Hi Andrew King:
It's very refreshing to have someone posting on this group, who actually knows what they are talking about, and who provides useful facts, base on experience witrh real-life working systems, that can help to steer AWE in a proper direction.

I had always wondered whether the best Aerostats needed to come down in the worst of weather events. Is there such a thing as an aerostat that can routinely survive any weather, or do they all have to come down in bad enough weather?

Of course in wind energy we intentionally seek out the windiest areas. How do you think aerostats will fare when continuously placed into the strongest available wind resource?

The other concern with Aerostats is the stronger you make them, the less extra lift they have for lifting anything besides their own weight.

Still, if you want something that can maintain altitude when it gets calm, aerostats seem like a tempting component to work with for AWE.

Good info - hungry for more good info - thanks!
:)
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

Hi Darin: You are definitely a thinker.

Dr. Kari Appa was my predecessor in researching advanced turbines for the California Energy Commission. He produced a prototype of a dual-rotor counter-rotating wind turbine. The (very old) idea was that:
1) the energy lost to wake vorticity would be recaptured by a second counter-rotating rotor, located downwind of the first rotor.
2) The generator could be smaller by utilizing a faster comparative rotation rate, if each half of the generator counterspun.

This old idea went nowhere as usual under Dr. Appa. In fact last I heard he had moved back to India to start a turbine company, and was interested in my approach where all rotors spin together. (I have patents in India too.)

Problems with this counter-rotating two-halves generator idea:
1) Modern rotors spin fast, minimizing the transfer of kinetic energy to wake vorticity. So recapturing that small amount of lost energy is one more "solution in search of a problem".

2) If you ARE going to add another rotor, why not place it in its own fresh wind, rather than in the wake of a previous rotor? You can get more power that way. This was one more "beating a dead horse" attempt to extract "every little bit" of energy from a given slice of wind, when of course we know Betz limits the total power to what can be extracted without slowing the flow to an unacceptable level (stop the flow to extract ALL the energy, and you have NO energy!)).

3) Most working wind turbines have a serious problem with overheating the generator in strong winds. In fact that is the main thing - some would say the ONLY thing to worry about with a small wind turbine. I have piles and piles of burnt out stators, caused by trying to make turbines that are "too powerful". Smaller generators get hot faster and burn out way sooner. It's ALL about heat disappation! So the advantage of the faster rotation will be difficult to realize. Soon you'll be adding water-cooling, and the complexity, expense, and weight will get worse and worse.

4) Dr. Kari Appa actually used TWO generators, each rotating by itself. Well heck, it was only a "demo"! The fact is, from the very start, actually implementing a counter-rotating generator is so problematic in terms of complexity, expense, wear, and reliability (slip rings and brushes) that even a government-sponsored program with the specific goal of showing how good a counter-rotating generator is, will end up NOT using one!

:)
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

New folder in the Files section of group:

Sounds from AWECS
AWECS makes sounds ... perhaps music to one's ears, but perhaps indicators of status, conditions, changes, need for special attention by operations and maintenance crews

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

Feel free to post essays or file notes, etc. in that folder.

What are the sounds that AWECS make?    One day someone will sell a set of sound bites from this or that AWECS. What is the sound a system A when it is working well? When the system is in some kind of trouble?  Sensors sending the sounds to a smart program?   Listen in on your system?  When thresholds are reached on sounds of your AWECS, perhaps a buzz in your pocket and a status report comes up on your mobile-device screen?  

Music to my ears ...
Surprise sounds?

A new genre of music:  EKSS : energy kite system sounds.

This is more than just musical kites; it can be part of a vitality story or make-or-break sky story.

JoeF

 

Hi JoeF,

Great idea.For most systems,comprising flygens and reel-out-in the sound shows the variations of power.

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

Pictures then video and comments on sound and power (too heavy video for entering into files):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M35Dl_qwGGs

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

Dear Dave Lang Dave Lang: ("He's So Fine" by The Chiffons)
Uh-oh, I guess I DID imply that I know what the heck I'm doing...
That is always a dangerous thing to state! Maybe I don't!
:)
Actually, I'd add you, and many others to the list of people who know what they are doing within their own field(s). I've heard of you before AWE became a big thing.
On this list however, we DO have our share of dreamers without much, if any, experience in either wind energy OR aviation.

But it is OK to dream, and I find even posts here that are completely naive or repetitive in restating old ideas long disproven, still every post DOES stimulate thought, and I would thank EVERYONE for taking their time and contributing.
-Doug S.

P.S. The purpose of my kite demo using a rope for a driveshaft and shaped yardsticks for blades, was to show that an AWE demo can be conducted for less time and money than printing-out and Fedexing-in in a grant proposal, let alone the time and energy to author it. My take is, if the agencies have to be dragged kicking and screaming to try anything new, it's not worth the effort to include them. Nike said it best: Just DO IT!

I hear what you're saying about the single blade arrangement catching more 'fresh wind', though I can't help but think about how the most efficient helicopter in the world works. 

And, that your rope tether design, being a 'flexible drive shaft' , has friction associated with it.  Though, the simplicity of your original low-cost design, definitely wins-out.  All it needs is some simple landing stands to go with it.

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: doug@selsam.com
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 14:41:29 +0000
Subject: [AWECS] Re: Landing Legs Idea

 

Here is a concept for a dwelling place that could have an aerostat living on the ceiling!  In the picture it shows a ballooncraft taking off, though it would work as well for launching and retrieving a kytoon platform.  Each 'pie-slice' roof piece has its own interlocking rain trough along the edges.

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: santos137@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 03:11:19 -0700
Subject: Re: [AWECS] High Altitude Operation Notes

 

http://darinselby.1hwy.com/images/airyurt.jpg

---

To: airbornewindenergy@yahoogroups.com
From: darin_selby@hotmail.com
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 23:57:22 +0000
Subject: RE: [AWECS] a hangar design idea / High Altitude Operation Notes

 

Regards Darin's post:
http://darinselby.1hwy.com/cgi-bin/i/images/airyurt.jpg

If academia is so smart, why don't they just design the winning system themselves?
:)))
Also: Could a Delfts, for example, be unbiased since they are a player?

Seems to me someone's gotta figure out some rules, a goal, something solid that all can agree is a worthy target.
Of course, one might observe that a contest of sorts already exists: make electricity cheaper, and everyone wins!
That naturally-occurring contest is of long duration. In wind energy there have been market leaders (Kenetech, Flowind) that went bankrupt within a few years as their seemingly cost-effective turbines started failing in the field to the point that warranty repairs took down the company! Then there are many losing designs such as Vortec that went thru tens of millions of investor dollars with no successful product at all (sound familiar?)
Doug S.

Doug, Academia can in fact "solve AWE" given time & support. Letting academia vett the venture concepts with ARPA-E support will go a long way to getting academia up-to-speed. As for the potential conflict-of-interest of an academic team that both judges & competes, let them choose one or the other role to avoid this obvious bias. Perhaps Chris Carlin can be persuaded to lead the ARPA-E "contest" in the most rigorous manner, as DaveL may have a top horse in the race, daveS

Most used conversion of upper wind kinetic energy by kites seems to be
traction of bodies, boats, and ships. Next seems to be conversion of
the kinetic energy of upper winds regards driving electric generators
with the challenges of gearing, conditioning the electricity, matching
generator to wind velocity range faces, etc. Next is the pumping of
fluids or gases, mostly water, to do tasks or store heads for later
water use or use in driving hydro generators at a smoothness not
experienced in direct-AWECS-generation of electricity. Pumping water
by use of AWECS holds some simplicities that might win the day as
regards ROI, simplicity of parts, etc. Is enough attention being placed
on the pumping of water by AWECS?

Waterhead in flexible containers floated on sea is feasible; then as
needed, use the head to generate electricity.

Recharge the head of reservoirs. Have double-reservoirs with one high
and one low. AWE pump water from low reservoir to high reservoir.
Operate hydroelectric generators as needed; drop water to low reservoir
as source for water for AWECS to pump the water back up. Scalable from
small village systems to large city systems.

Super-sized static-height blimps tethered via super-tethers; AWECS pump
water to high head (mass held up by super blimp). Let high-head water
drop when one wants to drive hydroelectric generators.

JoeF

I really like this approach of integrating the energy collection into a whole storage scheme for on-demand electricity.  However, I don't understand how to  float a reservoir in a dracone.  One can pump air into a flexible bladder moored to the sea floor to maintain a pressure differential, but you usually loose the heat of compression.  A reservoir on water would need a rigid structure, and floatation.  A regular water tower on floats would work, but would not be cheap.

Intoxicating? Now you have our attention!

Toward topic:

http://www.poolcenter.com/56911-easy-set-pools-15x48-15-footer.jpg

Mile radius air-inflated ring with ripstop bottom; tether to sea-floor or near island.

 

Toward topic:

Alternative to pumping air to sea-floor holdings is to pull down cabled buoyant bags of  low-density "solid glass foam" .

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

On the static-super-blimp:
Upper surface of blimp could be solar-energy collector or/and resort for human vacationers. When the item is holding little in hung sacks, the anchoring tethers have supper tension; when water holds are near full, then the tension in the super tethers are low.   One may be able to use the alternating tether tension during water-hold changes, even while using the hydroelectric generators. Four way benefits: vacation resort, solar energy, water-head generation, and tension cycle generation.

Distinguish swept area from areal velocity or area-swept velocity

A kite sweeping a certain area might take a hour do such or 5 seconds to do such. Conventional turbines are allowing some shortcut math when considering the swept area of  blades because of correlations found useful, apparently.    However, in some AWECS, simply assuming that larger swept area of a wing means more power opportunity runs into errors about power opportunity; rather, the speed of sweeping an area reflects relative air speed  that may be worked for generation.    More-clear expressions on this matter are invited.

JoeF

The flotation you mentioned, Bob, would floor the item and pay for the
head.
Huge silica closed-cell foam for century floating island to hold on-deck
water-head. Top the water held with a floating solar-energy plant that
will not care if water head is high or low. Have the solar-energy deck
be also used as an aircraft landing space.

 

http://energykitesystems.net/WaterPumping/Seawaterhead.jpg

A ratio maximized swept area/kite area could be usually determined according to the ratio lift/drag of kite.

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

Inventors:	Griffith; Saul (San Francisco, CA), Lynn; Peter (Alameda, CA), Hardham; Corwin (San Francisco, CA)
Assignee:	Makani Power, Inc. (Alameda, CA)
Appl. No.:	11/903,521
Filed:	September 20, 2007

U.S. Patent Documents

3987987	October 1976	Payne et al.
4084102	April 1978	Fry et al.
4165468	August 1979	Fry et al.
4207026	June 1980	Kushto
4242043	December 1980	Poulsen
4251040	February 1981	Lyod  (sic , Miles Loyd)
4285481	August 1981	Biscomb
4450364	May 1984	Benoit
4491739	January 1985	Watson
4832571	May 1989	Carrol
5311706	May 1994	Sallee
5421128	June 1995	Sharpless
5677023	October 1997	Brown
5735083	April 1998	Brown et al.
6182398	February 2001	Head
6616402	September 2003	Selsam
6692230	February 2004	Selsam
6781254	August 2004	Roberts
7335000	February 2008	Ferguson

Primary Examiner: Ponomarenko; Nicholas
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Van Pelt, Yi & James LLP

Click image for full patent:




Discuss claims.
The litany of "embodiments" is extensive.  What is novel in the approved claims?

by Daniel Lopez
http://vimeo.com/23205323

Sounds good Dave S.
I hope you know that comment about the academic institutions inventing it themselves was tongue-in-cheek.
But I DO remember running the beginnings of the Superturbine(R) idea by my favorite Fluid Mechanics professor at UCI in a private discussion back in the 1980's.
The (lack of) response I got, that blank stare, has now become quite familiar.
I realized that as intimidating and learned as this PhD powerhouse of aerospace was, as long as he was regurgitating what was already known, putting together math problems just barely within reach of us newbies, he was comfortable and on top of his game
BUT
When a new idea, no matter HOW SIMPLE, is put right in front of him, literally had nothing at all to say.
Had it been tried?
Did he think it would be effective?
He didn't know!
He didn't wanna find out.

He was busy grading papers, and it wasn't in the book.
I HAD thought that universities were where cutting edge discoveries were made, but I started to realize that they were more like a cookie-cutter: It has the shape of the cookie they are looking for, end of story.

I still have find memories of this professor: he used to tell me he liked my drawings, appreciated the art-work aspect. But it wasn't the drawings themselves that were the message - they were just the carrier signal.

That blank look reminded me of the blank look from the guys at Kleiner Perkins when I tried to explain why their multimillion dollar "FloDesign" effort combined several known mistakes in turbine design into a single machine. (Even using the word "Flo" in the name is a known symptom of previous failures) Band-aid upon Band-aid til it used far more material per unit energy, stuff that real wind turbine people can only shake their heads and smile at, yet no light went on. No real conversation took place in the sense of give and take. Facts and reality bounced off them like ocean waves bouncing off a concrete seawall. The seawall remained, and the water tried again. The water could never break through. The wall was impenetrable.

Industry has a lot to say about what they teach in universities.
Industry tells universities "we want people who have been beaten into submission". Industry doesn't need people who will think for themselves and leapfrog the status quo by starting their own business.

When I saw the original Laddermill come out of Delfts, I thought I might be looking at the decline of western civilization.

I had moved on from that configuration as soon as I had read my first pamphlet on actual wind turbines, realizing that high speed airfoils and lift were needed, along with high-aspect blades to avoid tip losses, and that a circular crosswind path was easily accomplished using that well-known interface between fluid movement and rotation: the propeller!
Almost as though one were designing a new type of vehicle and decided to use (gasp) wheels!

But I remained concerned: If a regular kid could read a pamphlet and see that the original laddermill was most like a wind turbine of 3000 years ago, whereas to bring it up to date would mean to convert it to high RPM propeller-drive, that was great. But if a leading "academic institution" could NOT easily see this, then that was definitely cause for concern, in my mind. It also made me realize that maybe what I thought came so easily: inventing, somehow just does not come that easily for everyone.

Well one thing is for sure now. Everybody and their brother is on to AWE and it is no longer the case that I have nobody to talk to. I used to read the patents of Shepard and wonder who this one guy who "got it" was. Now there are others who see the possibilities, a whole community! Cool!
:))))

Now as far as a contest, what are you going to do?

As far as I can see, as it stands now, we'll have one group flying a spinnaker into the sky to pull their boat saying they won, because technically they pulled down the most power. And someone else flying a kite with a propeller on it for a few minutes, saying they won, because they generated the most peak electricity without using a boat. Someone else with a balloon saying they won because theirs could remain airborne overnight... Someone else claiming to have the lowest cost per unit power produced, someone else with a system that can stand the test of time - how can we fairly compare all these apples and oranges? What standard or goal will these systems go for?
And will anyone, or SHOULD anyone, dilute their effort to try and fit into the rules of a contest whose stated goals might not even make sense in their vision?
Even a contest that purported to target the lowest cost power production, which is the real goal, would suffer from cheap machines that could make power for one afternoon of average winds, that might be ripped to shreds in a strong wind. Yardsticks? And there might be varied opinions on the real cost of scavenged materials etc. So I don't know where you go with this idea of a contest. The contest idea itself is a like AWE itself: nobody can really say where it should go!

Doug S.

Hey Joe,
 
           Far Out and Fantastic! You made my day Joe!
 
                                                                  Beautiful, Dan'l

 

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: joefaust333@gmail.com
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 14:19:37 +0000
Subject: [AWECS] The resource

 

This patent seems to contain mostly prior art. I did a lot with tilted wind rotors (including multi-rotors) with "power extractors", starting in the eighties. The inflated drive shaft does not seem novel either, but i can't confirm a prior instance. This is not really AWE, but close...

I'm still adjusting to the idea that some obscure specialty from my
past (my first job after U of Toronto) would be of interest to anyone.
I hadn't thought much about aerostats for decades till David Carmein
pointed me towards this list.
Now I'm rooting around my office trying to find those fabric samples...

The thing that motivates retrieval in the face of a thunderstorm is
not windspeeds as much as turbulence.

The classic airships could do 70 - 80 mph and I'm sure with modern
materials and CAD we could improve on that but when you have a 70 mph
vertical gust thing get much more interesting.

Think about wind shear that can drop a 300 ton jet liner six feet in a
few seconds and think about what that gust would do to a much lighter
aerostat.

An upward gust will only load the tether, a downward gust can slack
the tether, possibly fouling the mooring system or maybe just snapping
tight as the balloon bobs back up.

A stronger hull will be heavier but an aerostat's lift scales with the
cube, the weight scales with the square so I'm confident that a big
eough balloon would support your kite and survive the required wind
speeds.

The question is whether such a balloon might be so large that the
additional drag would cut into the kites efficiency to the point that
your payback would be sacrificed.

As someone commented the economics will determine the best method.

You can compare the cost of building and operating an aerostat and
mooring system with the cost of building and operating an kite plus
mooring system.

Exciting possibilities abound although I must confess that I'm partial
to the approach that plays to my strengths.....

Andrew King
King Technical Services
Ann Arbor MI 408-1286
Consulting on technical challenges
Translating ideas into reality

The Canary islands are very interesting, especially with regard to the indigenous population, who serve as a time capsule of the region as a whole. The world was not always anything like what we assume, even just a few thousand years ago.

If I didn't know better, I'd think these guys had been thumbing through my engineering notes. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

Corwin Hardham of Makani, as well as myself, were honored to have been chosen to serve on the "Wind Energy" panel for the "Clean & Green Investment Forum" that took place earlier this week, on June 6 and 7, at the Hotel Nikko, in San Francisco.

The moderator for our panel, Steve Taber, is developing a 1000 Megawatt Windfarm in Mexico. (!)
(That's almost as powerful as a real powerplant!)

It was fun to hang out with Corwin, and the food was pretty good.
I think both of us were fairly well-received, and it was nice to see that AWE is getting more serious attention from the investment community.
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

I have just looked at your home page, and as phenomenal and artistically drawn as your designs are, I find a few of them quite disturbing concepts. 

Migrating birds and bats would be big-time endangered by flying through something like this, wouldn't you say?

And, I'm sure that if you bug this guy that you're rubbing shoulders with long enough, he'll let you do it.

Without a doubt, your designs represent wind-powered centralization at its finest.  And, it shows to me how much we really need to instead focus upon the de-centralized versions of your wind energy harvesting technologies. 

For instance, your http://dualrotor.com/ represents just that.  It eliminates the need for high-tension power lines (with their built-in 17% line loss), and all of its infrastructure and maintenance costs.  Not to mention the endless monthly payments, and the possibility of getting turned off if the bill isn't paid on time.

Then the birds and bats stay protected, and people won't have to look at some ugly monstrosity looming over them.

I believe that your incredible genius abilities are better invested with empowering the small guy to do it all himself.  What a concept, eh?

As far-out and phantasmagorical as your designs are, the centralized versions do not have the best interests in mind for migrating wildlife. 

These design drawings lend the appearance as coming from someone who wants to get really rich, no matter what the environmental cost. 

Haven't we had enough of that already from that guy you're standing with?

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: doug@selsam.com
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 17:30:58 +0000
Subject: Re: [AWECS] Wind Power Generator

 

http://energykitesystems.net/KiteMan/index.html

Looming on the horizon are new "kiteman" roles and characters.
Charles Brown in Batman story ...was there a connection with Charlie Brown and the kite-eating tree, etc.?

What will the "kiteman" of the AWE future look like?  Energy tamed and used for good ...

There are good-guy KiteMan and there are bad-guy Kite-man, and if you Google images "kiteman" be ready for some surprises.

JoeF

May day, Houston, we're losing altitude...we're goin' down in what appears to be an off-shore wind turbine farm!  Pull up!  I repeat, PULL UP!...I can't ...do it....yaaaaa!  PFFFFFSSSSSSSS........


Whew, good thing the crew had recently put an escape shuttle on board!



"Wow Mom, we didn't need that big ole bulky balloon anyway, did we!"

Well, thanks to their levitating shuttlecraft, they escaped from harm's way.  Others may not be so lucky.  How can future generations possibly float around a city, or an off-shore area at nighttime, if there's the possible dangers lurking of losing altitude, to then be frapped by blades spinning below them? 

How will people safely navigate in a gust of wind, around your windpower monstrosities?  (Imagine the Eiffel Tower is the Selsam Tower)

High tension power lines also pose an serious issue when dealing with up-and-coming personal floatation crafts getting a firm foothold in the clouds.

Oh yes, I know, people would just have to be 'quarantined' from certain areas.  And, if they don't obey that directive, and float over that location and lose altitude... oh well, they were warned!

Instead, we could technologically make it very inviting an actually a very safe endeavor to have a 'Balloonotopia'-possible future scenario.  The Selsam way of centralized electricity from the wind actually endangers these future floating adventurers. 

These are people and families who will much rather want to aerodynamically float around, than drive clunky hunks of metal with wide rubber wheels, that mostly roll upon an impenetrable surface of hardened petroleum goo.

---

To: airbornewindenergy@yahoogroups.com
From: darin_selby@hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 18:47:25 +0000
Subject: RE: [AWECS] 'Centralized' Wind Power Generation

 

Portland, Oregon, the coolest city ever, is the home of the "good" KiteMan, a superhero created in 1978 for Pacific Energy to promote kite electrical safety. A series of public video spots contained dialogue such as- KiteMan: Metal kite or wire line? Children in Chorus: Never! So it was that an entire generation of Stumptown hipsters imprinted on kites. Wayne German was set on his visionary quest by PDX KiteMan. Portlanders even have a secret KiteMan code to identify themselves around the world; one says "What about frogs?" & the correct reply is "I like frogs." Now, with a world in peril, KiteMan is back (Wayne disguised?) in his "crucified" kite form. His cult following grows. A five year quest to find the old video clips continues & jubilee will attend the find. Analyists at Pacific Energy are eyeing early adoption of Kite Energy, as well as aiding the return of PDX KiteMan. KiteLab began in Portland in the basement of the legendary Clown House.

Pierre, One of the gentlemen from WOW (Pietro Cambi) who visited you recently has created a series of electric car conversions beginning with a classic Fiat & lately with converted Smart Cars (a very handy but comfortable two place vehicle). We have already been considering your precise idea of charging electric fleets as a suitable early application of AWE. Pietro is based outside of Florence & his cars would make a fine demo project. daveS

DaveS,

My idea is how an economical scheme with AWE can work.I do not think charging batteries for electrical cars with AWE (and other energies) is a good idea for a scheme where customers are owners:now the time of charge is too high (2 or 3 hours,perhaps less but with stress in the battery).

But for a scheme where customers are tenants the time of charge is not a problem.Of course customers could be owners according to a new concept of property by changing the car when the battery is empty.

With such a scheme both electrical cars and AWE could be developed.

Nor now we are on a wrong scheme where most car batteries would be charged with electricity from coal,where searches are made for an ultra quick (and expensive) loading of batteries for owners who compare it with the 3 minutes of filing up gasoline.

A new available energy (HAWE) should be work with new economical concepts,comprising (only for it of course) a new conception of property or rent.It is a mean to mitigate the irregularity of wind energy and using huge amounts from HAWE.

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com  

HAWE could be definated according to the ratio altitude/weight of used material.

It is obvious AWECS working in 1000 m are in the area of HAWE.For such an altitude classical towers should be so heavy as  mountains.

In the same way an AWECS working in 150 m and which weight is 1/10 or 1/20 the weight of a conventional wind turbine are in the area of HAWE with such a ratio.

Following it the altitude of 20 m for  FlygenKite is not HAWE in the absolute but it becomes with this ratio 20/0.5 (kg).Indeed 0.5 kg is the weight of mini turbines where the (not included) support is on 1 meter (a person carrying it or a bicycle).

PierreB 

Pierre, The problem with us defining "high altitude" in a new way is that the standard meaning is so well established in aviation & we are aviation tribe. Under this norm all our current AWE is low altitude (LAWE). Note that Pietro is developing an electric vehicle rental sevice, so we are all talking about the same operational model, daveS

I've watched the two videos.  The noise factor is pretty loud using a propeller blade.  Here is a Gorlov/Darrieus helical blade design that spins faster than the wind itself, due to its aerodynamic pull upon the blade , so it is super quiet.  Place it horizontally where your propeller presently is.  Voila!  The neighbors will be happy that you did.

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: pierre.benhaiem@orange.fr
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2011 12:42:55 +0200
Subject: Re: [AWECS] Economical schemes with AWE

 

Yes, electric cars powered by renewable energy - and kites - it is an idea that we have been working with for a while; Pietro Cambi, myself, and others. There are still many problems; the main one in Europe is bureaucracy. And also the usual one: subsidies to fossil fuels make electricity so cheap that there is no significant advantage, right now, in using renewable energy for it.

We are exploring other avenues where AWE coupled with battery powered land vehicles could give a decisive advantage over other approaches. It takes patience; but I believe it is a good idea.

UB

I can't see how it helps to dedicate wind power to a particular market, instead of treating electricity as a commodity, unless that market is not sensitive to delivery schedules.

There is a logic in this idea. But you have to seek for a market where the conventional grid is inefficient or not available. Otherwise, you are competing straight against conventional utilities and, for the time being, it is - well - not really hopeless but very difficult.

In other words, innovations tend to develop starting from niche markets, then expand to larger markets. It is also possible to tackle older technologies head-on, but it is the harsh way. You need to spend a lot of money at the beginning and it takes time before you see it back. That makes investors nervous and the whole idea may collapse midway. It happens all the time with new technologies.

So, if we can identify a suitable niche, that would give AWE the financial boost that it needs to grow and expand. We have some ideas; but we are still at an early stage - electric cars are just part of this set of ideas. We'll see how things work out

UB