever from the conventional .gov world.   I think that rather than a complex, possibly judgmentally- flawed certification process it could well be cheaper for the government (ie NASA) to create a $10 million fund, from which would be expected only that it "will shake-the-tree of AWE"....ie....candidate s submit a technically meaningful proposal (evaluated by technically cognizant hi quality judges - not bureaucrats) , if selected, they get enough money to do a meaningful-size prototype, then it's "put up or shut-up"!   The NASA organization would of course be scrupulously clean of lobbying/fraterniza tion by the existing conventional wind-power industry.   DaveL           At 10:11 AM -0700 7/4/10, dave santos wrote:

AWEsome centering indoors on big stage may preface era of AWE

 

Hey Joseph,

Glory to the Human Spirit.

Dan'l

Wind’s Latest Problem: It Makes Power Too Cheap

http://greeneconomypost.com/wind-makes-power-too-cheap-10939.htm


Overall, the economic size of a utility is reduced by using wind power.
I suppose executives might worry that this could affect their bonuses.
All my life I've been struggling to introduce things that are good for
people, but bad for the GNP.

Bob Stuart

Thanks Mark, for the replies.   Please note I pointedly do not suggest NASA should fund AWE start-ups. If money was the key NASA could already have aced the application. The same goes for well capitalized starts dominating the AWE marketing mind-space while being technically outperformed by the bootstrapper cloud.   What is requested of NASA is an expedited internal technical review that susses out essential science & best practices. NASA's findings could endorse truly promising paths & shoot down bad ones, liberating plenty of private investment by the reduced uncertainty.   Dave Lang's idea of a NASA funded "fly-off" by the actual starts is appealing, but requires more flexibility on a short time-frame than a government agency like NASA is likely to manage. At best we can hope NASA will do its own studies well & somehow involve the best of academia, which has made fine contributions to AWE science with no real support.   NASA's SBIR & Space Act Agreement processes seem poorly suited to impartial determination of best technological practice & would likely distort the agency's participation in the field.   Thanks again,   dave santos

Personally I think the federal labs need to adopt a more pro-active stance toward identifying and funding those who are committed to pursuing breakthroughs.
The system as it stands serves mostly to slow the progress of already overworked innovators: The labs attempt to wrestle the innovators to the ground and stop all progress building and testing prototypes, by reducing the innovators to the same state of the labs themselves: perpetual stagnation of innovation while all effort is instead re-directed to endless paperwork, trying to convince unknown and unnamed technical reviewers that an idea is worth pursuing. I know people who work at these labs who are similarly frustrated that with all those millions, somehow prototypes of new ideas are nearly impossible and essentially never happen at all, while the populace at large can build new stuff in their garages and publish a video on youtube in a weekend. In our case, as much as the funding is great to achieve, it takes so much work and so many refusals, then your activity is directed by the proposal, that what I saw was a dubious benefit, at least for us at this level. In fact this seems to apply to trade shows, conferences, and a seemingly 1000 activities that are "almost" developing working models, but not quite - mostly just talk talk talk with no action. Basically every 3 days that go by without a working prototype is 1% of another year slipping through your fingers, and if a grant proposal takes a month to prepare and you need 3 or 4 to get funded, that is a lot of the year;s progress down the drain.
Seems to me the only way forward is with action and developing working models that produce good amounts of power.
Like the market for regular wind turbines, the progression will likely be from a small numberr of models that actually prove useful at any scale, even a small scale, then they will slowly get bigger and fly higher.
Luckily, with wind energy, small prototypes can be built for a low cost, often from scrap materials, even airborne.
Doug Selsam

All Roads Lead To Superturbine(R)
:)

All roads...
:)

By the way.
I've been contemplating a totally different way to do AWE for some time now. It's based on a new insight I had with regard to terrestrially-supported "ground-hugger" turbine technology.
The numbers look a little questionable but the concept is for real.
Maybe needs a bit more pencil put to paper before I spew it in the web.
But it is totally unlike anything I have ever heard or seen discussed.
I am afraid to say more but maybe that is enough of a clue for someone.
:)))
Doug Selsam
=:

That is what newbies to wind energy with their "superior" (yet untested) (and I should really talk) concepts and knowledge always do: back down from their original claims. That's usually cuz they start out (mentally) in the stratosphere and slowly are informed how everything they think has been thought of before and failed. Their ideas are not new, just new to them. They haven't seen it before because it is already known to not work. It is like a well-worn path trodden by those of whom one is born every minute. In the end they always end up on a tower with a regular propeller, or go out of business, or slowly fade away amidst laughter, or more likely are just forgotten - by everyone but a few of us who pay attention to it all, as a hobby if nothing else. The latest we heard with Google.org was being reduced to merely talking about very tall lattice towers - hey are you sure nobody thought of that before? Stratospheric Jet Stream claims watered down to just a slightly taller tower? sheesh!
Next thing you know they will shift to merely cleaning bugs off blades to improve performance. (which is necessary, yielding 4-10% better energy capture) - and ya never hear about all those bugs killed...)
Let's get some ACTION going here!
:)
Doug Selsam
~<brawk!
--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos <santos137@...

Lets hope that your concept is successful, Doug
 
 
Harry
 

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: doug@selsam.com
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2010 22:21:38 +0000
Subject: [AWECS] Completely new way to do AWE

 

NASA is required by its culture & mission to perform due dilligence in AWE & has the mojo...   From NASA Ames website:

Already this topic has occurred in this forum: Getting lifter craft set fast into the sky followed by tethering works.  Bow-and-arrow tech for shooting up a package that deploys to be a lifter kite has been mentioned.  Using conductive tether to spend saved energy to power up a propulsive craft to working altitude followed by power-off generation is center stage for a few AWE companies (in both groundgen and skygen followings).  Using worker balloons to slave lifter kites must be mentioned.  Worker-bee platforms have shown their head in launching hang glider while the platform is radio-controlled returned to ground club base.  Dropping AWECS start assemblies into the atmosphere from powered aircraft has been mentioned.  UAVs taking up a package  holding a lifter kite could set into upper winds a pilot lifter that would then sustain lower worker or flipper kites to drive groundgens.  Just when and where and at what scale slaving lifters will serve AWECS has yet to be comprehensively described; niche best fit scenarios for such tactics await proof.

Perhaps in such direction:  The Propulsive Wing in UAV format?

I have primed a folder in our group's Links section. All others are invited to place other links in that  folder that seem to address the topic:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AirborneWindEnergy/links/LaunchingLifters_001278509463/

Even open other sub-folders as you think might be helpful for collaborative research and development of the topic for any scale of AWECS.    So far sub-folders (most have yet to have postings ---a signal to have one or more of us place something!)

Links

BalloonWorkers
BowAndArrowWorker
IntegratedPowerMethod PoweredKitingWorker PoweredAircraftDropDeployment
PropulsiveWing Powered workers to set first kite lifter aloft may come in a variety of methods. Will PW be a worker bee?
RocketWorkers In support of "common knowledge base" and "collaborating" and " building consensus"  we have this group's Links and Files and Photos sections open for postings from all.  A mere start is set; each of us is free to sculpt those spaces with our own inputs for all of us to survey.   Perhaps take on a favorite sector and punctuate it with your style.  JoeF