Digest

Messages in AirborneWindEnergy group. AWES3490to3540

Page 50 of 79.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3490	From: dave santos	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3491	From: Dan Parker	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Forum Reminder Re: [AWECS] Re: Spiral Airfoil Turbune Advant

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3492	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3493	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: New wiki: http://airbornewindenergy.wikispaces.com/

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3494	From: dave santos	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: New AWE Science?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3495	From: Doug	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3496	From: Doug	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: New AWE Science?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3497	From: dave santos	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Kite Hybrid Power Plant (Retrofit Notes)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3498	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3499	From: dave santos	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: New AWE Science?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3500	From: North, David D. (LARC-E402)	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Hybrid Power Plant (Retrofit Notes)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3501	From: dave santos	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Hybrid Power Plant (Retrofit Notes)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3502	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3503	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3504	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3505	From: Theo Schmidt	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Wiki [was: Re: [AWECS] Re: 2 online wind groups]

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3506	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3507	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: Wiki [was: Re: [AWECS] Re: 2 online wind groups]

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3508	From: dave santos	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3509	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3510	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3511	From: dave santos	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3512	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3514	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3515	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3516	From: dimitri.cherny	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: DoE grant winners?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3517	From: Dan Parker	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3518	From: Dave Lang	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3519	From: dimitri.cherny@yahoo.com	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3520	From: Theo Schmidt	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3521	From: simon_0987	Date: 5/1/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3522	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 5/1/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3523	From: DavidC	Date: 5/1/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3524	From: Doug	Date: 5/3/2011
Subject: Re: New AWE Science?

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3525	From: dave santos	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: 1) Looping KitePlane on Leader 2) Radially Pumped Isotropic Kite

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3526	From: dave santos	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3527	From: Dan Parker	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3528	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3529	From: dave santos	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3530	From: Joe Faust	Date: 5/7/2011
Subject: Golden Spiral Turbine

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3531	From: dave santos	Date: 5/8/2011
Subject: Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3532	From: Darin Selby	Date: 5/8/2011
Subject: Re: Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3533	From: dave santos	Date: 5/8/2011
Subject: Re: Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3534	From: dave santos	Date: 5/9/2011
Subject: Scaling Up by Aerodynamic Porosity

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3535	From: dave santos	Date: 5/9/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3536	From: Dunne, Matthew	Date: 5/9/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3537	From: dave santos	Date: 5/10/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3538	From: Doug	Date: 5/10/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3539	From: joe_f_90032	Date: 5/11/2011
Subject: Mega-Scale Free-Space Polymer Engineering

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3540	From: DavidC	Date: 5/11/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3490	From: dave santos	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: 2 online wind groups

Doug,

You have been asked this so many times- PLEASE honestly acknowledge the pioneering AWE companies with real products for sale. There are several players with offerings in Marine Airborne Energy (from ships to kayaks) & several players with Personal AWE products clearly able to charge a phone or notebook. Even the booming decades-old kite-sport market fails your limited idea of an airborne power product. Look in the mirror as you cheaply denounce those who seem helpless to show any airborne energy product. By your logic, a discussion group on powered aviation around 1902 would somehow deserve your abuse for not meeting your pet criteria of established market over future potential. The AWE field is actually a wonderland of new ideas & directions & you seem just to lack the minimal acuity & patience to find it so.

Note that the thread you unhelpfully hijacked was about Wiki collaboration, which you did not bother to mention. Even the conceptual possibility of collaboration was avoided in the soured text. Its been supposed you hope to be censored on basic netiquette so as to then denounce list moderators of technical censorship of the rotating tower as an AWE concept. The moderators long ago resolved to stymie this outcome, but its been at a terrible cost in tedium. As with Dan'l, we eagerly await any flight test results you can share,

daveS

PS We do agree on the list problem of those who have only one ("all roads lead to") idea. A pro does not to fixate & sink on fringe ideas, but is always seeking a better ideas for best-practice.

From: Doug <doug@selsam.com

Funny thing is I'm involved in 2 wind energy groups online:

1) A forum for working wind energy home systems:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/small-wind-home/
Talk is restricted to working models, no "pet theories" allowed, no "self-promotion" allowed.
This group has gone from being VERY interesting, in years past, when there was no censorship, to being 100% predictable and boring now.

Newbies ask the same questions over and over, while jaded veterans sometimes bother to answer. These jaded veterans now grudgingly maintain their entrenched biases year after year and nothing new emerges, for the most part. It turns into a bitch session whenever the latest scam turbine enters the scene: The latest was Dyocore, that got the California rebate system shut down by claiming more power than the wind contained at their diameter.

It turns into a newbie promoter vs veteran skeptic debate every time. Over the years we've seen most, if not ALL, of the concepts discussed here, dissected and analyzed for ground-based use, rooftop mounting, or tower-based use. Most of the concepts produce so little energy as to be almost unmeasurable, like the spiral concept, which was laughed out of the group for a year, despite insistent protest by its promoter. They used the term "helix" rather than "spiral".
http://www.helixwind.com/en/

Note: in this OTHER group, discussion is pretty much restricted to systems that work, and discussions of the challenges to keep them working.

2) THIS group, which is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. Thanks for this great group, which is open-minded so we can share our thoughts without censorship. BUT, remember, without any sort of requirement that the discussion relate to products that routinely work on a daily basis, or at least imitate those that do, this discussion goes into no-man's land. Anyone can just claim any sort of nonsense and it gets the same billing as reports of systems that make power.

I'm super-thankful for this group, but we have to also realize that the openness also allows complete nonsense to enter the room in a big way.
It's funny that there is really no effective product available in the AWE field that one can buy and run, so there's no "baseline" to weigh concepts against. But one can weigh against working wind turbines, as we do still purport to improve the art of wind energy, of which AWE is a subset.

Be aware that many (most?) concepts discussed here are very old and they never went anywhere. I've got stacks of old patents for spirals, for example, and the best I could discern from them was that they tend to untwist into a flat sheet. Rather than making power, if one actually constructs a lightweight version and runs it, the first thing they see is it naturally de-twists. The solution seems to be adding extra guy wires to get it to hold its shape, by the end of their patents.

Other than that, the concept is known as an "Archimedean Screw" and was known before Christ for pumping water uphill in an enclosed channel for irrigation. Working Horizontal-axis wind turbines using less solidity than a solid spiral were already in use all around Archimedes, in the Greek Islands, since this was the Greek period of wind energy and Archimedes was in Greece. Good to take a look at old ideas but remaining fixed on them is not productive. The spiral was not an improvement 2200 years ago and remains so today.

The funny thing about these groups: Certain people tend to champion a specific cause, or "pet theory" forever, whereas other crackpots CHANGE their pet theory every few years, as both the debunkers and the crackpots themselves become weary of repeating the same tired arguments over each others' heads after a few years. Usually the crackpots never actually address the arguments the debunkers make, or their arguments make no sense. The jaded veteran debunkers by the same token are not very open-minded if a solution DOES emerge. Actualy some of the most opinionated veteran debunklers took over the forum a few years ago and basically won't let anyone disagree with them.

The main guy in charge is actually AGAINST wind energy, preferring solar, AND has a built-in conflict of interest since he's an editor at Home Power magazine. His ban on "self-promotion" is designed to steer paid advertising toward his magazine. He lives in the forest and constantly insists that towers need to be over 100 feet to get above the trees, even while many list participants live in the desert with no trees or on the water, or on a hill etc.

Very interesting to transition between one group with ONLY working turbines and NO pet theories to the other with NO working products on the market and ALL pet theories.
Have a BEAUTIFUL day!
:)
Doug S.
http://www.selsam.com

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3491	From: Dan Parker	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Forum Reminder Re: [AWECS] Re: Spiral Airfoil Turbune Advant

Hi David,

              Thank you for the respect and respectful letter. I have understood what you've been say'n about how well the SpiralAirfoil or something like the SpiralAirfoil may be better in the upper atmo, and I do get the ROI ends of things, to me that was a given. I understand also of what your say'n bout soft wings vs. rigid.
               David I am one man on a very tight budget. There are many directions that will be addressed in time. Firstly to get the ground based SpiralAirfoil perfected to a hi and reliable degree and market it, then other projects will be on the table, one of them being the Airborn concept that we all are exploring here. I am glad I had time this past winter to work on the lightweight SpiralAirfoil to see if it was a valid concept and wither I should accept your challenge at a contest. Again today we have many more materials then ever before to play with, I want to explore the possibilities, the potential results could be worth the effort.

                                                                                                                              Thanks Dan'l

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: santos137@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:20:23 -0700
Subject: Re: AWE Forum Reminder Re: [AWECS] Re: Spiral Airfoil Turbune Advantages

Dan'l

The new great news is that you have a rotor concept fit for flight, but please forgive anyone for thinking after two years that you were not really trying to fly. Regarding what is a heavy rotor- its any design considerably heavier than a standard skinny "propeller" form for comparable power out. ROI is not the same thing, but is strongly driven by weight aloft.

Also keep always in mind that a proper engineer is ethically obligated to try present all sides of an issue, while a common marketer just puts the best face on. So if one likes the advantages of soft wings (a lot) there is still an obligation to concede known shortcomings, like a probable shorter working life than a rigid wing (that does not crash before the soft wing wears out).

This thread started with a narrow conjecture that a low AR turbine (similar to yours) in the lowered Re tropopause might persist better in lulls than a high AR competitor, not a general finding of Spiral Airfoil's fitness. It should not be used to rehash the tired debate or market the idea, its time for action to decide old issues.

We eagerly await your flight test results & hope for your sucess,

daveS

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3492	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

I've gone ahead and started a wiki:

http://airbornewindenergy.wikispaces.com/

Copying and pasting now might do wonders.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3493	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: New wiki: http://airbornewindenergy.wikispaces.com/

See if you like it.

If you don't, you can make it better ;)

Would you like to be an administrator or moderator? Please tell me and I'll make you one.

You can make and edit pages without having to register.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3494	From: dave santos	Date: 4/27/2011
Subject: New AWE Science?

Its nice how closely kites mesh with the themes of the upcoming Morphological Computation conference linked below. Who says AWE Theory is of scant scientific interest? This summary touches on the deep affinities, with conference key-words in bold-

===================================

Morphological Computation is a hot branch of computer science & robotics dealing with the logic of shape, material, & energy as a natural outgrowth of classic Thermodynamic, Information, & Computation Theories. Toy kite autonomy is an ideal example of embodied morphological processing. Wind-driven ram-air inflated kites & kite latticework offer Soft Robotics it highest current scaling potential. Granular Jamming morphing tech can be done ultra-lightly with balloons as the particle medium, even with lifting gas. Wind is a very accessible experimental Reservoir Computing medium using kites as the wind-interface. A wind situated kite acts as a Liquid State Machine, accepting Chaos as input with a nicely processed semi-linear output. Cross-linked kite arrays are Amorphous Computers with Echo-State features capable of fully linear output. AWE Self Assembly airborne methods were pioneered over a hundred years ago by Sam Cody when he took the ancient line climbing " messinger" device re-engineered to process position & sequence along a line. Of course its the essential nature of a kite to have several programmable input channels for the kiter to fuss with for systematically processed output. The heart of kite energy is its thermodynamic/information theoretic dimension. AWE kite arrays are Smart Material on a grand scale, configurable as a Turing Reactor able to mimic BZ Reactions & Cellular Autonoma, with Utility Scale Power as output. Sweeet!

International Conference on Morphological Computation

coolIP

(note: coolIP is just a later rename of fairIP, there is no particular distinction)

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3495	From: Doug	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Dave S.
***See my responses below:

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3496	From: Doug	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: New AWE Science?

Dave S. Could you insert the word "intergalactic" to make it more impressive? You seriously accuse others of tedium? Ever heard of the word "blathering"? sheesh! :) Doug S.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3497	From: dave santos	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Kite Hybrid Power Plant (Retrofit Notes)

The Forum is aware of a wonderful potential to retrofit existing power plants as kite power hybrids. More notes-

General-

In principle any power plant based on driven generators can somehow be made to accept kite power on its generator shafting. Industrial megascale COTS components are available for most of the added hardware.

Some situations are more ideal, others marginal. Favored plants are those whose legacy power can be throttled & banked as the wind blows, especially where fuel is limited by supply or price. Good potential exists for gas turbine & hydroelectric where water conservation is urgent. A nuke, by contrast, only needs a boost during infrequent shut-down.

The .5 to (soon) 1 Gigawatt single generator class shows greatest enconomy of scale; this is the ultimate market for kites to enhance. The kite hybrid concept works at all scales with similar mechanical designs.

Existing capital investment in generators & distribution is leveraged. Kite Hybrids is an ultra low capital cost (by unit energy) strategy, with fast pay back possible.

New Kite/Gas-Turbine Hybrid plants look promising for adding new capacity.

Kite arrays will be located almost invisibly high over populations, if safety is high, whereas wind towers are mostly banished to remote unpopulated sites, raising distribution capital cost & transmission loss. 2025 is a good timeline to real HAWE

The hybrid concept only works well with kite Super Density concepts that minimize sprawl. The AWECS of choice is quite open, ranging from arrays of semi-captive varidrogues to rotors & kiteplanes rated around 1Mw.

All other AWE concepts involve high capital investment in new generators & transmission lines, at far smaller capacities.

Mechanical Issues

The kite power retrofit generally involves adding mechanical input to the legacy generator shafting. A sprocket clutch added on the shaft is turned by a drive chain to provide about an 8 to 1 step-up stage & allow the power to be brought into the plant by the chain passing thru the wall. Disconnecting rotating parts or mixing power from the legacy source is a design trade.

Wire rope cableways rated at about 10Mw each are proposed to aggregate power from surrounding kitefarm cells to an array of spragged bullwheels on the chainwheel axle. Bullwheel gearing at the kite field would be another ~8 to 1 stage & be the wire-rope loop interface to UHMWPE flying line. The kiteline could be a continuous power loop or pulse spraggs.

Kite Power regulation would mostly be done by kite modulation. Flywheeling of the the ground based aggregation should be enough for a plant's need for smooth input.

Power can be designed to run both ways & the power plant could drive the "winch-towing" of kite arrays in tight patterns to persist aloft thru calms, eliminating dedicated anchor winches.

Single membrane wing-mills 300m long could potentially approach 10Mw capacity & directly drive cableway fan-in the the power plant. Other known concept units seem scale limited to a couple of Megawatts & so would be needed in greater numbers, but the best ROI AWECS principle is still uncertain.

Specific MegaScale kite array concepts & considerations will be treated separately (soon).

coolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3498	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, simon_0987 <no_reply@...

=============================================

Some challenges:

Simon is not identifying himself or herself yet.
As meta-mager of the wikispace, the unidentified-yet Simon could erase the wikispace singly, after much investment by many people.
The Basic Plan allow Wikispaces to put ads on the page.
The formatting is limited as opposed to the HTML pages of EnergyKiteSystems.
Caring persons have to watch out daily, if not hourly, to check for abuse. One can be notified of all changes, as I have personally configured; but I will not be available to moderate so much.
Easily the wikispace could grow to duplicate EnergyKiteSystems, as my pages are free for such duplication. Indeed, if anyone posts something new in the wikispace, then I will integrate that information into topic files and glossary in EnergyKiteSystems. So, duplication will occur deeply.
The Basic Plan is limited to 2 GB. Then what? Price goes from free to payment as WikiSpaces is a professional service finally. Who will then pay? Simon, yet unidentified, will you be paying the upgrade after 2 GB to Super plan?
Why did Simon list only one company when starting the Wiki? He listed link only to one company. Hmmmm. I posted all known companies in an edit, as invited. But, if Simon unreachable-yet unidentified is in control and has high favor to just one company, then what might happen to the wikispace? Not sure.
Simon came into AWE group with a first post that was critical of the group structure. OK. Then he formed a wikispace without consensus from the community. OK, maybe, maybe not. But the one-company mention and the aggressive insertion does not feel friendly, IMHO.
At the same time period, PERHAPS NOT RELATED: a severe hack of one of our community's email was hacked and used to spam many AWE community members's e-mail with identity theft.

JoeF

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3499	From: dave santos	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: New AWE Science?

Dave S. Could you insert the word "intergalactic" to make it more impressive?

OK, how about-

"Perhaps the answer to the riddle of the cosmic Dark Energy that is tugging the intergalactic fabric apart involves an unknown kite-like traction process by (mem)branes & superstrings."

=======================

Sorry about the drive-by; your delayed-reply email invite only came after i had passed your location. Joe even thought you might not invite at all. I was carrying a lot of cool AWECS demo stuff to show around Austin, but you can easily duplicate any of it for yourself from the many shared videos & jpgs.

daveS

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3500	From: North, David D. (LARC-E402)	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Hybrid Power Plant (Retrofit Notes)

DaveS,

You said…

“Kite arrays will be located almost invisibly high over populations, if safety is high, whereas wind towers are mostly banished to remote unpopulated sites, raising distribution capital cost & transmission loss. 2025 is a good timeline to real HAWE”

Don’t count on it (at least not in U.S. airspace). The FAA will never cordon off volumes of national airspace for private use, which is what would be required for high altitude commercial AWE. The NextGen airspace plans projected for rollout in 2025 have nothing in them for AWE.

I know this is rather depressing news, but there still may be some wiggle room for AWE regulations below 2000 feet which we (NASA) are working on with the FAA. But again, this will be a very long term process (10-20 years at best). Take a look at the UAS (UAV) story in the U.S.. Dozens of commercial companies have been trying to get the FAA to establish rules for civil use of UAVs in the National Airspace System for decades now to no avail. It does not bode well for AWE, which in some ways will be even more difficult (tethered, unmanned/automated, etc.).

International waters (

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3501	From: dave santos	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Hybrid Power Plant (Retrofit Notes)

DaveN,

Not to worry overmuch about proceeding on faith, the world is big & the FAA hardly rules it. Its true that in the US AWE must integrate into NextGen 2025 to really make an impact, but thats our job, not the FAA's. Fifteen years seems like a long regulatory lead time, the tech muststill evolve greatly, but if it takes longer it will still happen.

I like the FAA's proper role of enforcing airworthiness. This will weed out weak AWE players. As the pioneer aviators work hard to demonstrate airworthiness by best practice, FAA inspectors will give workable approvals, even within the current framework (constant NOTAM, sense & avoid, etc.). FAA Inspectors themselves, after all, are veteran aviators loyal to the Tribe.

Hold with the flying community in rejecting privatized airspace (the FAA listens). Who else but Joby promotes or believes in it? The standing model of safe shared airspace based on mutual trust & tolerance cannot be counted out as an AWE basis. Of course Super Density AWE is favored over sprawl in shared sky & wind-enabled new aviation is a glory of itself.

Maybe your inside FAA dialog has some dimension of inter-agency politics. Did your FAA connection reply to the (forwarded?) TA ConOps? Is there any written trail from the FAA to support your particular pessimism?

daveS

From: "North, David D. (LARC-E402)" <david.d.north@nasa.gov

DaveS,

You said…

International waters (

DaveN

From: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com [mailto:AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of dave santos
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 1:22 PM
To: AWE
Subject: [AWECS] Kite Hybrid Power Plant (Retrofit Notes)

The Forum is aware of a wonderful potential to retrofit existing power plants as kite power hybrids. More notes-

General-

Existing capital investment in generators & distribution is leveraged. Kite Hybrids is an ultra low capital cost (by unit energy) strategy, with fast pay back possible.

New Kite/Gas-Turbine Hybrid plants look promising for adding new capacity.

All other AWE concepts involve high capital investment in new generators & transmission lines, at far smaller capacities.

Mechanical Issues

Kite Power regulation would mostly be done by kite modulation. Flywheeling of the the ground based aggregation should be enough for a plant's need for smooth input.

Power can be designed to run both ways & the power plant could drive the "winch-towing" of kite arrays in tight patterns to persist aloft thru calms, eliminating dedicated anchor winches.

Specific MegaScale kite array concepts & considerations will be treated separately (soon).

coolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3502	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Hi Joe,

All valid arguments.

I started the wiki in a "start first, ask permission later" kind of mind-set. Because if you wait for permission or consensus, you often can wait for a long time.

1. Simon is not identifying himself or herself yet.

No, I might not do in a while.

2. As meta-mager of the wikispace, the unidentified-yet Simon could
I won't. But I'm happy to renounce any power I might have (I'm not invested as much as some of you are in this subject after all). If that's not technically possible. You could easily start another wiki.

3. The Basic Plan allow Wikispaces to put ads on the page.

Yeah. I don't like that either.

4. The formatting is limited as opposed to the HTML pages of
Agreed. It is simple to use though. That is a big PLUS. Content is King. (The template is suitable though, and EnergyKiteSystems isn't super HTML good)

5. Caring persons have to watch out daily, if not hourly, to check
Disagree. You can see who has made changes and what they have changed. When you see a new user you might be extra careful, maybe.

If the vandalism gets out of hand, you could decide to only let registered users change content.

Agree.

I don't see the problem.

I haven't yet looked at your site. I assume someone has to mail the changes they'd like to you. If that is the case, you are the bottleneck. More importantly, people are less likely to mail you changes than simply click EDIT.

No. I will not be paying. I am not as invested in this subject as some of you are. My hope is that some of you will develop this further, as you are the interested parties and knowledgeable.

I've not looked very much in the different services. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms )

My starting one with wikispaces IS NOT very much researched. It seemed popular, simple, and free.

If anyone has a better idea and is technical enough to implement it, and is willing to pay for something if they decide that should be the way to go. Please go ahead.

That's the only one I could think of. I was just trying to give the start of a navigation. I also only listed one person (Doug Selsam).

An agenda might be nice too, etc. etc.

That's how a wiki works: gradual build up of pages.

Hmmmm. I posted all known companies
I don't. I'd just like to see a wiki on this subject, as I believe that is the best way to grow this field.

A respected member of the field is probably better to be an administrator. They would almost certainly have more time for it.

This was not my first post ;)

For other comments see my previous replies.

I don't know if it's related or not. But I or anyone I know didn't do that.

My opinion:

Wikispaces might not be the best solution, because it might go bankrupt or it might decide to delete the wiki, among other reasons. I didn't feel like doing better research before knowing the commitment from this community (in time, money).

I might not be the best administrator because I'm not all that invested in the subject, and I know nothing of it. So other people could join me (or/and kick me out).

Comparison between wiki and http://www.energykitesystems.net/

I have to say a wiki is better, because of the reasons I mentioned above, the most important being:

People are more likely to contribute.

A forum is the best way to communicate online. A wiki is the best way build an encyclopedia online.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3503	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Checking in at energykiesystems.net/, one of the first menu items I see is "wiki." This links to the regular Wikipedia entry. Does that not satisfy your wishes?

I'm reminded of someone who was sent to work with my group as a temporary supervisor for only two days, but decided to reorganize our work anyway.

Bob Stuart.

On 28-Apr-11, at 12:59 PM, simon_0987 wrote:

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3504	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/28/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Simon,

Good. Thanks. Your prior earlier posts were read and enjoyed; sorry about the "first" haste ; ).

Some talking points:

Participating members: I find their time is short for encyclopedia formation. It would be neat to get content anywhere; I will grab open-source items and keep organizing it in EKS. When I had open forms for people to post into for immediate posting to HTML pages, two years ago one person posted; then he stopped and got busy on his project; he posts in AWE forum now: Grant ! I sift all posts for new matter to get into the EKS. But mostly scholars, engineers, scientists, and developers are producing essays, white papers, journal articles, and news points at their pace. We are linking in EKS and also in the Files section of this form and in the Links section of this forum. Theren there were hundreds of spam entries on active-enter forms. There will be hundreds of spam and vandalism entries when edit is open to the whole world.
+
Then we keep aware of the encyclopedic development in Wikipedia. And we form new articles in Wikipedia concering AWE /KiteEnergy/HAWP when there are sufficient noteworthy sources to reference to meet the requirements of Wikipedia. Hundreds of wikis in Wikipedia are open to AWE members for editing at any time right now. And in EKS AWE Glossary we link "wiki" for reach to those edit-by-anyone articles in Wikipedia. So, functionally, there are three rich places for AWE: EKS, this forum AWE, and the articles in Wikipedia that attend to our interest. The Wikipedia threshold of noteworthiness is a bit high. The level of live-person comment is restricted, as it should be. The level of AWE community members entering the Wikipedia space for the articles' editing is yet much smaller than I would hope. The editing is not as easy as WikiSpaces too, but ease can grow to be fairly easy.
+
In the Files section of this group, anyone may start a file and edit it as they wish from time to time. That is available now. And open folders where others may post files that may be edited from time to time. HTML files may be uploaded and overwritten by a poster. No e-mailing needed.
+
An AWE community member may at home or work edit their own text as they wish and simply press Send to EKS editor@UpperWindPower.com They may later resend same document for an overwrite after they have edited their item. Some allow the editors of UpperWindPower to edit and add hyperlinks and form discussion pages toward which anyone may post.
*
HTML pages may be improved by anyone who cares to send an HTML page rewrite to EKS.

Good to see your enthusiasm, Simon.

Lift to you and yours,

JoeF

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3505	From: Theo Schmidt	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Wiki [was: Re: [AWECS] Re: 2 online wind groups]

Bob Stuart schrieb:
Hi Bob and all,

No, the regular Wikipedia entry is *NOT* the same thing at all. Wikipedia is
meant to be an encyclopedia and although free for anybody to use, has a number
of strict and even more fuzzy rules. Articles should be reasonably short and not
too detailled, contain no original research, no conjecture, advertising, etc,
etc. Joe started out there and tried to greatly expand the kite article, e.g.
exploring every concept which might be considered a kite. This was deemed
unsuitable by several people. I suggested Joe start his own site and I guess
that was what he did and created energykitesystems.net

Adding a wiki to this site simply allows more people to easly participate. In
contrast to Wikipedia, it can have any content which the owner of the domain
sees fit.

I would limit editting to registered users from the beginning, otherwise there
will be severe problems of vandalism and spam.

Cheers, Theo Schmidt

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3506	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: 2 online wind groups

Hi Joe,

I've now looked at your site. It has LOTS of content, but still difficult to get an overview. Rather than trying to change your site, I think it is easier to start anew (to cut a long story short).

Problem: eks: much information, difficult to get a quick overview, this forum: much information, difficult to get an overview, wikipedia: much information, difficult to get an overview.

Solution: link to the different sources in a somewhat more organized manner, with short descriptions of the information in the links. If there is sufficient momentum after a few months / years, some original content might be written.

I think...

--------------------------

I will invest no more than 1-2 hours per week in the wiki, and that will be mainly in undoing spam and vandalism, and doing some organizing housework. Doing more would require more of my mind's attention, and I am really not that invested in the subject and I am busy, and I know nothing of the subject (I just saw this "problem" I liked to point out).

I am likely to get bored with it quickly if I am the only one doing anything.

--------------------------

I've started this wiki to see if there was any attention. Now I see there is some, maybe we could select the best suitable service before doing anything else.

Evaluation of wikispaces:

--Easy editing by anyone (as it is a wiki),
--free up to 2 GB (after that $200 / year for 5 GB, $1000 / year for unlimited......which I think might be very expensive)
--widgets to add
--No HTML (which is a slight bother, really only in not being able to make columns)
--I haven't discovered a/the way to undo edits (which is a BIG bother in trying to undo spam/vandalism)
--History available
--Relatively established company

It costs $1000 a year if you want more than 5 GB, so that makes it unsuitable in the long term.

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

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3507	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: Wiki [was: Re: [AWECS] Re: 2 online wind groups]

On 29-Apr-11, at 2:08 AM, Theo Schmidt wrote:

I think that what Simon really wants is a nice introductory article with useful links. Unfortunately, it is too early for a consensus on who should write such an article, and what approach to the subject is correct. There is really no easy route to getting educated on this topic. Joe has done a Herculean job of gathering the available information, but the jury is still out on which are the valuable bits. The majority of us are working to prove our favorite theory in the marketplace, rather than compare theories in one lab. The market is not very good at selecting efficient, sustainable technology, and even worse at directing venture capital to the most competent inventors. When immersed in technical details, a mind is rather like the core of a mathematical computer program, with only rudimentary access for input and output. The VC "experts" don't bother learning that interface for each inventor, they just gamble on rather random associations and minor resemblances.

Business is full of odd quirks. You don't usually associate Nevada with education, but Abaris training, offering short courses in composite materials located there, attracting students with the subsidized airfare for round trips to Reno, and an opportunity for managers to enjoy the night life there while getting a company-sponsored upgrade on their resume.

Bob Stuart

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3508	From: dave santos	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Its not as easy to create wonderfully organized tech content as some seem to think. Its especially hard in a field like ours that is so unsettled still, the ontology is a fog.

Simon is curious case, anonymous for no stated reason, weakly committed to about 100hrs a year, & fully up to speed in the field. How does anyone know how he will react under the great challenges? Will he fold or persevere? It would be predictive to know of any demonstrated ability to carry through a serious initiative. I don't worry Simon is a bad actor, but is he great? There just is no evidence either way, so we have wait & see.

Joe's content is unmatched in scope, quality, & quantity. There are plenty of slick AWE websites devoid of real knowledge. Nice intuitive layouts are overrated by the misinformed. Joe's "Ugly Betty" content is a good filter to repel superficial players.

There is no magic to wikiware unless you have a critical mass of social participation like wikipedia. Every other wiki i have ever encountered is a fizzle, but surely there are successes (?).

NASA's slick website is a caution. There is some good content (an academic bibliography) & a forum, but its an empty disco with no one dancing.

Creating free quality content for unknown advertisers to milk is not attractive. Creating financial obligation is not attractive. We deserve free stable hosting with good sysadmin, such as academia enjoys.

I think this wiki is worth trying but predict the working pattern of scattered ad-hoc AWE content will continue. Each researcher will self-organize custom learning by banging away at the search engine. The cutting edge will be too dynamic to worry about format. The newbies can get a fine start on Wikipedia.

My recommendation is that this wiki not try to compete with anything else (like Joe, NASA, or Wikipedia), but try & focus on some underdeveloped specialized corner of AWE knowledge. If it can create unique value for researchers, that's success.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3509	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Gathering the notes from several, a configured wikispace is started:

http://kiteenergy.wikispaces.com/Welcome

All world may read. Free join. Joiners may construct pages and edit.

Extended plus: Content will be culled for advancing the folders and files of EKS, the articles in Wikipedia, and the files and links and images in the associated forums. Free.

All are also welcome to advance the Files section and the Links section of this forum and the associated forums.

Especially also see how threads may construct a tree of focused comment on each patent, as interest beckons.

Anyone may volunteer to sharpen any aspect of the set of tools now available.

JoeF

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3510	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

:)

Investing a couple of hours a week isn't a great challenge for me ;)

If there are more people developing the wiki, I will continue. If not, I will assume there is no interest and stop.

Great thing about a wiki is that then other people might like to continue.

You want to attract people, not repel them.

Agree.

We "deserve" nothing. But hosting shouldn't be too expensive.

Agree. Just trying to make that researcher's day a bit less stressful.

That is arguing from the status quo. I usually think of what might be possible. A wiki that organizes content from other sites to me seems highly achievable.

Agree. My recommendation would be to try to organize the knowledge.

Cheers

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3511	From: dave santos	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Simon,

The AWE challenges mentioned do not relate to the quantity of time one volunteers, but to maintaining the minimal high quality required to succeed. 100hrs a year is an appreciated contribution of time to public AWE. Even with modest quality, any principled volunteer open-source effort really does "deserve" the generous cultural norms academic knowledge serving gets.

Please understand when dealing with curiosity-driven people that wearing a mask is an odd distraction worthy of some explanation (a plausible motive might do).

Thanks for undertaking to add value to the AWE commons,

daveS

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3512	From: Joe Faust	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

KiteEnergy wiki

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3514	From: simon_0987	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Dave,

If only I add content to a wiki, it will fail. Success depends not on my qualities and time investment, but on how many people feel compelled to edit.

How many people will feel compelled to do this? Only time can tell. (But Joe is busy already, so that makes 1+1=2)

On anonymity: this is just one of several projects of mine. I don't feel like seeing my name splattered all over the internet for the rest of time. I like my privacy.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3515	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 4/29/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Hi Simon,

I'm glad you are not just the Format Fairy, sprinkling magic wiki seeds wherever you hit a rough patch in your browsing. Just picking an initial entry put you in a partisan position. Lots of people use the term "the Persian Gulf" without any clue that half the maps call it "the Arabian Gulf" and the owners of those maps don't like hearing the other name.

A wiki is often a fine thing, but they do take work, and, like any good idea, they still need to be sold, even to technical types like us. I tend to resist having to post the same idea in two places, and have a strong preference for the system that leaves a copy in my email archives for handy reference. I really do wish you luck at generating a critical mass of traffic to make it a preferred forum, but I'm not going to be an early adopter.

Bob Stuart

On 29-Apr-11, at 11:55 AM, simon_0987 wrote:

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3516	From: dimitri.cherny	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: DoE grant winners?

The non-selected for the 2011 DoE phase-1 SBIR grants were informed of their lack of success today. We were one of them.

Were any AWE developers selected?

- Dimitri Cherny
Highest Wind

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3517	From: Dan Parker	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

Hi Dimitri,

Long time no hear. Don't let it get yah down. I guess yah gotta have a thick hide to be in this biz. The rejections makes the victories that much sweeter. Still in the Carolinas. Hope your doing well.

Dan'l

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: dimitri.cherny@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 12:31:02 +0000
Subject: [AWECS] DoE grant winners?

The non-selected for the 2011 DoE phase-1 SBIR grants were informed of their lack of success today. We were one of them.

Were any AWE developers selected?

- Dimitri Cherny
Highest Wind

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3518	From: Dave Lang	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

We have yet to receive a dime from ANYWHERE :-)

SkyMill has an SBIR proposal pending with NOAA. The "deliverable" for this NOAA proposal, while it uses SkyMill as a demonstration platform, would in fact provide useful technology for the entire AWE field since it involves the derivation of a rigorous "functional convolution" between the "probabilistic description of the atmospheric wind state", and the "deterministic power production of an AWE device, given a wind state"....thus leading to a probabilistic description of power production. From this resulting "power function" one can then, by way of calculating cumulative probability values, directly determine meaningful values for "availability factor", "ROI", "COP", etc for any AWE scheme at a particular geographic location (for which a wind state can be probabilistically described). Its stipend is an extremely cost-effective $90k (in terms of what could be gained), but I'm not holding my breath :-)

DaveL

At 12:31 PM +0000 4/30/11, dimitri.cherny wrote:

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3519	From: dimitri.cherny@yahoo.com	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

Thanks Dave. That's the fourth grant we did not get this year and I'm forced to listen to the bigger message - the only funding I'm going to get for AWE development is from myself. So I'm going to pursue some other entrepreneurial ventures for awhile to make some cash. What's that line about things worth doing not being easy? Please say hello to Grant for me.

-Dimitri

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3520	From: Theo Schmidt	Date: 4/30/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Simon wrote:

Joe wrote:

Great, now we have two competing wikis of the same type but different design
already chock full with a lot of the things from the kiteenergy homepage. So
already a triple fork. I'm not sure this is going to work...

Cheers, Theo

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3521	From: simon_0987	Date: 5/1/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

Joe would like http://kiteenergy.wikispaces.com/ to have a different focus than http://airbornewindenergy.wikispaces.com/ (For a new welcome note see: http://airbornewindenergy.wikispaces.com/Test+here+2 ) How exactly he sees that, he can better explain. I don't know how that will work out.

We'll just have to wait and see. If it doesn't work like that, we could always integrate the two wikis.

I'm willing to invest a couple of hours a week for the next few months. If after that no one else besides Joe and me is contributing, I will lose interest, as I will assume there is no interest in the wiki(s).

Cheers

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3522	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 5/1/2011
Subject: Re: AWE Knowledge Architecture (wiki)

I hope we will soon have a single main wiki. I like Simon's writing and initial overview approach, but I think his time could be better spent at making Joe's work accessible instead of trying to create traffic elsewhere, and in a potentially problematic venue.

Bob Stuart

On 1-May-11, at 6:14 AM, simon_0987 wrote:

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3523	From: DavidC	Date: 5/1/2011
Subject: Re: DoE grant winners?

Sorry to hear that, Dimitri. We know how hard it is to put together a good proposal.

David

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3524	From: Doug	Date: 5/3/2011
Subject: Re: New AWE Science?

Dave S.
Come by on your way home if you want!
Most days we get good winds here.
Many days we see clouds at our level stacking up in the Cajon Pass.
Ground level is 3600 feet altitude, saving tether material and deployment time.
:)
Doug S.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3525	From: dave santos	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: 1) Looping KitePlane on Leader 2) Radially Pumped Isotropic Kite

1) A kiteplane on a short leader looping around a tensioned pilot-lifter kite main line may reduce high-speed tether drag. The launch/land sequence is also attractive; the pilot first launches conventionally; then the kiteplane is hauled up & down the pilot line, dangling from its leader, rather than require a more complex launch/land method. Power is extracted as the kiteplane modulates tug on the main line. Not to be confused with letting a kiteplane loop well downwind of a pilot line rather than around it.

2) An isotropic membrane kite wing (think "triangular playsail") anchored by a radial array of winches (minimum of three) can be sustained in flight by phased tugs in zero wind. The iso membrane does not itself rotate direction but merely changes which way is "front" as it orbits over the center-point. To generate power the membrane shunts back & forth crosswind, driving winches in generator mode. Earlier proposed iso methods involved many rotating kite cells or distributed AoA actuation. This new simpler method promises to scale even more at lower unit-energy cost.

CoolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3526	From: dave santos	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Its well known that ordinary kites suffer greatly from extended UV exposure. On the other hand, fabric covered airplanes are known to live in sun happily enough; even a decade outdoors is not too unusual, as long as the fabric is minimally maintained & passes annual inspection.

It turns out that aluminum paint pigment traditionally protects airplane fabric from UV. A thin aluminum coating can similarly extend the lifespan of "industrial" kite fabric without much added cost or weight.

CoolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3527	From: Dan Parker	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Dave S.

Electrical Conductivity problemos?

Dan'l

To: airbornewindenergy@yahoogroups.com
From: santos137@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 14:23:32 -0700
Subject: [AWECS] Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

CoolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3528	From: Bob Stuart	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Conductivity is good. You can even buy fiberglass cloth that is 40% aluminum by weight to help deal with lightning.

Bob

On 6-May-11, at 3:26 PM, Dan Parker wrote:

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3529	From: dave santos	Date: 5/6/2011
Subject: Re: Kite Membrane UV Degradation Solution

Conductivity of the kite itself seems like a minor issue, as all sorts of aircraft are aluminum & take lightning strikes with only minor damage. Conductivity of a tether seems like the more dangerous condition, especially if breakaway drags the long conductor across power lines. There seems to be greater risk proportional to a longer conductive path. Fortunately nonconducting UHMWPE lines are fairly UV resistent.

Metallic oxides of aluminum or titanium are UV resisting options that reduce or eliminate electrical conductance...

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3530	From: Joe Faust	Date: 5/7/2011
Subject: Golden Spiral Turbine

Welcome Golden Spiral Turbine (click through for full contact)

CEO: Omar Abass

===================================
JoeF

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3531	From: dave santos	Date: 5/8/2011
Subject: Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Hello All,

Here is the latest take on kite megascaling theory-of-operation (please excuse some review)-

Several kite design principles promote megascaling potential. Aggregation into stacks, trains, & arches is an old practice. For single kites, Dave Culp (KiteShip) identified "single-skin" construction with "minimal energy" surface geometry; these are the basis for KiteShip's OL ship kite, the world record holder for the largest steerable power kite. Five years ago, then collaborating with KiteShip, i asked DaveC to list all the ways he knew that big kites can be passively stabilized. He said, "well, (one) can "stake-out" a big kite." The remark did not make a sudden impression, as the mission was to fly OLs from a ship, probably as a single line kite, with "control pod" actuation. I continued to test professional kite methods & flew big kites off arched lines after the model of kite showmen David Gomberg & Peter Lynn. I discussed with Peter the "autozenith" feature of his (& others) power kites, & he laughed when i found an obscure stability mechanism in the wing-tips, but missed the major one; that a kite control bar, held crosswind, in effect stakes-out the kite. Kay Buesing exposed me to kite arches over a period of four years via the World Kite Museum's annual "Kite Train & Arch Day". Washington State has for two decades been the "world center of kite arches", thanks to Kay. Kite arches set crosswind were consistently found more stable than single kites (aggregate stability). Flying many kinds of giant kites on single lines revealed linear limits of single-line passive stability (dimensionless time analysis).

The lesson of these varied clues was that the major scaling limit to kite structure is insufficient passive stability. A huge soft kite can be built & flown, but one cannot count on active actuation to be either powerful or fast enough for "five nines" reliability, especially with airborne actuation. The only way to get powerful passive stabilization is to stake-out the kite. The challenge is to see that the stake-out mechanism scales to tens-of-km across, with the top of the kite arch structure easily able to reach our "ultimate" 10,000m altitude. Smaller megascale kites can be rotated by "compass belay", but the largest sizes require a radial line stake-out pattern with phase tracking (Iso methods). In effect the kite arch now becomes a kite dome & can be angled for any wind direction or "wobbled" to sustin flight in calm. Various means exist to operate safely over populations & other surface conditions.

Stake-out involves "captivity factor" & also exploits the ground surface as "free" megascale compressive structure. Ground based actuation allows the fastest most-powerful response using industrial winches & no regard for flying-mass limitation. Bulk industrial actuation evades the aerospace component pricing trap. Megascale kite structure, as single control thread, eases realtime latency control computation challenges. Its pretty cool that we are not limited to dinky mesoscale single megawatt AWECS concepts, when what we really need is gigawatts.

daveS

coolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3532	From: Darin Selby	Date: 5/8/2011
Subject: Re: Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Do you have some links to look at? Thanks.

To: airbornewindenergy@yahoogroups.com
From: santos137@yahoo.com
Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 14:03:36 -0700
Subject: [AWECS] Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Hello All,

Here is the latest take on kite megascaling theory-of-operation (please excuse some review)-

daveS

coolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3533	From: dave santos	Date: 5/8/2011
Subject: Re: Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Darin,

The funny thing is that ideas at the real frontier don't have a lot of web content, its up to us to create it. The main reasons for early disclosure on this public forum (OSA- Open Source AWE) is to prevent blocking patent monopolies & promote RAD (Rapid AWE Dev).

But there is a vast amount of foundational content behind this thread. Just comb the text for search terms. KiteShip Gomberg+kite Lynn+kite world-kite-museum. etc. The fancy words are mostly defined online or Wikipedia topics.

KiteLab experiment media can lag months before posting online, but here is the link-

KiteLab Group

Hope this helps...

daveS

From: Darin Selby <darin_selby@hotmail.com

Do you have some links to look at? Thanks.

To: airbornewindenergy@yahoogroups.com
From: santos137@yahoo.com
Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 14:03:36 -0700
Subject: [AWECS] Top Megascaling Principles (especially "stake-out")

Hello All,

Here is the latest take on kite megascaling theory-of-operation (please excuse some review)-

daveS

coolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3534	From: dave santos	Date: 5/9/2011
Subject: Scaling Up by Aerodynamic Porosity

Its well known that a porous kite fabric adds stability to flight in high wind. Designers have learned to use a range of materials & constructions to build-in the effect, from unsized cloth, to meshes, open ribbon weaves, & holes in the cloth. Last year, in hurricane force winds on the US Pacific NW Coast, i noted that my string hammock was flying out almost horizontal, but weirdly stable, when everything else was in tumult. Pondering the effect, some of the principles emerged.

A porous wing does not develop as much raw lift as a non-porous one of the same overall plan, so in light wind a porous wing is disadvantaged; the stability effect is also less needed. In higher wind a porous kite has adequate lift & begins to excel by enhanced stability. For equivalent lift, a larger porous kite can match a smaller non-porous kite, but several dynamic effects differ. Letting air thru the wing blocks formation of the separation bubbles that cause violent stall. Depending on the pore or hole size, vortical lines are formed that act like soft ropes to damp flutter. The overall porous kite creates a diffuse wind-field obstacle, with a softer more diffuse wake.A larger porous kite has a slower weaker dynamic response to turbulence by increased moment of inertia, by magnified dimensionless time.

To create megascale kite structure a fractal scale of porosity is proposed for what is dubbed a "metakite", a super kite made of a dense array of smaller kite elements. The smaller kites naturally operate at lower Re by a reduced characteristic dimension. A sound principle is to increase porosity progressively toward the rear of the kite, keeping high-lift at the leading edge, with drogue force toward the trailing edge.

coolIP

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3535	From: dave santos	Date: 5/9/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Thank you, Matt, for your reply.

The ARPA-E proposal process you propose is not suited to many of the "expert" players in the AWE field. It seems to favor well connected entities with venture marketing intent (like Makani/Google) rather than fostering a level scientific playing field.

Similarly, FOIAs by themselves are far from an ideal mechanism for citizen oversight of scientific research. What is asked is the ability to directly query public servants & contractors with specific questions. A FOIA will likely completely miss addressing key questions posed, wasting everyone's resources.

Please also consider whether a public duty on the part of ARPA-E exists to answer specific questions. This is perhaps as vital as the formulaic suggestions. Please consider advising ARPA-E staff & contractors to act in an accessible manner, to ensure the technical concerns about the contract are properly addressed.

Thanks for understanding the need for this sort of public accountability & helping make it happen,

Dave Santos

From: "Dunne, Matthew" <Matthew.DunneIII@Hq.Doe.Gov

Dear Mr. Santos,

Thank you for your inquiry. In your email, you referred to competing Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) technologies that “promise to scale far better & safer by inherent flight stability; with generators, avionics, & actuation kept ground-based.” Although ARPA-E has not issued an AWT funding opportunity announcement, ARPA-E welcomes the submission of unsolicited proposals for transformational and disruptive energy technologies. For additional information, please refer to ARPA-E’s FAQs on unsolicited proposals (http://arpa-e.energy.gov/About/FAQs/UnsolicitedProposals.aspx) and the Department of Energy Guide for the Submission of Unsolicited Proposals (http://www.netl.doe.gov/business/usp/unsol.html). In order to maximize the potential for funding, unsolicited proposals that are submitted to the Department of Energy (DOE) at DOEUSP@netl.doe.gov are considered by every DOE program that funds similar technologies.

If you are interested in the Makani project, information about this project is available on ARPA-E’s website (http://arpa-e.energy.gov) and Makani’s website (http://www.makanipower.com). If you are seeking additional information, you may submit a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) at http://management.energy.gov/foia_pa.htm.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Kind regards,
Matt Dunne

Acting Chief Counsel, ARPA-E

From: dave santos [mailto:santos137@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2011 10:53 AM
To: Hartney, Mark; Corwin Hardham
Cc: Joe Faust
Subject: Reply Requested- Fw: Concerns About ARPA-E Airborne Wind Energy R&D

Dear Mark & Corwin,

Are the these emails getting through? Is there intent to be non-responsive, or just some email address problem?

At stake are specific aerospace issues that ARPA-E is responsible to rigorously judge, but may lack in-house expertise to fully address. It is in the US National Interest that the test program fully reveal whether MP's has created a safe reliable cost-effective platform in the context of other leading US approaches, particularly "low complexity" concepts that promise to scale far better & safer by inherent flight stability; with generators, avionics, & actuation kept ground-based. Its not to late for ARPA-E to plan proper comparative study with a fly-off process, even with privately funded designs competing against the grantee. ARPA-E can best serve US policy makers with a widened AWE research design with full NASA & FAA participation.

Please faithfully reply to the concerns presented. Thanks for accommodating suitable public oversight & input into a high profile govt. contract.

Dave Santos

KiteLab Group

PS Corwin has not replied to a follow-up message; will resend if needed. Continued non-response must be considered willful; a seeming malfeasance of the public trust.

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: dave santos <santos137@yahoo.com

Dear Mark,

There is a perception in key academic & venture circles that ARPA-E's involvement in Airborne Wind Energy is not a well balanced public investment & does not adequately represent the best & brightest US players. Makani Power is perceived to have gained undue advantage based on an association with Google, rather than by due diligence & excellence in the critical aerospace engineering area. As Fort Felker's cautionary points (AWEC2010) suggest, the result could be a (preventable) high-profile US failure, instead of the intended "Home Run".

Please allow an open email discussion of the particular concerns with interested citizens, with Makani Power obliged to answer questions for the public record, for public funding. The hopeful result will be a better informed ARPA-E better accountable to its mission,

Sincerely,

Dave Santos

KiteLab Group CTO

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3536	From: Dunne, Matthew	Date: 5/9/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Mr. Santos,

Thank you for your email. I oversee ARPA-E's evaluation and selection of unsolicited proposals, so I can assure you that the same, unbiased merit review process is used for all unsolicited proposals. Selection determinations are not based on how "well connected" the applicant is. Accordingly, you may wish to consider submitting an unsolicited proposal for any potentially transformational and disruptive energy technologies.

Kind regards,
Matt Dunne
Acting Chief Counsel, ARPA-E

From: dave santos <santos137@yahoo.com

Thank you, Matt, for your reply.

Thanks for understanding the need for this sort of public accountability & helping make it happen,

Dave Santos

From: "Dunne, Matthew" <Matthew.DunneIII@Hq.Doe.Gov

Dear Mr. Santos,

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Kind regards,
Matt Dunne

Acting Chief Counsel, ARPA-E

Dear Mark & Corwin,

Are the these emails getting through? Is there intent to be non-responsive, or just some email address problem?

Please faithfully reply to the concerns presented. Thanks for accommodating suitable public oversight & input into a high profile govt. contract.

Dave Santos

KiteLab Group

PS Corwin has not replied to a follow-up message; will resend if needed. Continued non-response must be considered willful; a seeming malfeasance of the public trust.

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: dave santos <santos137@yahoo.com

Dear Mark,

Sincerely,

Dave Santos

KiteLab Group CTO

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3537	From: dave santos	Date: 5/10/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Matthew,

This request is for Mark Hartney & Corwin Hardham to be responsive to a few publicly posed technical questions about Makani technology & ARPA-E's evaluation process, NOT a request for a funding application or FOIA review. The major citizen concern is that the Makani technical evaluation design fairly & accurately identify & report weaknesses of the narrow concept, as well as strengths. In particular aviation safety-critical knowledge is requested (failure-modes & incident reports), as consistent with aviation best-practice & the US public good. A secondary concern is that Makani not unfairly use the ARPA-E process as a marketing advantage over competing concepts, if the actual reality is less rosy.

Please note that Corwin is listed by ARPA-E as the "point-of-contact", but he is unresponsive to this information request, hence your involvement. Please advise the "point-of-contact" of a reasonable duty to be responsive. Mark, as a public servant, should also be open to technical questions without needing counsel to run interference.

Since you made the claim, please also explain how ARPA-E's "unbiased merit-review process" avoids grantsmanship bias; the inherent favoring of an obviously very limited pool of applicants, when the technical field is far broader. A more subtle source of non-scientific political bias is the unique Google association. How are ARPA-E reviewers instructed to compensate for the powerful psychological influence of Google Corporation, which even extends to cozy well-publicized lobbying in the White House? Does anyone wonder why a Google start-up needs US govt. subsidy, with no duty to allow public information of the kind requested? It would greatly help your claim to show that ARPA-E reviewers had the needed depth of expertise in aerospace technology. If not, allowing wide third-party input can remedy the shortcoming.

Thank you for understanding & addressing these concerns head-on,

dave

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3538	From: Doug	Date: 5/10/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Let me tell you how these grant programs work:
The agency hires "technical reviewers" from outside their organization. These reviewers include a few experts in the status quo, many degreed professionals with peripheral expertise (just enough knowledge to be dangerous) and bean-counters.

My experience with ARPA-E:
1) I submitted a "concept paper" as requested when they first got started. The whole time I was cognizant that this was just another agency, unlikely to be different from the rest, despite all they say.
Result? As predicted, a complete waste of time. I got back a form letter about being "overwhelmed" with submissions. A "learning experience" they called it... It was pretty clear that they were unable to even read what I had taken so much time to prepare, based on what? The same old promises, like when Nixon said we'd be off foreign oil by the time he left office.

What does ARPA-E waste your money on? Well how 'bout the FloDesign wind turbine? FloDesign combines several typical newbie mistakes into a single mess. I call it a typical "Professor Crackpot" turbine. Any idiot that knew ANYTHING about wind energy could have saved ARPA-E millions of dollars, but how can you get them to listen to reason?
What do they listen to? Impressive credentials and clueless companies with deep pockets that tell good lies.
Why did FloDesign get funded? Because they are backed by highly-connected Kleiner Perkins, the Venture Capital firm that is wasting MANY millions of several not-so-good ideas in the clean energy space.

In the case of FLoDesign, they combine the following typcal newbie mistakes to "improve" a wind turbine:

1) Adding a duct or shroud to focus more wind through a propeller:
It is well-known that the shroud uses too much material, when just lengthening the blades a fraction nets the same energy gain.

2) Rotor speed needs to be controlled to reduce noise, so concentrating the wind has a downside: the rotor cannot just spin faster to take advantage of that enhanced wind speed, since noise would result as the blades approached Mach 1, so FloDesign had to increase rotor solidity (add blade fraction to the circle) to slow the rotor and still capture all that "extra power".
a) Now the only advantage of the shroud over just lengthening the blades, (faster rotation) is already sacrificed...
b) that slower rotation will require a bigger generator to get the same power...
c) that higher solidity increases energy lost to wake vorticity...

3) Using a high-solidity rotor to capture "all that extra energy"!
The solidity of a rotor has been worked out for 3000 years and is best very low, usually around just 2%, depending... The first and most common newbie mistake is to add more blade to the circle, whereas experts realize that the best rotors run lean, like the fastest engines run lean. Wind energy calls for a VERY lean blade/air ratio, like a lean fuel-air mix.

4) internal vanes to counter wake vorticity: While modern low solidity rotors lose little energy to wake vorticity, nonetheless, the "fixated on one aspect" school of design leads to such "beating a dead horse" design results: That high-solidity rotor causes increased energy losses to wake vorticity, so vanes are added to counteract that vorticity.

So FloDesign becomes a downward cascade of design Band-Aids, as it slowly takes the already minimalist design of the modern ultra-simple wind turbine rotor, and starts to add one typical newbie mistaken complication after another, each requiring a further "fix", each "fix" masquerading as an improvement, to where ANY person with expertise in wind energy can only shake their head, and chuckle, if there were anything really funny about it.

Why did FloDesign get funded? a complete lack of understanding by the reviewers, and a lack of communication, combined with imnpressive connected backing that had the financial expertise to prepare impressive financial statements, resulting in government money wasted in addition to the Kleiner Perkins money wasted.

I actually had the occasion to talk with both John Doerr and Bill Joy, principals at Kleiner Perkins - I was at an event at the Ritz Carlton that they attended and I was leaning on the bar next to John Doerr and he wanted me to explain why my wind turbines were better than the ones they already funded. I came away with the realization that these guys were too busy looking at financials to ever really comprehend the physical realities, which in this case were pretty cut-and-dried. my points went unacknowledged and uncomprehended as far as I could tell. No "light went on". While I had noticed that KP had funded other dubious endeavors in the past, this time I knew for sure they were wasting their money. But I also learned, it's not just the bureaucracy that gets in the way. The real problem is a complete lack of understanding at the top, and it is ignorance of the impenetrable kind: They are too busy being rich!

I had back-and-forth with these guys from Kleiner Perkins by e-mail for a month after this, and the furthesst I could get toward convincing them was for them to tell me that they couldn't consider funding me without a LOT of the same sort of requisite paperwork that had gotten FloDesign funded.

The experts in the status quo have limited imagination beyond the status quo, and tend to disapprove anything new, with blanket statements like "unlikely to comprise a significant fraction of the future market".

In my experience they do not even address the relevant aspects of the idea, despite the fact that a proposer may waste months in preparation of the required documents for a grant proposal. They just gloss over their lack of understanding with quickie negative comments.

Then you get to the bean-counters: a proposal is scored on several aspects, one of which is the business plan of the company proposing it. Now I think that is pretty sad, at the point where they admit they can't think of anything new and say they REALLY want the good ideas this time, they once again assume that they will magically find the perfect inventor and the perfect business person in one candidate, and refuse to look at "just an idea" without a large amount of typical business lies (false projections) that go with them.
And if you DID have a breakthrough and put down the TRUE business implications, they would simply find them unbelieveable.

In the end you realize that there is no point in trying to convince the unmoving and the unwilling - you have so many hours in a day, and you have to decide how to spend them. Do you want to try to convince naysayers who only want to talk financial projections, or get on with it and build it yourself for a fraction of the cost anyway? Do you want to build prototypes or build grant proposals? My California Energy Commission grant was good in some ways but it also determined that I had to spell out some simple plan they could understand and then execute it while I COULD have been developing a product for market. Free money is not free. You gotta perform once you get it.

My true take is that the federal paperwork in the form of patents has been filed and you are moving forward, at some point, if you have anything really happening, the right people will find you, and you will not have to "apply" for recognition. The more I ignore the big talkers and build turbines instead or doing paperwork, the more progress I make.

I hope ARPA-E steps up to the plate and helps develop Superturbine(R) technology, but for now, I'll stick with my original acronym for ARPA-E:

ARPA-E: "Almost Ready to Produce Another - Excuse..."

(I make up acronyms for every agency, like "National Redundant Excuse Laboratory")

I hope they improve soon! this is our country and our agency - it belongs to all of us, so we should hope it works!

Doug Selsam
http://www.USWINDLABS.com

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3539	From: joe_f_90032	Date: 5/11/2011
Subject: Mega-Scale Free-Space Polymer Engineering

Upper Windpower
is publishing a DRAFT copy of:

Mega-Scale Free-Space Polymer Engineering
Engineering Case Study: Super-Density Kite-Energy Arrays

Dave Santos
KiteLab Group
and
Wheeliad

Commentary is invited during the DRAFT period.

Group: AirborneWindEnergy	Message: 3540	From: DavidC	Date: 5/11/2011
Subject: Re: ARPA-E Inquiry

Many of us are surely wondering how you would have written this if you HAD been funded. You spend a lot of negative energy on this, Doug. But maybe you have twice as much energy as the average guy (I suspect so).

You need a business partner to isolate you from this whole process so that you don't get so frustrated. You expect things to be "right" and "fair" and "scientifically exact." When it comes to raising money, it just ain't so.

That said, the VC guys/gals can be amazingly insightful and technically competent. Dismissing them all out of hand is not quite fair. Maybe Mr. Doerr had a drink or two, and you were talking really fast. It happens. Your technology is very cool, and certainly VC worthy, especially if you have the numbers to back it up. After all, both you and a viable VC want the same thing - to grow good technology and make money (not necessarily in that order). The best hooks for VC are 1. proven product, and 2. positive cash flow, 3. fast growth rate. Do you have those? No shame in not at this very early stage. I'm just saying...

I'm also going to risk my neck and stick up for ARPA-E. They are human, they make mistakes, they tend to work 8 hour days, unlike you or me. *If you can get it* the ARPA-E support is great. But the success ratios for proposal wins is pathetically low. Not winning should be no surprise. You have to weigh that up front.

People in this group should go for every funding source they can get. For some, this means that ARPA-E and VC are not a waste of time. But for the individual inventor, or small, resource-bound team, it probably is.

Cheers,

David