Dan of airborne division of SpiralAirfoil  sent in a robust jet stream forecaste and history link:

http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html

Jet Stream Analyses
and Forecasts at 300 mb

The link has been posted as a resource in the KES or AWE Glossary

as well as a tool for the TKT team  where also is a neat new quote from Dave Culp that well-blankets Twin-Kite Technology (TKT), a branch of FF-AWE.

http://www.hdtglobal.com/site_media/pdf/2011/february/T-11-parachute.pdf

Will this say anything to AWECS?

T-10 is being overcome by T-11.
Do the reasons for such progress play in how drag  groundgen AWECS will consider canopies?

Will AWECS for recreational dropping of parachutists have a greater play because of the T-11?

JoeF

 

I'm not sure I'd trust a "groundbreaking" parachute.  ;-)

http://drachenstore.easystorecreator.net/items/publications/drachen-mit-geschichte-p053-detail.htm

for the book.

Peek:

http://books.google.com/books?id=AWMUEbRCtVcC&lpg=PP1&ots=hwI6c9q2he&dq=Drachen%20mit%20Geschichte&pg=PA36#v=onepage&q&f=false

Same in Tiny URL:
http://tinyurl.com/BookPreview2005kites

 

Thanks to Grant at SkyMill for the synergy that brought this new file (all are invited to send LeCornu links and data):

http://www.energykitesystems.net/JosephLeCornu/index.html

There is posted there now a link to a complete Google digitization of Joseph LeCornu's classic kite manual, over 200 pages.

JoeF

Tether tactics thread

Starter (not comprehensive; open for furthering):

• Single tether
• Endless-loop tether
• Double tethering
• Triple tethering
• n-count tethering
• Farm of separated tethers
• High-count-sparse-curtain tethering 
• ganged tethers    Have several separate tethers; then guide or gang those tethers into a close trunk arrangement.  A loss of one tether in the trunk set of tethers leaves the other tethers available for tasks.
   
• gangline, gang line,    "The gangline is the series of ropes, clips, cables, and so on, that attach your team of ________"
   
• Conductive tether
• Conduct mechanical energy
• Conduct vibrations
• Conduct tugs
• Conduct light
• Conduct electricity
• Conduct kitricity
• Conduct chemicals
• Conduct air
• Conduct objects
• Conduct water
• Conduct odor-laddened air
• Conduct sound
• Conduct heat
• Conduct tension
• Conduct waves
• Conduct signals
• Conduct _______
   
• Move tether set
• Axially
• Longitudinally
• Spatially
• Oscillationally
• Compound motions
• Waves in type
• ___________
  
• Material choice
• Simple
• Compound
• Complex
• ________
  
• Form
• Wire
• Rope
• Braided
• Complex
• Tubular
• Flat
• Round
• ________
  
• Handling
• Static no reel
• Static, but reel at very low tension post flight
• Active winching in flygen positioning
• Active winching in groundgen yo-yo generation
• Low-tension power-flight launch for flygen followed by high-tension flygen kiting
• Lattice settling
• Lattice reeling
• Long-drum winching for wide multiliners
• Handling equipment
• Responsible persons
• __________
  
• Safety
• Monitoring aspects
• Inspection (occasional, continuous, smart, visual, log analysis, ...)
• Detachment strategy
• Go-no-go decisions
• Wear
• Failure modes
• Lightning strikes
• Moisture
• Temperature
• UV damage
• Fatigue
• Pollutants
• Defects
• Icing
• Shrouding
• Sealing
• Detensioning
• Guides
• Guards
• Catastropic event awareness and prevention
• Life
• Responsible persons
• _________

Who will be first to sell kitricity via net metering?

Maybe such has already occurred?

Have the meter run backwards and reduce one's electricity bill
by use of an AWE or KES.    Historical first?   Record books? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering

JoeF

Quote from http://homepower.com/basics/wind/ 

"The utility company often provides
intertie-capable meters at no cost."

 

Special path of enthusiasm, art, craft, and education from 2003 to 2011 from traction to flygen:

Dan Tracy of Maui ::

from put-aside Kite for Sail, LLC.
to in-focus Pacific Power Sails

•  http://www.energykitesystems.net/PacificPowerSails/index.html  
• http://www.energykitesystems.net/KiteForSail/index.html
• http://www.energykitesystems.net/HighWindHawaii/index.html
• http://www.pacificpowersails.com/

Welcome Dan Tracy,

JoeF

Welcome Uli Wahl.

Converting wind's kinetic energy includes the making of sound, indeed music. When one specializes on the production of music by kite-energy systems, Uli Wahl stands tall:

Having worked with high altitude high aspect ratio wing aircraft one of the funny failure mode issues is that if a wing falls, as it might in a fire, it will have a glide ratio of about 23:1. So take the operating altitude multiply by 23 and you get a radius for a circle over which debris might fall which must be added to the wind velocity at high altitude. If you pick 10 miles as an operating altitude you can have a minimum radius of 230 miles to worry about not counting wind effects. In my experience it means you have to build into the design automatic systems to break the craft up in the event of a failure so it falls pretty much straight down.

Gosh, we must be taking a huge credibility hit, having more articles
from global warming skeptics than supporters on our site.

Bob

I'd really love to have a way that everyone can officially record their opinion on this issue, as well as many others. Then we can go back and see who was an idiot, who was not, and who stood their ground. The answer will only be found in retrospect.

I'm thinking back to when all cardiologists and officialdom advocated eating margarine to prevent heart disease. They had "science" on their side after all... (a little knowledge"? - press-release-level marketing masquerading as science?)

And of course the astute student of journalism (not science) will note that there has been a ~30 year journalism cycle oscillating between global warming and cooling, going back very reliably for hundreds of years! Do we think that will suddenly stop now? Do we really think that in 30 years we won't be back to "cooling"?

Maybe, just maybe, we might notice that the people who say they believe in "global warming" are the same ones who can never get any working wind energy system in the air. They are the ones who hope "someone else" handles all the details.

That "someone else" would have to understand a lot of complex stuff all taken together, or at least be able to simplify what seems complex to some, and by the same token, may have insights into longer weather cycles and mass hysteria to the point that they do not in fact "believe" in "global warming".

I'm thinking of producing a rock video opera, about a guy who had the solution to the energy crisis, but agency by agency, nobody could do anything about it, except point out missing paperwork or to give the inventor a new assignment. The funny part will be that the hysteria is over global warming while the guy with the solution doesn't believe in the warming (!).

Each agency that first touts its desire to leave no stone unturned to find the solution, then that agency starts taking all the inventor's time, asking for more and more paperwork, while themselves flying all over the world, attending conference after conference, (talking about global warming rather than the solutions) to the point that the inventor realizes that no agency can even see the solution when handed to them, and if they could, they really have no way to act on it.

First, he'd go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office - flying to DC to actually visit and get to know the examiners. Then he'd spend a couple years filing the requisite patents along with a trademark, to clear the runway.

He'd go thru the California Energy Commission to get initial credibility and prove the basic concept with independent power output data.

Then he'd move on to the big agencies: NREL and DOE, with no result and a few wasted years.

Then ARPA-E would show up with great fanfare, and it will look like finally the cavalry has arrived to save the day, til ARPA-E fizzles out with non-participation, distracted into funding idiotic designs for millions of dollars while ignoring the solution, finally and slowly yielding the now-predictable null result.

In one of the final scenes NASA would show up and announce they are putting $100,000 up to once again ignore the solution, pre-announcing that they are confused and will not build anything with their funding (well that gets them out of any expectations of success at least)...

Finally, with peak oil having in fact cause a severe recession, real estate prices collapse, and the inventor is able to suddenly acquire a large facility on 20 acres in a high wind zone in California with the highest concentration of home wind turbines in the world (mostly Bergey 10 kW machines)...

OK that's as far as I've gotten. If anybody has any more ideas for the rock opera, please share! :)
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

PS Global warming - like the current state of AWE, is nothing but a lot of hot air! :) Go fly a turbine!

If we knew the precise reasons for which the investors and the decision-makers hesitate to support awecs, we could more quickly progress.A complete study could be profitable.

Following arguments:                                                                                   

-Challenge of flying wings and management of control;

-Airspace limitations (Mark Moore,NASA)

-Reliability (Fort Felker,NREL)

But also other arguments:

-Difficulties of implementation  increasing with altitude

-Needed new technologies 

-Real output;

-Quality of produced electricity (the power during kite pathes is not equal:see Makani' curves I can confirm with experimentation;the same for groundgens)

-Strengths on structure (not for flygens or reel-out,but maybe a real problem with efficient oscillating or carousel (Massimo?))

-Not enough depletion of fossil sources;

-Not enough climate changes...

PierreB

FlygenKite 

                             

 

Attachments :

Isn't that knowledge what Eve got when she bit into the apple? ;)
kidding!
What is "not enough investment"?
How much has been invested? 10 million? 20 million?
Easily "enough" to have megawatts, or at least hundreds of kiloWatts running on a daily basis, right now, but the money has been mis-spent.

I've tried to explain before, the reality of wind energy.
If you have a system that works, you build it and run it. If you don;t, you don't. Not that complicated.
Remember regular electric wind turbines were deployed by the hundreds of thousands or even millions, long before turbines grew to large proportions. If a design is shown to work at any halfway decent level of output and reliability, there is an immediate market for it somewhere.
When anyone has an AWE system of any size that is useful for any purpose, then you may begin to see wider investment interest begin.
As it stands, I'd say investors are afraid their investment would be wasted pursuing the wrong trail. And they would probably be right.
:)
Doug Selsam

Hi Doug,

Customers in the news for AWECS is a new column on the Stakeholders page:
http://energykitesystems.net/AWEstakeholders/index.html

Any customer in the news may be reported to editor@upperwindpower.com for posting into the shown existing categories or some new category.   Suggestions are welcome as the new collection begins.      If any AWE member has a customer, please report if such matter is not private; thanks. All scales of kite-energy products or energy or service or AWECS  products, energy, or services are invited to be represented.    We show one customer in one category at the moment.   Traction, kitricity, pumping, light, heat, sound, etc. are to be respected.  Special works are honored.

Today's report summary: We are with over 100 suspected OEMs. In addition there are seen about 34 academic centers in higher eduction, one in secondary-school, and three consortia, four AWE boundary entities,  a few publications,  a good bunch of othr stakeholders, and 625 AWE Era founders (and growing in number as YOU inform us).

Advertising is now open for KiteEnergySystems; just be a supporter and have your ad approved (moderate linked logo or photo):  Advertise

JoeF

DaveS,

I give the exemple of http://flygenkite.com :trials schown good qualities like lightness,low cost,possibility of adaptation on all sorts of existant power kites,simplicity,stability,not too heavy consequences in case of crash.Dave Lang's expression:"the Devil is in the details" is pertinent.Now I try to complete the set with existant materials;a hidden problem appears (for exemple impossible accord between voltage,electronics,battery for such technology).So I select elements which can do a working set before taking a final decision on its way on use:making with existant materials for a complete working prototype is the best solution for a first little investments (mine) .My idea is making a working prototype then a commercial prototype without specific making of electronical parts (too difficult and expensive for a commercial prototype,maybe useless before real knowledge of validity of the design) :so heaviest investments do not concern basic technology but massive advertising,distribution,market.

PierreB

John,

Like DaveS I think marketing AWE for small unities (manual version of FlygenKite for example) can allow general launching of AWE.Now I am before two options:1) waiting for important founding to make a specific prototype with specific components.2) the option I adopt:building a prototype with existant elements then allowing a small production,furthering founding for high scale productions.

Last October month,I put trials for general aerodynamic with generator.Now I test the complete device with batteries from several technologies.According to first results it seems that Ni-Cad (now the production is forbidden) and Ni-Mh are easier to implement.

I think now I have all main elements,not yet the quite good disposition.

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

What if your new baby is the wrong species?

Bob:
My tower-based turbines have helped to power a few households around the world this year. That's it, No AWE this year yet.
But I have developed some new ideas, thanks to the discussions here and how much they make me think. So I guess the discussions do have value. Thanks to everyone for discussing.

Still, we gotta build to make it happen. It's only when you build and run turbines that you find out how easy some aspects are and how hard others are to overcome.

Hypothetical turbines seldom fail, while real prototypes almost always fail. And fail and fail and fail. And fail. And fail.

If you haven't given up at that point, you MAY be one of the teeeeeeeny percentage of would-be manufacturers that ends up with a turbine that can actually be sold to customers, who will turn out to be happy customers.
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

Another point:I tell my AWECS is good,yours is bad;you tell your AWECS
is good,mine is bad,etc.What thinks an investor reading the forum:all
AWECS are bad...

PierreB

DaveS,Joe,

Dave Santos wrote:"Despite the fantastic profit potential of the Upper Wind Resource, any investor without expert knowledge of physics, aerospace, energy-production, & economics probably should not invest in AWE."

I agree and push the reflexion:investors should be also actors or managers towards partnerships.

So actually a manager can be more useful than an investor,being a link between actors.For example for FlygenKite  an adapted charger must be studied:the work of a manager could be putting FlygenKite in relation with manufacturers of chargers.

For other systems (grid version of FlygenKite ,numerous concepts of KiteLab,reel-out and others),the manager can ask to grid specialists  what are constraints in regard to an efficient and smooth electric production...

So management could be an intermediate step before heavy investments.

Who can be manager?
NASA seems to make some actions towards a sort of management.
Joe Faust'EnergyKiteSystems is a good tool towards management of partnership.

How working?
I pay the manager and he finds an appropriate company to launch a partnership.

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

Somehow a sales manager for a new kind of flashlight that has never been shown to work comes to mind.

Why would anyone invest in an "industry" that has, so far, only a "vast resource" to talk about? (Well they SHOULD invest, from our viewpoint, but why WOULD they?)

How about the "vast resource" of all the heavy metals likely to be found at the center of the Earth? Gold? A big diamond? How 'bout the "vast resource" of placing solar cells in orbit and microwaving the power to Earth? Hey once that's up and running Wayne German could piggyback the resulting-COTS microwave technology for his flying separated kites with reel-in/reel-out generation, transmitted by microwave to Earth! And wouldn't it seem that the "space elevator" has gotta figure in somehow?

What do these have in common? A vast potential resource, but no known way to harvest it, and expensive schemes with numbers that never come close to penciling out, compared to known technologies.
Pick Rube Goldberg or Jules Verne but acience fiction & entertainment is not the same as something that works, let alone something that has a demonstrated economic advantage, or a demonstrated advantage period.

How 'bout a club dedicated to jumping from the ground up to the top of the Empire State Building? One might point out that nobody has shown how to jump to the top of ANY building yet.

Seems to me that by insisting on capturing the very highest winds, one makes the task just impossible enough that excuses suffice for results - after all who could ask for a successful product with so many hurdles to overcome? That gets the company off the hook - they never have to produce a successful model. Congratulations and welcome back to "the all-talk format". Let's craft another rendering, raise some more money, and spend it on more trade shows and airline tickets.

Who am I preaching to? You? Not myself, as well as anyone else. As someone pointed out, I haven't "flown" anything this year either.

(though we wind turbine people DO use the word "fly" to describe "operating a turbine", as in "What are you flying?")

So I am just as guilty as anyone. This is for all of us including me:
Let's get something in the air! Brawk!
:)
Doug S.

DaveS,

What Doug says is true:more the height of altitude is,more the potential of energy is,more the difficulty to harnessing it is.

PierreB

DaveS,

My opinion is the probable success of both HAWE and AWECS,precisely kite systems for a conjunction of reasons:high ratio lightness/swept area of kites,and computer technologies becoming mature for furthering automatic systems (with human supervision like you tell for Skysails).AWE is now at a crucial point where 100 steps for one stroke is possible with an event like a first commercialisation (FlygenKite,KieLab and other schemes) or a first MW production (KiteGen Stem).Kites are now studied for towing icebergs!

My opinion is also Superturbine is an interesting concept meeting three main parameters:small turbines without gear,wind angle,one only shaft.According to the configurations it is possible to play it with only two parameters.

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com   

DaveS,

I think it is the same project.40 years before Georges Mougin imaginated this project.A successful simulation has just been done IceDream: The Iceberg project .

PierreB

NOTICE of moderator typo error; please replace text to what Doug originally had--from "Not" to here shown "Now":
"Whom am I preaching to? You? Now myself, as well as anyone else."
================================================

Anyone in the world is welcome to post a kite application at group KiteApplications.
Moderation will aim to have posts on a particular application stay in the thread just for that particular applicaiton. Be first to post a new application or first to post some historically known application.  KiteApplications    

Doug wrote:
A very good question, begging comparison of HAWE with other
energy-generating systems. Here just a couple:

Geothermal.
Another vast resource, down instead of up. Tapping this seems even
harder than high altitude winds. You have to drill through kilometers of
ground and "all" you get is hot water. Terrific safety issues. My home
town of Basel, Switzerland had started to build a pilot plant and
stopped when it produced significant earthquakes. And yet, geothermal is
firmly on the agenda as a potential big player. And of course state of
the art in certain places like Iceland, where the resource is nearer.

Fusion.
The ultimate resource. Except for bombs, the implementation always seems
to be 50 years away. And yet, billions are being spent on this.

HAWE:
Has anybody here done the sums for HAWE? I looked through our files at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AirborneWindEnergy/files/HAWP 2009
Conference/ (thanks, Joe!) but may have missed the answers. I would
guess that the main difficulty is the terrific tension required to
support the line and the enormous safety problem should the line come
down. Therefore large factors of safety would be needed, making the line
even more massive than physically required. Approximate figures, anybody?

Cheers, Theo Schmidt