daveS,let's review the three
horsemen of AWE: Makani, Altaeros, and Magenn. These three were
the most popularized as examples of AWE. From a wind energy
standpoint, I think my previous explanation sufficed to establish that
anyone promoting Magenn hd to have been either dishonest or
clueless. That included all the publications that
repeated the false narrative that it was even effective, let
alone a breakthrough. If you include everyone who promoted the
Magenn debacle, how many "idiots" or "know-nothings" or "people who are
wrong, saying they are right" are you up to at that point?
Hundreds? A thousand? How many publications and websites
repeated the "news" that Magenn was going to be powering our
future? Were ANY of them right? - no, they were ALL wrong.
OK
let;s take Altaeros next. DaveS did a great job of debunking it
based on his LTA knowledge. So daveS proved that it was a bad
design, on paper, and his points were easy to see, and really could not
be argued with. So, again, one could use whatever words work for
you to describe it: People being wrong but saying they were right",
"know-nothings" - for shorthand, you would imagine that real wind
people sitting around having a private conversation using the term
"idiots" because they really know what it takes to do wind energy, and
they have nobody censoring their words in a private conversation.
You could take it further and validate which statements they've made
over the years, see how many of them have come true, including more
recently Oman, Mitsubishi,then Wifi, and, from what we've seen so far,
verify that pretty much most of what they've promised, or predicted,
has fallen flat, and not happened. So now, take all the people
who repeated the Altaeros hype, published their pictures and repeated
their promises. That alone has got to run into the thousands of
people. So now we've debunled two out of three of the most
visuible and talked-about AWE efforts.
Next
let's examine the "third horseman of AWE" (as popularized) which is
Makani. Once again, daveS has debunked their effort more
thoroughly than anyone else I can think of. Their mistakes,
according to daaveS include making a too-early "diownselect", making
the wrong "downselect", not taking into account the realities of wind
energy, building a crash-prone machine, not followinig through on their
stted projects to power the grid in Hawaii, etc., etc., etc.,
Now
let's assume daveS is right about Makani. That's all three of the
main poster-child star players in AWE, all easily debunked by even the
notoriously optimistic and forgiving daveS. So, even compared to
daveS, the 3 main stars of AWE qualify for "idiot" status, or if one
wanted to be more charitable in terminology, they could be called"wind
energy know-nothings", "people who are wrong saying they are right" -
whatever terminology makes you comfortable.
So,
we've (mostly daveS himself) now debunked the three "leading" AWE
efforts, the ones that have made AWE famous. Well if nothing all
these people said for all these years was valid, call them what you
want. The fact is, you can now see that wnat I said the whole
time "You are looking at "the bloopers"". was accurate the whole
time. Depending on your level of knowledge and experience, you
can debunk things that others can't. In this case, even daveS
himsefl has plaayed major role in debunking the three
poster-child go-nowhere, know-nothing efforts in AWE, so, thanks daveS
for helping to prove my point while simultaneously pretending to deny
my point.
We could go on to note that none of
the kite-reeling efforts seem to be bearing any fruit - there is
something wrong when, after all these years of hearing the promises,
there is still nothing running in the kite-reeling camp. And we
could go on citing the hype over "laddermill" to note that nobody ever
bothered to even try to build a single one, instead coming up with
excuses of why it was too hard and instead they just wanted to buy and
fly kites and play "kite-reeling" games with statements of grid-feed
projects that never happened.
These are all
just the facts, daveS. It was easy to just lie on the old days
when everything was "in the future". Well, people still want to
play that game of false statements describing nonexistent future
actions. What would you call someone who believes the next
"story" of "promises of future grid-feed projects"? Would you
blame someone for using the term "idiot" after ten years or more of
such empty promises? So,
daveS, thanks for helping to debunk AWE as currently promoted.
You've done a great job. Far better than me alone trying to
explain that, as dramatic as the promises sound, these people don't
know what they're doing. Now that ten years have passed, we're no
longer in a position of not having any way to prove it. Now the
people have proven it themselves. Thanks for helping to get to
the bottom of that one, and finally establish the facts of the matter,
daveS. Nice job debunking them, daveS. It's really not that
hard, now is it? And by the way, I do call myself an idiot, every
time I do something idiotic. I think it;s healthy to be honest
with yourself. The first step is acknowledging when you're an
idiot, so you don't make the same mistake again. ---In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, <santos137@...
daveS asked: "Who do you think tops in AWE? 1000 folks can't all be idiots like you seem to imagine."
*** DougS replies: The point many don't appreciate, especially you, is that there have always
been outsiders advocating "alternative" wind energy collection system
designs and concepts. 99.99% of the time they are wrong.
Ten years ago I used to ask the question from bathroom graffiti: "Can a
million flies be wrong"? The answer of course is yes, a thousand
people can be wrong and so can a million people. The term
"idiots" is often applied by real wind people when the newly-hatched
wannabes seem particularly clueless, annoying, or even just if they are
pursuing known dead-ends.
The
way I have always seen it, AWE is a great pursuit, but I didn't see
anyone about to master it ten years ago and still don't. The
problem most of the would-be, wannabe, wind energy innovators have is
they want to substitute "feelings" for energy produced, and they want
to substitute "saying" they will produce power for actually producing it. You gave an answer I hadn't heard yet,
"Doug, you seem unaware my work focus in experimental kite power is on
the mechanical side, including feats like Mothra dumping tons of sand,
kite-sailing, and many other apps, not just electrical power"
but
it falls smack-dab in the middle of such rationalizations and excuses
for no power or low power in proportion to size, cost, complexity, and
reliability. How many times do we need to her about the
accidental lifting and shedding of some sand? Ten years of
"research" for that? Figure out a way to generate some
power! I have some ways in mind for you if you can't think of any.
And when real wind people point out that the would-be-innovators don't
have a better way to generate power from the wind, the
would-be-innovators typically get angry and call the real wind people
names. They think that saying they will produce power at some future point in time,
on the internet, is a substitute for producing a machine that reliably
produces electricity at low cost. But reliably producing
electricity at low cost is the only
thing that matters. Not group-selfies. Not claims of
"bird-friendly". Not press-releases announcing upcoming
grid-feeds that never happen. Power. That is the goal, and
if you can't show a way to do it better, you're missing the mark.
Now someone who knows nothing of wind energy might find it extreme to
hear us use a term like "idiot". But it's not so farfetched at
all, really. When we get together it's the term often used for,
well, you know, vertical-axis people, and, well... anyone who insists
their half-baked ideaa can outperform the best wind turbines in the
world, for example. Anyone can say it. How many are right?
Let's start with asking if there might just one single "idiot"
out of the thousands of candidates you cite.
Take
Magenn, for example. Now you don't need a college degree to know
Magenn was a very expensive way to place a less-effective version of
the least-efficient known type of wind turbine, with a paltry amount of
swept area, into the air. There was never any indication that it
formed any sort of reasonable wind energy solution. It generated
almost no power compared to its size and cost. It was easily
disproven on a napkin using a crayon. I immediately said only an
idiot could believe in Magenn. I believe that is a true
statement. If there is such a thing as an idiot, someone falling
for Magenn would have qualify. Especially if they had a college
degree - in, say engineering. Yet didn't the Magenn Sta-Puf
marshmallow-man grace the covers of hundreds of magazines and
websites? Didn't Magenn hire engineers? Didn't even NASA
and the big AWE "industry" organizations use the Magenn image in
promotions? OK how many "idiots" are we up to now?
Let's
take Altaeros. You, daveS, noted that the envelope would use less
material to hold more helium without the donut-hole. It was not
so hard for anyone to see, but you had previous LTA experience so you
knew. You knew it was a bad design. You were in a position
to say "these guys must be idiots" had you chosen those words.
With some experience in wind energy, knowing how brutal the wind is,
seeing the frail donut envelope, I too was able to not only make the
same observation as daveS, with regard to the envelope, but also to see
that it would be unlikely to survive strong winds. I mean,
seriously, real wind energy will just rip your shit apart. Not
for the timid or faint of heart. So, to us, for a highly-educated
engineer to not be able to see what we could see, in our view, we might
be forgiven for saying anyone who can't see what we see is "an idiot, even if they are a trained engineer? Especially if they are a trained engineer!
Look at Kleiner Perkins - chasing another disproven ducted turbine design. Many people tried to warn them,
including
me, but they invested millions, found out it totally sucked, as
everyone does, then sold Ogin for 50 million to New Zealand, who had
already wasted 20 million on a previous ducted turbine debacle
called Vortec. Was New Zealand on a sucker's list? I think
it was me who spilled the beans to KP - sorry NZ I didn't mean
to! I was trying to get KP to give it up! I only used
you as an example of how dumb it was!
Are
you going to tell me hundreds of real wind energy people did not tell
all these people right to their faces they were "idiots"? Well I
know I did. We were trying to save them from their
stupidity. Trying to save them wasting millions of dollars.
To us, yes, there were all idiots! How much more idiotic do you want someone to be before you come out and say it?
So,
whether you see 1000 geniuses, or 1000 idiots, depends on your point of
view. Only the future can tell us, in many cases, right?
But people with more wind energy experience might know better than the
newbies think. After all, they have to design, build, install,
and run, machines that can do the job, and fix them when they
break. So their perspective is from the school of hard
knocks. Maybe we're looking at 999 idiots and one genius.
Maybe it's 997 and 3. Maybe it's all 1000 and zero. Maybe
it's a few hundred either way. Half-and-half? Way too optimistic,
sorry. Whatever the case, when you start adding in the magazines,
the website people, the pundits, the investors, the lawyers, the
entrepreneurs, besides all the teachers, students, interns, employees,
secretaries, human resources people (groan), office managers, (ahem)
"engineers" (choo choo!) I mean, it's out-of-control, right? Kind
of like Bitcoin, Flexseal, or 3-D printing? Maybe one team is on
the right track, and the rest are lemmings running for various
cliffs. How about that? I'm thinking we're way over 1000 -
of something.
---In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, <santos137@...
As usual, you are dodging the question. How much power have you generated? Not Kitegen, you. Nobody
is asking you to hold the world's record. Just asking what your
results are with regard to power generation, in the art of power
generation, which you claim to have been a top researcher and expert
in, for the last 10 or 12 years or so by this point. Your answer
is 5 Watts? So no progress since 2009? Why? You claim
to have been conducting AWE research all that time. At what
weight did you generate 5 Watts?
---In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, <santos137@...
The
simple question, which you are trying to avoid, is how much electric
power have you generated, and what is the weight, after ten years of
your stated AWE "research"? Your stated 1 kW/kg sounds great.
I'm
not interested in generic statements of how much power a kite is
theoretically exposed to. Yes a kite "can pull". That much
I knew in Indian Guides as a second-grader when we (mostly our dads)
learned to make some pretty cool kites. "Kites can pull".
Remember that folks. Now what? Kite-reeling again? I
think I thought of that by age 8, a "breakthrough thought" that just
about anyone reeling a kite has experienced..
The
challenge in AWE has never been whether the power is available, or
whether the technology exists to fly a kite, or whether a powered reel
can theoretically extract some intermittent power.. The challenge
is to use the wind's energy to generate electricity in an
economically-superior way. The entire charade you've watched for
the least decade is that everyone can see the power is there, but the
skills required to extract it go far beyond the ability to fly a kite.
Still, most "teams" are stuck at kite-flying, really, still mostly just
trying to master flying a kite at all. let alone making much, if any
power, and let alone doing it cheaper than existing wind turbines.
---In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, <santos137@...
In moderate wind, standard power kites easily produce
True, we have become knowledgeable here in key differences of upper wind tech v. conventional wind.
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