Recent quarter to Sept. 30, 2011: summary note  at Recovery.Gov on Makani Power, Inc.

thanks for the feedback Doug.
I'm using "beginner" kites. Because the chord length is so long, I'm hoping for beginners luck and intuition in finding their top speed and balancing that with the right amount and length of bungee to give at the right time. It will be a total fluke and it's a ballance between the centripetal acceleration of the air inside the wing cells ballanced against the relative drag rearward as it starts to oversspeed.
I'm probably being foolish not looking for the fastest kites. I'm hoping, against all advice from solid systems to develop a usefull high torque, many vane more like a let turbine model.
I tested new needles in my sewing machine today. Cutting old sails soon. It's got to be worth a go.

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DIY  ... all-earth notice:

I think setting a new single kite altitude record would be fun. The idea of towing the kite at sea is an interesting concept. But I think that is a different category of record. To me it seems that the kite has to be able to fly at that altitude via wind alone. Getting it there via towing seems ok. I can't remember the record authority that was used last time. Was it the FAI?

Brian

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Yes, Brian, 

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "Doug" <doug@... Virgin Galactic is just down the road from you(Doug), an X-Prize result of sorts. The NASA centennial challenges have given out millions in prize monies. The astronaut glove guy is doing pretty well and astronaut gloves have improved as a result. I can name more.

There is however a lot of truth and reason to Doug's skepticism. The contests are often run and have rules made by people that have little grasp on how hard what they are asking is. Other times they do know how hard it is and have purposely make it an excellent value for their interests and a terrible value for the contestants. Rarely will you will find a contest that has a good balance for innovation vs reward. However they sometimes error on the other side and put up a contest that is low hanging fruit for the talented among us. That said they are ALWAYS harder than they look and can eat your lunch if you lack experience.

Brian

The latest communication from ARPA-E.

"ARPA-E has decided to put its consideration of any prize competitions, including potential co-sponsorship of the proposed AWE competition with NASA, on hold.  ARPA-E will revisit this issue later next year."

I like these quotes for bad reasons. I fear the FAA is largely responsible for them and that the FAA is steering AWE down the same path.

The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.
— Warren Buffett, annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, February 2008.

As of 1992, in fact—though the picture would have improved since then—the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero.
— Warren Buffett, billionaire investor, interview 1999

Quotes are from here: http://www.skygod.com/quotes/airline.html

The subject of this topic is a common quote about safety that was recently summoned in this forum.

According to: http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/view/24

2800 people die each year from lung cancer caused by power plant pollution. In total an estimated 28,000 die an average of 14 years early from it. In the time it takes me to write this post someone did get killed.

Now even if you think those numbers are way inflated, I think most of us would admit that pollution kills people.

One of the reasons that I hang out here is because I think AWE can kill less. I don't believe that it can replace coal on a meaningful scale and kill zero, just less. Every delay in replacing coal with better alternatives kills people. I am willing to think of risk and safety in ways that are more complicated than aiming at zero. I encourage others to do so as well.

Brian

Well, at least it used to pay pretty decent wages.  BTW, when I was in the aviation biz, I heard that more tons of spare parts had been "recovered from crashed helicopters" and certified after the Vietnam war than had ever gone down in total.  Obviously, a machinist knows a printer someplace, and neither respects the FAA.

DaveS,

In the next posts to Makani and ARPA-E about the necessity of
reliability as Fort Feker indicates,you could mention which are the
possible criteria of reliability.One of such criteria is:

-Passive security (or kite inherent stability) when automated control is
failling,AWES with low wing load (on the basis on fabric kites) being
favored to avoid crash, being able to fly without its own speed,and/or
without tether tension.

-In the same way the notion of "(low-)complexity" is with difficulty
understandable because it merges at least three possibilities:the
complexity of the AWES scheme (in such a way Makani presents a
low-complexity understandable flygen scheme),the complexity of its modus
operanti (take off as an helicopter),the complexity of building (mass
and weight and costs,materials).

A small description of AWES schemes with their advantages and
disadvantages,and their commercial possible applications would allow to
obtain a basis for decisions from organizations.

PierreB

Correction:modus operandi (instead modus operanti)

PierreB

By more complicated I mean that the risks of AWE should not simply be taken against it's own current value. It should be taken against it's potential future value and the decrease in risks vs how we make our power now. It has a lower "blood cost" as you put it.

If I take vaccines as an example. We used to lose thousands to various diseases. Now we lose a handful to complications of vaccines. We need to work to make vaccines more safe, but they are definitely better to have than not.

A more debatable point closer to home is that tens of thousands die on our roads each year. If we moved as much of that travel to the air as possible we should see many less fatalities in total while having more aviation fatalities. The FAA has a disincentive to let that traffic into the air because it would make them look bad.

Brian

" This strange conspiracy of organized labor and government regulation puts a lid on laissez faire capitalism in the sky."
That sentence makes my point nicely. Unless one is anti-capitalism but that is a different debate.

An AWE pilots union is an entertaining idea. Right now, both of them could go on strike and they would starve before anyone noticed.

Brian

Newsflash: ARPA-E will do nothing....
hello...
hello?
Operator!
"I'm sorry, the number you have called is no longer in service..."

Say it isn't so! No wait, the bureaucracy is unresponsive you say? To innovation? No contest? It can't be! Bbbbut you said... Bbbbut they said...

I was thinking that the single kite record was more sexy. But now you have me thinking that perhaps it would be cool to break the absolute altitude record using a kite chain. You could perhaps even knock off many of the regular aircraft records if you spent enough money. I'm probably getting a bit fanciful there. :) 70,000 feet is a long way up.

Brian

 

That looks like a winner for some locations.  If somewhere nearby is suitable for a hilltop reservoir, the generator could be replaced by a pump, which is a lot cheaper to marinize.  Storage of compressed air in a submerged bag is another option, although you usually have to throw away the heat of compression.  Either way, you can put out power on demand, and keep all the wires dry.

My point is, you have endless distractions. The most dangerous are the ones that say they will do the job, or part of the job, if only you stop doing the job, and start talking to them instead of doing the job. Their realu purpose is to pull you down to their level of nothingness. They don't care about the job and will never actually help, only slow you down. What I have learned in 10 years of developing advanced wind energy systems is that almost EVERY SINGLE ENTITY that says they are there to help will really only slow you down. That includes people and organizations. And almost every highly-funded entity that thinks they have a wind energy breakthrough is, sadly, completely mistaken.

I give FloDesign, funded by KleinerPerkins, the much-celebrated Honeywell rooftop turbine, and the rooftop turbines from AeroVironment, and of course Magenn, as examples. Somehow, all of these Million-dollar or billion-dollar entities, replete with large staffs of "scientists" and "engineers", issues press-release after press-release stating the superiority of their advanced wind energy systems, even flying ones, while still under development and unproven, and it is only revealed as months turn into years that these "scientists" are ever called upon to report the ACTUAL DATA that reveal that their machines DO NOT MEET THE STANDARDS OF THE PRESS RELEASES AT ALL.

In essence, these idiots, hiding behind the titles of "scientist" and "engineer" do not meet the standards of either occupation. They publish mere rumors, the kind of uneducated crap that any idiot WITHOUT CREDENTIALS could state, and literally without having one shred of scientific proof, usually without having EVEN CONNECTED A GENERATOR, they have raised millions of dollars and put large teams of idiots onto tasks that will never work out since no ACTUAL scientific person has even LOOKED AT THE FUNDAMENTALS of whether the BASIC CONCEPT is even sound.

But idiots tend to clump together like dust under a bed, so I can see why you are endlessly attracted to the neverending string of lies - heck if you can't get something actually working, there's no shortage of people who will help you to waste ALL of your time talk-talk-talking about it, whether all that talk reflects any reality is not part of their agenda. They already KNOW what works: LIES! Just lie and say you have something that works! People will then give you money. And call you a hero. Then when it doesn't pan out, they will be busy watching a movie or something and forget all about it. "Oh I guess that didn't work out..." who knew? who cares? right?

Hey, what can I say? I'm just reporting what I'm noticing year by year as I listen to the statements and see the results.
Have fun!
:)
Doug Selsam

You see this is exactly how the time-wasting and attention-wasting process happens. How much of how many peoples' time has now been wasted just talk-talk-talking about and trying to plan this "contest"? After several months, they already think you're too much of an idiot to even talk to, as a first result. And you're still discussing "categories" of something that does not yet exist, which makes it hard (meaningless?) to categorize anyway.

In all that time you have not even bothered to apply for their funding even though they offer a clear path to engage them by wasting more of your time with endless paperwork. The sign says "this way to avoid the slaughterhouse" (failure), but if you follow the path, it goes behind some bushes (grant-proposals, press-releases) and loops back around to the slaughterhouse.

You choose not to believe me that all these entities are a waste of time but look at the results so far. We've listened to your nonsense for years now. What are the results? If you need a job, hey they have other lines you can stand in for that too. Is that the best way to get a job? Or is it better to just go do it?

Wilbur and Orville: "We've GOT to convince the railroad authorities to try this flying transport idea! THEN we'll be able to get our airplane off the ground!" - hey wait: The Wrights avoided all that shizzle and just worked on it with the mere shoestring budget that was actually required, til they got it to work! LESSON.

Seeya!
Doug S.

         http://www.math.le.ac.uk/people/ag153/homepage/Gorlov2001.pdf

• "The most interesting finding of our analysis is that the maximum efficiency of the plane propeller is about 30 percent for free fluids. This is in a sharp contrast to the 60 percent given by the Betz limit, commonly used now for decades. It is shown that the Betz overestimate results from neglecting the curvature of the fluid streams. We also show that the three-dimensional helical turbine is more efficient than the two-dimensional propeller, at least in water applications. Moreover, well-documented tests have shown that the helical turbine has an efficiency of 35 percent, making it preferable for use in free water currents."  Gorban, Gorlov, Silantyev

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, dave santos <santos137@...

Dave,

I wish to humbly apologize for anything that strikes you as brash or disrespectful in our (Damon & my) posts – our intentions are quite different from this.  The reason for mentioning the prior work on several other architectures is that Makani is commonly criticized for a focused effort at the expense of other options that are considered more viable.  We merely wish to make clear that while we are now singularly focused on our current architecture, most of the early work at Makani (with a much larger team) was broadly focused on evaluating many architectures.   

I apologize for the delay and I would welcome a chance to discuss in person with greater detail.

Corwin

dave santos schrieb:
I apologize for responding to "dead" threads, but I can only look at this list
every now and again.


I agree that if you use insulated lines, you are bound to have too much weight
and thickness on the lines.


I would expect electrical lines to be steel, carbon fiber, or some new-fangles
conducting polymer. Short-term maybe al aluminium alloy, but with, as you say,
doubtful fatigue life.


True. But if the generator were high frequency, high voltage, and this is
converted to BC, the weight is relatively little.


And yet umpteen power lines transmit 400 kV relatively efficiently over
thousands of kilometers, especially the newer DC ones.


This is unlikely to be a limiting factor.

...
I think it is the same scaling disadvantage fo mechanical systems. Line is not
really 1D, but also a 3D object. If you double the power at the same speed or
same voltage, you have to double the cross-section, neglecting heat aspects.

...
It's out of my depth at present and anyway I agree with Doug here that priority
must be to build things which we know will work rather than speculate. I do have
all the components for a test of a mecanical system: Kite pulls me in electric
car uphill, then relaxes so I can descend backwards. Power can be generated in
both phases. But I got to do it!


This isn't what I meant, unless you are converting the substance of the line. A
closed circuit chemical conversion would be electrolysing water to hydrogen and
oxygen aloft, sening this down and returning water. Obviously this isn't a very
good one for AWE, the other way round would be better! Liquid-liquid would be
better, and could be sent up and done, literally, in bottles.


I don't agree. People and especially children will believe anything they are
told and indeed do. The scientific method requires publicised proof. You are
right that PhDs make as many mistakes as anybody else.


Dan'l wrote:
On the ground, compressed-air storage is at the most about as efficent as
lead-acid batteries so I would expect this to be worse with AWE. But pumping a
ground-based compressor with a kite would be a nifty way to store energy, not
the subject of this thread of course.

With best christmas greetings,
Theo

blturner3 schrieb:
...
I think you are correct to point this out. More people die "innocently" from air
pollution than by any other cause, leaving aside the climate debate here. Even
in Switzerland with relatively clean air, according to government statistics,
2-3 times more people die from air pollution caused by traffic than by direct
traffic accidents. But because these deaths are "invisible", they are ignored
completely.

The sorry fact is that humans don't mind death, indeed we couldn't live without
it!They only take notice if a *new* form of death is unwillingly inflicted on
them, such as the risk of being hit by a kite-generator. What bugs me, is that
humans don't even mind "unfair" deaths. E.g. the rich usually live in clean air,
yet to get there they pollute the air which the poor must breathe, mostly forced
to live close to major roads.

Cheers, Theo

In WW II, J.E. Gordon tells us that the RAF was offered a change in policy.  Very few aircraft were being lost to structural failure, so the boffins thought it would be better to take some weight out of the airframe and add it to the munitions, so that fewer aircraft and crew would be exposed to danger.   It looked very attractive on paper.  The airmen wouldn't even consider it.  

Joe:
This study looks to be self-serving false information. Windfarm turbines have been measured to hit or almost hit the Betz coefficient of 59% efficiency. That's getting to be routine. Gorlov's helical version of the Darrieus is a nice idea, but doesn't really improve on the basic fact that a propeller is more efficient over a wider range of tip speed ratios, using less material to extract more power at higher RPM.
Doug Selsam

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "Doug" <doug@... Doug, I had that gut feeling; but now it would be neat to clarify just where errors in the argument sit, if so. This may be an open question until someone carefully gives corrections. JoeF

Joe Faust wrote:
I havn't studied it, but in the conclusions the professors mix up the terms
"propeller" and "turbine" as well as "efficiency" and "effectiveness".

A propeller is not subjected to the Betz limit and approaches 100% efficiency.

Efficiency is the the amount of power produced in relation to the force on the
turbine times the movement of the turbine. This is zero for stationary turbines.
However the force produced is of interest with regards to construction of the
structure and foundation.

The Betz Limit is about the effectiveness of a turbine in removing a high
proportion of the power in a stream and is not really an efficiency.

Open is still whether they are correct in their own terms. As the paper is from
2001 and wind turbines are big business by now, I'm sure some newer conclusion
has been reached.

Cheers, Theo