Correctiong image link:

http://energykitesystems.net/Japan/JP62163722.jpg   for shown:

Guinness world record  - 4,422 m
Richard Synergy was in STRATOSPHERE
August 12 "3. To celebrate the accomplishments of those kite pioneers who set the existing kite altitude records.... by raising those records to new heights."
Thats a good day for celebration

http://www.energykitesystems.net//images/graphic333.pdf

 

Do you see the Outleader?  The tensairity testing?  The seaAWE lifted multi-turbine of Selsam? Do you see Peter S. Lee's multiturbine?   Do you see the Tripod Tether cranking generator using lifted worker?  Do you see the Japanese patent clip?  Do you see Rowan University's EHAWK winch on sandy beach area flying a working  something?   Do you see the figure 8 pathing?            Do you see respect for the thinker, no matter his or her funding?  Do you sense the blossoming of the AWE Era in the daily growing involvement?    Do you see "generator" in a wide sense, not just direct electricity, but perhaps pumping for hydro storage?  And more.  Change the world!

Toward the topic:

Waking this morning, I am noticing that the systems used in record altitude flights (or non-record flights!)
converted the wind's kinetic energy and used some of that captured energy to:

• Lift the mass of the flying bodies.
• Lift the mass of the involved tether.
• Strain the mooring points.
• Create some heat in the tether and lifting craft.
• Make some sounds.
• Move the mass of the flying bodies from one position to another.
• Move the mass of the tether from one position to another.
• Set up potential energy in elastic arrangements.
• Set up potential energy in the involved lofted masses.
• Tear apart structures (Wearing down parts? Creating new arrangements?)
• Provide a visual event.
• Effect a filling of some airspace.
• Advance the downwind hazard level.
• Provide a raised platform for potential practical, recreational, scientific, industrial, governance, etc. uses.
• ?

Each category of secondary use or application of the captured wind's energy from altitude might title a gateway  or focus indicator for practical works. Developers working to bring effective use to what may be generated by lofted AWECS form part of the AWE Era community.  

AWECS may involve light generators, heat generators, electric generators, mechnical-motion generators, sound generators, potential-energy generators (solid or liquid or gas pumps; chemical potential energy formers; elastic or spring loading; flywheel loading), ...

Flying an AWECS may be a doorway to problem solutions. What is wanted to be done? Might an AWECS be designed to be part of the solution.  And by employing AWECS solutions, will use of coal and oil be reduced?  Will the quality of life for animals and humans be advanced by the use of AWECS?  

When flying an AWECS for altitude record attempts or other reasons, consider the potentials and perhaps favor a direction to develop.  Be open to scale from micro up through international electric grid feeders either directly or through intermediate energy storage.  When moving air through drying product, then going the electric route may or may not be most efficient. Sculpt solutions that fit well to budget, environment,  and target.

News Release      
from Upper WindPower        27 January 2011

DaveL,

You are correct. The NASA efforts are minuscule. It's just me and Mark M. trying to get up to speed and get funding. We are trying to get more visibility of AWE within NASA so that some research dollars might start flowing. But you know how that goes with big gov. bureaucracies. It's a very slow process.

I also think that a lot of you (but not you DaveL!) are confused about NASA's intentions. It seems that many of you are worried that we are favoring one company, concept, or consortium over another or that we are plotting to create some new AWE invention that we will promote with NASA backing to try to overtake all of you.

None of this is true. What we are trying to do is understand all of the concepts and systems out there and where some technology focus is needed that you guys may not have the funding for (e.g. aerodynamics, controls, materials, structures tests, etc.). That is, use some of YOUR tax dollars to help YOUR AWE efforts. Isn't that what NASA is supposed to do?

Another problem that we face is that energy is not really one of NASA's core charters. It is the Department of Energy's charter. So it is very hard to get research funding b/c it does not fit clearly within any of the areas that NASA currently has a mandate to work on. However, per an obscure agreement/law from the 1970's Carter administration, NASA is supposed to be a contributor to alternate energy research. This is how the three-bladed HAWT came to be the industry standard... lots of NASA work, mostly by NASA Lewis and NASA Langley to optimize the HAWT aero and mechanical systems. But that mode of operation (collaboration of NASA with other agencies on alt. energy) has sort of withered away and we are trying to re-establish it.

So......one of the things that would help me is for you guys to clearly lay out and prioritize what technologies you think your tax dollars could most effectively be spent on to advance AWE. (and DougS, don't say "endorse and fund the SuperTurbine(R)" ;-), tell me how we could use your tax dollars to advance your technology (i.e. better flexible rotating shaft materials, better bouyant lift systems for the downwind end of Superturbine, more efficient turbine aerodynamics for specific application to multi-rotor single shaft turbines, etc.).

The way I look at, I'm funded by U.S. tax dollars (i.e. your money). NASA should be helping you (U.S. companies) with technology needs so that you can stay ahead of the rest of the world (sorry DaveS and Euro-dudes, I love you too, but my paycheck comes from Uncle Sam. Everybody will probably benefit anyway).

DaveN

Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed herein are my own and
do not necessarily state or reflect those of NASA or the
United States Government, nor do they represent the
official position of NASA.

Oh nevermind then. Nice to at least be included. You're right, I did not see "the short list". Thanks for letting me know.
Well let's start building them and flying them if we are serious!
:)
I remember when I had first filed the first patent - I expected to get a call from the scientists at NREL who, I assumed, must monitor the patent system on a daily basis for new viable wind energy concept disclosures. It slowly dawned on me that they probably have nobody even occasionally glancing at the patents, let alone monitoring them on a daily basis.

They "already know" there can be no better wind energy device than the current "pedestal fan" model, so why bother looking? They are now there, really, to advise against trying anything new, since they tried a Darrieus machine once decades ago and found it lacking. To them, that "proved" there is no point trying anything new. Think I'm exaggerating? Nope that's really the lay of the land. That is really what we face: organizations charged with exploring new things that secretly believe there is no point in pursuing anything new, so they try not to.

They are good at the status quo, really knowing their stuff well, and good at incremental advances (say an airfoil that is tolerant of bugs etc.) but they are not equipped to try anything truly new at all, And yet they are the main go-to exploratory agency not only for the U.S., but really for the world, since everybody else assumes if it were any good, the U.S. would have a handle on it.

I'd hope that out of 3 agencies, one will be able to grasp the significance of Superturbine(R), in this case since the rotors can fly, and the turbine is elongated and therefore can reach into the sky.

Oh well NASA here's my cel phone number:
714-749-3909
Here's my e-mail address:
Doug@Selsam.com

Do we really want to do this? Are we really looking for the answer? Or is it enough to find another excuse?
NREL: National Redundant Excuse Laboratories
ARPA-E: Almost Ready to Produce Another - Excuse
NASA??? =:O

Wait a minute: You're saying that our U.S agency is mis-attributing my multi-rotor flying Superturbine(R) concept to a team from another country that has a watered-down single-rotor version, and I'm supposed to be glad about that? Please! This stuff is too predictable!
Also note: Shepard / SkyWindPower has been promoting flying rotors for years. No need to venture outside the country for ripe concepts, so far.

The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today's technology, in 20-40 years,
says Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson 

 

For a complete high-scale working prototype the budget is high.But for 1) analysis and 2) activity of link with  international organizations, the budget is only emails and web publications.

1) Analysis

-Evaluations of different great families of AWECS by exchanges with companies or entities.Sometimes after some amount of search it is seen that such system is too difficult to implement.An example:I want to develop for all scales FlygenKite (Optimization of AWECS of type flygen ) but also OrthoKite (in farm with single kite for each Orthokite).The first is easier making but the second maybe could have a greater potential if "Tensairity" allows strong and light levers (But now the rule for me is to develop what I can make from A to Z,so a little version of FlygenKite). 

-Analysis of specifical technical difficulties from exchanges.

-Analysis of concerned industries:kites and other flight members,control systems, enginnering,grid,smoothing device (hydraulic installation,flywheel,supercapacitors...) for grid.

-Analysis of places of implementation...

Good exchanges between entities and NASA can accelerate reliable results and sometimes avoid useless searches.   

2) Link

NASA could be an active technological link between national,international gov. or non gov. organization,AWE and airplane companies and organizations like AWEIA,AWEC,Boeing, Airbus,"Fondation Hulot"...,and also between personalities like Bill Gates,Fatih Birol (IEA),Hélène Pelosse (IRENA),Pierre Gadonneix (WEC President),Edgar Morin...Such an activity can raise AWE interest.

Both activities with simple emails and publications on web,for low budget.

After detailed studies some ascertainments can be:

- Huge potential for GW scale:AWE itself is a technological revolution for green energy.

- Now too many problems for GW scale but an amount of interesting possibilities.

- What systems for what uses...

PierreB

 

Thanks to the technical and writing skills of Matt Bennett, the Windlift application story is online.

Powering Remote Villages with Revolutionary Airborne Wind Technology Using NI CompactRIO
http://sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-13295

I don't speak German, but if you do, check out this new article on airborne wind in Swiss Megalink Eco magazine, page 14. The pictures are nice; I just wonder what I'm saying?

http://issuu.com/megalink/docs/ml_10-eco

Cheers,
Brian

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I read through the NASA preliminary report by Mark Moore:
I do not see any reference to my work despite my flying the ONLY working prototype flown at either AWE conference.

There's a graphic of a floating, tilting spar buoy with a tilted flying wind turbine with a tail at the top. Please see U.S. Patent 6616402 for the first such tilting spar-buoy with tilted wind turbine, and for an earlier disclosure of a flying gyrocopter wind turbine with a tail.

Please check the facts of this new (for you) realm.
I was up to where the University of Delfts is at with "laddermill", way back in the 1970's, and quickly moved on to the real thing.

I was one of the pioneers of this nascent art.
I've developed a comprehensive I.P. portfolio around the world, including the U.S., and including the federally-registered trademark "Superturbine(R)".

I am the ONLY one pursuing AWE who also manufactures real, working wind turbines for a living. It might be said that I'm therefore the ONLY one pursuing this nascent art, who has a truly PROVEN understanding of wind energy in the first place.

Please check: "Sky Serpent"
Popular Science Magazine Invention of the Year 2008:
http://www.popsci.com/node/21640

Youtube Video of Popular Science Photo Shoot with continuously-operating Superturbine(R) Sky Serpent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOGqURa1a8g

Please check "Discovery Channel" production: "Doug Selsam, Inventor of Superturbine", part of the "Innovation Nation" series
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55HfnGR6kQ

Click here for another "Discovery Channel" segment on "Superturbine(R)", titled "Winding Change":
http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/clip118301#clip118301

Sky Serpent Superturbine(R) Demo (preliminary test of Popular Science Prototype) Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddliyfspmr4

Note: Sky serpent offers continuous unattended operation, continuous uninterrupted steady-state rotation, is scalable, and works NOW, not in 100 years. This is the simplest version possible. Cost was less than $1000. It only gets better from here.

After all that work, and after watching the federal agencies consistently AVOID research into anything truly new for at least a decade now, despite pronouncements of the exact opposite, it would be nice to be included and recognized.

One example: Say you want to fill your blades with helium or hydrogen so they float. Well this is a concept I cam up with years ago before most anyone was thinking of AWE. Buoyant, inflatable blades is patented - U.S. Patent 6616402 - a part of the extensive disclosure I've been assembling for that same decade as it has been ignored.

While I have not been well-funded until recently, when a financial windfall allowed me to back my own effort, I had in fact sacrificed all normal human comforts for that same decade, living in a crime-ridden industrial urban part of Los Angeles, driving old vehicles, doing my own fabrication and mschining, and putting every extra cent into the patents, working in conjunction with a top-5 I.P. law firm.

Would you like to see a productive use of a $75,000 grant, from "The California Energy Commission"?

Here's the link to the Independent Assessment Report from the CEC:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-500-2007-111/CEC-500-2007-111.PDF

Building and testing a new type of wind turbine that gets 7 times the power by combining 7 rotors to drive a common generator using only a single moving part. The sad thing is this stuff is really not that complicated. Who can say they have done more with a 75,000 grant?

I've got a HUGE amount of further I.P. that will actually get this whole thing really going. I can't necessarily publicly telegraph ALL the complete solutions or directions to perfecting this, but I've really got a LOT more of it worked out than you would imagine, just need to build them and fly them at this point, so we can start to find out how they really work and get the bugs worked out of them.

Wish I could say more now but if nobody wants to listen anyway, I should really just get back to work. Anyway, if anyone at any agency is interested in REALLY doing this, they should contact me.
Doug Selsam
Selsam Innovations
14045b Mission St.
Unit A
Oak Hills, CA 92344
(Our facility is POWERED by WIND ENERGY.)
E-mail: Doug@Selsam.com
Website: http://www.FlyingWindTurbine.com
Cel Phone: 714-749-3909

P.S. I also noticed a misspelling typo:
"Lightning" does not have an "e".
(That spelling, using an "e", means "making something lighter".)

Questions for everyone to ask themselves:

A couple of my pet sayings, developed over the years of watching "our nation's greatest minds" do nothing but stagnate with empty talk:

"Getting Ready to Get Ready"
"The All-Talk Format"

Ask yourself: which best describes your current "effort"?

"I am the ONLY one pursuing AWE who also manufactures real, working wind turbines for a living." Hmmmm.

Dan'l

In year 2011, those who choose the "Pro" level of support will have logo-link ad presence on the front page.
See freshened front page. Thanks.

http://www.energykitesystems.net/0subscribepay.html

JoeF

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Joe,

Why the interest in skyline logging carriages? I helped design the radio controls used in many of the carriage systems. Check out Rothenbuhler Engineering at http://www.rothenbuhlereng.com/ttproducts.htm
I have some video of carriages being used in the woods.

How were you imagining them being used to harvest wind energy?

Herb

Welcome Herb to AWE!,

Several of us in former posts and in some files at EnergyKiteSystems, we have been glancing at cableways, cable cars, logging methods, kite-using logging methods, kytoon logging methods, ship-to-shore or shore-to-ship cable ways involving kites, etc.  The rigging arts have caught our attention. And the various ways to use kites to do tasks (that could reduce the use of coal and oil in some instance) often involve fancy rigging.   The sky-carriage  is not using the kites or kytoons, but kytoons are well present in the patents for logging.   

Your cool control devices are new to me. Congratulations on your several patents.    I fully suspect that your expertise will have play in control of some AWECS and AWECS farms in order to sense and control for best production of energy, and to maintain flight, and advance safety in the AWECS farms.   Sensors and their signals from flying AWECS may well need the fruits of your inventions. 

Best to you and yours,

JoeF

 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

 

You are honing your comedy writing skills Dave S., thanks for a funny post!

The strings are covered in the patent too. Also covered (better than just kite-strings?): cross-axis blades woven into a spinning tether that produces power.

Last I knew Dan'l was still working on a 100% solidity rotor using a spiral surface. This was also DaVinci's idea for energy exchange in an open flow, but unfortunately DaVinci chose to ignore the wind turbines that surrounded him, these being the main source of non-animal industrial power in Europe for 500 years by DaVinci's time. Davinci's (non)flying machine, by ignoring what was known, had no chance of flying. Had DaVinci, like Dan'l, opened his eyes and looked around, he'd have seen that the rotor he needed for a flying machine was already in operation next door grinding grain, pumping water, etc. I think if Dan'l were running wind mills let lone selling them, he'd know the performance of a rotor or propeller has been fine-tuned far beyond the literalist early attempts such as spiral.

If today's top minds talking empty talk of AWE would wake up, they would see that the wind turbine rotor and the gyrocopter rotor are one and the same, the obvious confluence of aviation and wind energy.
Shepard understood this. Skywindpower, for one, is viable.

I was glad but somewhat slkeptical to hear that "NASA was responsible for the 3-bladed design we see today". Reminds me of Al Gore "inventing" the internet. Anyone else make that mental association?

I'm sure models like the Jacobs etc, that used 3-blades to generate electricity across the U.S. back before NASA was even called the NACA and had expertise developing airfoils, propellers, rotors, etc., had nothing to do with it.

And the fact that basically every builder of wind turbines, from homebuilderrs like Hugh Piggott and the Dans at Otherpower.com, to all books on wind energy and all real wind turbine companies, large and small, quickly experiences and identifies the well-known smoother rotation of 3-bladed rotors versus 2-bladed rotors, that has nothing to do with it either.

Wake up call: The main turbine type that's been standard in most wind farms for the past 25 years has been the simple "Danish Style" turbine with no fancy controls, no fancy anything, just a constant speed, constant pitch, solid operating pedestal fan. The Danish Style was the only successful one for so many years, because all the fancy crap from everywhere else, including here, could not stand up to the punishment, and was not reliable. Only newer, more modern turbines have the sophisticated controls, while the old, simple ones are still the reliable workhorses.

Know what would impress me?
And maybe it's true for all I know?
I'd like to see a story where NASA got involved early on in wind energy, quickly surmised that AWE was the way to go, tried to convince the industry that AWE was the future of wind energy, and was laughed at but held their ground and were eventually fired. That would impress me.

Doug S.
http://www.flyingwindturbine.com

The gyrocopter has the worst mileage in aviation.  If you take a standard angled-shaft style boat drive setup for a human-powered propeller, and use a bendable shaft, the propeller in use will line up normal to the flow, continuously bending the shaft, it has such a fight to run at an angle.  I'm sure Doug could increase his output with flexible hubs on his props.

Doug wrote:
...
You certainly do seem to be active, thanks for the summary.

...
I'm not sure this was a good idea. While others waste money on
conferences, I can't see how all your I.P. is going to help you. Most
good ideas are there, they just need to be implemented, not talked
about, as you say, or patented, as I say. You could have simply
published, and lived a bit more comfortably. A patent *is* a
publication, but the way they are used these days, is for fighting the
competition and stifling innovation. Of course there are a few success
stories, but on the whole the patent industry mainly benefits lawyers.

...
The basic idea of buoyant, inflatable blades is nothing new. I published
something on this thirty years ago. Soon after I worked for Keith
Stewart who made this the center of his business a few years later. His
blades wern't very efficient (best drag angle maybe 20°) and they were
used for sailing and lifting, not direct power generation. But they were
the most effective way for this in very light winds. They also worked OK
in moderate winds, but ground handling became increasingly adventurous
in stronger winds. I think Keith Stewart later also worked on AWE for a
bit, but know little about it.

Theo Schmidt

Hey Theo:
Thanks for your post. To me the patent system has the main function of ascertaining who came up with what, when, since with most good idea, "everyone" claims to have "thought of it first", after they see someone else doing it.

My feeling was that filing patents for solutions to widely-known problems was the way to introduce solutions in a form that technologists and business people could sink their teeth into and make happen.

Life is a learning experience and I now realize that most people and agencies do not do what they purport to do at all and mostly just want to show up for work and get a guaranteed paycheck. It is always easier to find some fault in an idea, even to the point of ignoring the idea and focus on endless peripheral particularities such as the level of development a business plan, energy storage, or even simply declare going in that wind energy is worthless in the first place so why bother actually DOING anything anyway as we've seen recently.

One the other hand, we've lots of enthusiastic kite-flyers who have "felt the power" and are eager to contribute, but have no experience with wiind energy, that involves something called a "rotor", highly developed over 3000 years. Oh and the "rotor" happens to be identical to a gyroscope rotor.

So this is where we get to hear that gyrocopters are inefficient, and someone who has probably never even seen a wind turbine up close, or someone else who has merely wasted millions of dollars hiring Ph.D.s to fly kites, is given the same credence as someone who's been building, testing, selling, and servicing wind turbines for 10 years, inventing AWE for 30 years.

At some point, all I can do is maintain that I've got the answers and invite those looking to come and see "what's up".
One can't "push a rope" (though using a Superturbine(R)torque tube/tether to transmit power is perhaps the closest one might come TO pushing a rope...

OK, that is my daily affirmation.
Happy flying! Hope everyone's device makes great power today!
:)
Doug Selsam

Translation?

http://energykitesystems.net/KiteGen/KiteGenNewspaper.pdf

 

First blush:  I think the claim is over the top, as energy in many forms, including electricity, has been produced by AWECS in earlier decades.  However, the headlining excitement might boost the AWE program. Not sure.  

THE FIRST KITE IN THE WORLD CAPABLE OF PRODUCING ENERGY

In Sommariva Perno KiteGen experimentation has started.


It is 50 m^2 big, it weights just 12 kg, and it is the first kite in the world to produce energy [in industrial scale]. [...] Data for the first tests will be used to check the control software. At the standard configuration, the kite will produce 1 MW of energy with 7 m/s wind speed. It will fly at above 1000 m from the ground. [...] On the ground a higly technical plant is able to move according to wind direction and speed. [...] It is expected that the plant will work for 6000 h a year. There is more: it is being built two new plants with kites much bigger, for 3 MW. [...] All the generators will work in cooperation.
[...] Michele Torasso the Sommariva mayor: "... Kitegen efficiency is much higher then photovoltaic panels, and higher then other renewable sources"

What would happen if everyone were forced to live up to the hype of their press releases? Like OK, you've now got a contract to produce these megawatts you said you could produce! Oh you can't really produce any electricity? Oh darn you're getting fined for not meeting your PPA! You're bleeding money! Wow you're being sued for lying. Your investors are up in arms. Oh wait, you say, "It;s only a press release!"
Oh yes - that's right.
"There's actually nothing whatsoever to that press release" you protest...
Aha - so when feet are held to fire, once again (as usual), THERE IS NO THERE, THERE.
Anyone can SAY they have the answer.
We in the real wind turbine world are SO USED to this.
ALMOST EVERY SINGLE AWE idea promoted is just one of these typical, ill-advised, press-release without any substance, proven-to-not-work big-yawn false trails from the previous world of regular wind power, where millions of installations make power EVERY DAY (or every windy day). Guess what they ALL use?
Propellers.
How hard is it to get a regular propeller to survive years of strong winds?
VERY HARD.
How hard is it to get kites to hold together in years of strong winds? EVEN HARDER.
How easy is it to get power from a propeller? VERY EASY (simply connect to a generator - geee, ya think?
How easy is it to get a kit to generate electricity? NOT EASY.
Is there any precedent for kites in wind energy?
YEs the 2000-year old Greek Islands design used a ring of kites, and was superceded: The kites became longer, stiffer, were given airfoil profiles on a frame, and for the last 1000 years ghave been called "blades".
To me it is unbelieveable: You can find A THOUSAND press releases like this regarding "new wind turbines".
Not a SINGLE ONE of them is true.
I've had 10 years of these same claims in regular wind energy and now all the hucksters are going airborne.
You can listen to nonsense, or you can get on board with the future.
Doug Selsam
http://www.FlyingWindTurbine.com

Joe:
This AWEA Conference WindPower 2011 is within walking distance of our old headquarters, and an hour's drive from our new headquarters.

Here's a VIDEO of a Superturbine(R) demo for NREL at Windpower 2008 in Los Angeles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exjjMm_h8r4

NREL did take a look at it, but would not climb in to see the instruments. "My wife wants me home safe" was the reason. I mean, who really races about advanced turbine designs anyway, right?

I remember sitting in the FIRST AWE conference in Oroville...
Outside spun 2 machines:
1) A conventional 2-bladed wind turbine in the distance, powering someones farm or home. Out of the entire conference, nobody noticed or commented on this machine.
I'd try and bring it up in conversation, such as "I wonder what brand that machine is" or "I wonder what the nameplate capacity is in kW" or "How do you think whatever that machine is does in this wind resource?" or even "How do you think the wind resource around here is?". I could not find anyone who had any interest in a wind turbine, or any knowledge to discuss it in any meaningful way.
2) My Superturbine(R) prototype, continuously running outside, in a light wind, spinning a generator, pushing juice into a battery bank at such times as the wind picked up a bit.

Inside, despite a single-rotor wind turbien and a multi-rotor wind turbine running outside, despite the fat that 20 propellers were flying outside the window, spionning a generator, I sat thru 2 days of discussions of kites flying at various altitudes, tethered together and producing microwaves beamed down to Earth to power our civilization. As though any of this were the least bit realistic, for a thousand reasons, starting with the fact that the conbcepts were questionable, and culminating with the fact that no single piece of this complicated AWE puzzle was developed or in use...

Meanwhile the two turbines spun on outside...
"Propeller-based!" the label is affixed. "The whole industry is propeller-based!" they protest, trying to pass off nonperformance by redirecting attention to birds, a vast wind resource, global warming, etc.

OK back to the conference: Think of it like say you'd lost your keys. You've lost your keys and a hundred people are trying to find them.
NREL is looking "under the streetlight" - they will not look in new places that are unknown or not yet well-lighted.
ARPA-E, being committee-driven, has developed a comprehensive program to look in all places where the keys are unlikely to be, or where everyone has looked before (The multi-million doolare wasted effort of "FloDesign" - another "Professor Crackpot" red herring turbine that combines ALL the typical newbie mistakes into one is a good example.)
Meanwhile I'm standing there going:
"Here are the keys! I've found them. They're right here, see?" As I hold the keys up. That's what I did at the first AWE conference.
I held up the keys everyone was looking for. But to judge from the non-reaction to the working wind turbine in the distance, not many people understood what a set of keys really looks like.

If everyone is looking for the lost keys,
"I've found them!"
"Here they are!"

See all those propellers, going up into the sky, spinning that generator? (Spinning reserves)
Is anyone interested?

Doug Selsam
http://www.FlyingWindTurbine.com

FLARM and PowerFLARM

"PowerFlarm will be introduced in the US in April 2011. "
http://www.powerflarm.aero/  "PowerFLARM integrates ADS-B 1090, FLARM and obstacle avoidance in one tiny device." FLARM       (flight alarm system)     

• wiki  
• http://www.flarm.com/product/index_en.html
• http://www.gliderpilot.org/FlarmHome

Kitefarm units massively communicating with each other and avoiding collisions? Satellites coming to play and serve some AWE needs?  PowerFLARMS integrated with KCU (kite control units)?   Power for PowerFLARM instrument supplied by RATs on the AWECS?  Obtain the robust radio control from Hainey & Associates?  This is beyond my personal experience of youth with ham call of KN6GRH or KN6EOF (dad).  Collison avoidance in crowded kitefarms will have its challenges and solutions.   Other aircraft will see our AWECS in various ways.   Visual, transponders, PowerFLARM, ...?     Clouds will waft by unmanned AWECS elements. Night-flying AWECS for sure ...

CAUTION:  Mostly this will seem off topic, however, in time the conference  series in China just might embrace the aerial works of AWECS into their "aerial work equipment"   :

AWE 2011 : China International Aerial Work Equipment Exhibition 2011

CAREFUL:  Do they realize how AWECS should be part of their "aerial work equipment" ????????????

Although the conference is not part of  our AWE sector, perhaps something could be done to change things. Look up and work.

Sorry for the claims over the top we aren't the authors of the text.
Obviously It isn't the first kite capable to produce energy, even our first prototype was capable of production in 2006.
Another due correction, with the current (small and inefficient) kites and at 7m/s we would start to produce some energy, certainly not 1 MW.
Massimo

 

Jan. 21, 2011:    Jeroen Breukels was scheduled to defend his PhD

 on An Engineering Methodology for Kite Design on 21 January 2011

at 10:00h at the Aula of Delft University of Technology.  

Abstract of thesis  along with a special viewer and link on that page for the dissertation.        

Big file:  PDF   53 MB     Pages: 288.

Congratulations, Jeroen; way to fly!

It's excruciating to watch the newbies drag themselves through 2000 years of wind turbine design, still stuck around 2000 years ago, trying to re-discover the basics...

History of Wind Energy:
1) I guess trim drag would be the drag of a kite having to steer itself in circles, when it COULD have just been attached at a central point (called a hub). Now you're up to 2000 years ago in the Greek Islands, where they had a ring of triangular kites or sails attached by sticks to a central hub.

2) Then apply more kites to the struts til they are solid kite to the center, add airfoil profiles, and you have low aspect ratio (long) kites, and you're up to 1000 years ago in Europe.

3) Lower the pitch and Harden them for long term, high-speed use and you're now at 100 years ago in Denmark and America, when we first started spinning generators.

History of AWE:
1) Imagine sails pulling upward, and you're up to where I was in the mid-late 1970s, until I read my first book on wind energy.

2)Transition to cross-axis spinning rotors took place in the late 1970's as I began to comprehend the realities of wind energy. I quickly saw that a stack of spinning rotors would make more power while helping to lift itself, also providing steady-state rotation for spinning reserves, while remaining simple (1 moving part).

3) Early 2000 decade: Patents filed

4) Mid-2000 decade: Prototypes built and flown for Popular Science (PopSci Invention of the Year 2008), Discovery Channel, first AWE Conference...

Joe:
Why do I say "excruciating"?
Well, are we serious about wind energy or not?
Do we really want to do it or is it just a game for bloggers to argue about their silly fantasies, and bureaucrats to garner an endless stream of funding to show consistent null results at our expense?

You're doing a FANTASTIC job of agglomerating all thought on AWE.
Unfortunately, most of what is put forth is misguided and actually an impediment to progress.
I've tried to explain that after 10 years of this SAME EXACT dynamic on the "regular" wind turbine sites (be sure what I mean by "regular": They WORK), I'm simply not going to take the endless stream of nonsense lying down.
Yes I will die on this hill.
We have crackpots galore in regular wind energy too - some of them are VERY eloquent in their writing, like Dave S.

These are actually the worst, since most people unfamiliar with the art will confuse eloquent writing styles with factual knowledge.
The idea that wave-like motions or oscillations can provide wind energy has been beaten to death for 3000 years and NEVER been found advantageous. There is NOTHING like a rotor, with a hub, spinning: It can spin forever and never wear out, with no guidance needed - it just does the job, period, which was why it was developed.

If other methods could work well, they would have already. The fact is there is a standard mechanism for energy exchange in an open flow, it's called a wind turbine rotor, it is the same as a gyrocopter rotor, and that is all one needs to know to do AWE. It is EASY EASY EASY to do AWE, NOT hard hard hard. There's NOTHING TO IT.
It's a PIECE OF CAKE!!! Why try and make it hard? Why ignore the simple machines that have been proven to work?

The oscillating cycles ec. are just ways to create large amounts of wear and early failure, in addition to being less efficient in the first place!.
Double-blades etc. - all crackpot insanity from regular wind energy.
As I've pointed out, without expertise in wind energy, there's nobody on this list and pretty much nobody in this "industry" who even has A CLUE about wind energy in general, LET ALONE how to generate electricity LESS expensively by getting it airborne. Note: LESS expensively - hello Rube Goldberg & Dr. Suess...
Less-Expensively implies LESS material used per watt output, LESS complexity, Less fabrication cost, to sweep a given area, NOT more material and more head0scratching complexity. We KNOW how to make energy from the wind and we KNOW ho to make flyiing machines, and the two dovetail neatly at the gyrocopter. HELLO. WAKE UP.

No matter how many resources are applied to AWE, if they are MISapplied they do more harm than good.
Example: NASA gets involved and mistakes Magenn for a legitimate AWE effort, mentioning an UNWORKABLE technology in their report, while NOT mentioning a guy here who was ahead of Delfts as a teenager, who can build a steady-state AWE turbine anytime with 1 moving part, in his sleep.
Who gets the credibilty?
Why NASA of course.
Why?
Because they put a man on the moon 40 years ago.
Nevermind that they have already demonstrated that they are:
1) 100% ignorant of wind energy, evidenced by their mention of Magenn and their prediction that Chinese drag-based machines will be the first to dominate.
The comment "excruciating" must be taken in context of the previous post wherein I explained WHY it was so excruciating.
Joe if there is a destination and a proven road to get there, why keep asking where the road is?
Why keep talking about a million ill-advised paths to the destination when we have a proven path NOW that solves all the problems the others have?
Why?
Because It's just little old me and not NASA, NREL, ARPA-E or some other wizard-of-oz-esque do-nothing smoke-and-mirrors tax-funded recreational picnic with the usual zero results?
Facts are facts and results are results.

I suggest people who want to move forward in this field get with the leader and that is Superturbine(R).
Doug Selsam
http://www.USWINDLABS.com