SkyServe Satellite Wind Data Service
http://www.secondwind.com/Products+Systems/Triton/TritonAndSkyServe.html

GlobalStar, Inc. 
http://www.globalstar.com/

SecondWind's glossary
http://www.secondwind.com/Knowledge_Center/Glossary.html

 

 

Doug,   You have long been directed to "the evidence" requested that half a dozen or so AWE prototypes worldwide have successfully generated electricity, but you never bothered to respond in any detail to those examples. Power curves, meter outputs, everything you asked.   Far from being "amazing", the amount print spent on this list meeting your objections is far less than what you require to make them. Of course you'll continue to be haunted by the Franklin quote & Wright Bros example to the extent your skepticism is blind.   Lets go demo by demo, starting with Mario Milanese's power curves presented at HAWPCON 09 & eventually ending with KiteLab Group. So why dismiss Mario's data?   daveS

USA  FAA     sUAS

Small Unmanned Aircraft System
Aviation Rulemaking Committee
Comprehensive Set of Recommendations
for sUAS Regulatory Development
 
April 1, 2009
Pages: 74
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/air/hq/engineering/uapo/rulemaking/media/sUAS_ARC_Recs.pdf

Same document given by a Tiny URL:
http://tinyurl.com/recommendationsFORsUAS

This probably a part of the synergy occurring that will be addressing some AWECS operations.

 

I'll send an illustration shortly,
 
 
Harry
 

---

To: AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com
From: doug@selsam.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:09:34 +0000
Subject: [AWECS] Re: Selsam Superturbine (Mountain gorges)

 

David S. Let's be clear:
You have still provided no links to any power data.
Where is a link? Where is the evidence?
Thanks
Doug S.

Very impressive design. The numbers shown are projections based on measured wind data. There are no measured power numbers here.
Doug S.

Doug,   Please do not expect folks to easily satisfy unreasonable impatience. Mario does have his data available online & presented power curves you claim do not exist at the conference you attended. That you could get so confused about Makani, as Dave Culp corrected, shows you could do at better job at homework before posting.   True, Joby is not one of the known producers of AWE yet. Pardon John for trying to help you. You should also thank JoeF for working to help you with your question. Stick to Mario's data first, then we will go to TUDelft, then Makani, then Windlift, & so on.   This probably will take longer than you want, but folks are perhaps more busy with real work than you imagine, just chill a bit,   Is your sky serpent AWE? Then your own power curve would meet your demand.   daveS

OK Dave S.:
So you are saying you can't offer a single link?
Why do you say you provided a link when you have not?
You said you had provided several examples of measured power output.
Thanks
:)
Doug

 

WindLift in 2007 had given public reference to John V. Mizzi's patent.  Click thrugh images to get patent copy. Mizzi seems

to be being somewhat paralleled by TWIND(R)  with long-stroke using two workers on one line that derives power as line

goes in either direction. The reverse time is short where power is not being generated.    Mizzi offers a revenue stream from

raising advertising messages.

John V. Mizzi         Renewable energy systems using long-stroke open-channel reciprocating engines  Robert Creigton in WindLift  has been generating power in several ways.  Robert has an extensive two year blog of notes that are rich to follow. ClickHERE.  Just what claims in the Mizzi patent are novel is something yet to be known by this poster.

Doug,   *Arrgh* its bogs down the list if you continually ask for help with basic surfing. I surely am not an ideal web helper, but off course found easily some AWE power curves, right off the bat. There are many others. Try & find the some yourself.   Sorry below is not a tiny URL, just paste it in your search engine. In the future please spare the list such search woes & contact JoeF or me directly. TIA   [PDF] Presentazione di PowerPoint File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML May 28, 2009 ... KSU1 prototype. Mobile KSU1 prototype while operating a commercial power kite ... M. Canale, L. Fagiano, M. Milanese, Kitegen: a revolution in wind energy generation, ... mario.milanese@polito.it. Thank you! ec.europa.eu/research/sd/.../2009/.../mario_milanese_-_kitegen.pdf - Similar   BE HAPPY,   daveS

A lot posts tell about "output power".Now no home,no town etc. draw electricity from AWECS.However AWECS potentialities are huge (GW scale).

1) Certainly not yet published datas could exist.

2) By far "output power" is not the most important data if it is not linked to other parameters.We must consider the three following ratios as schown on OrthoKiteBunch (OKB) :

1) Swept area (so output power)/Land occupation,2) Swept area/Surface of aerial occupation,3) Swept area/Volume of space occupation.

Generally the first ratio is taken for favourable to AWECS.The second and above all third ratios settle bottlenecks for AWECS,in rapport with aviation rules.

A good system lets to overcome bottlenecks with a maximization of the space occupation.

There may be something I don't really understand here but I don't think any propeller/turbine designer would deliberately install one in cross flow if he could possibly help it. Anything gained avoiding wake effects will be lost in blade angle of attack variation and the dynamics of the beast would be a nightmare. Just my off the top of the head opinion.

There are an awful lot of older power boats with angled prop shafts. It is a real bear, though. I knew a guy who could not make sense of his pitch/rpm data for years. Others have found that using a flexible prop shaft allows the prop to force inself into alignment, rather counterintuitively, but also still wastefully. U-joint hubs would probably help these blades work.

Bob Stuart

Chris,
Doug's patents and applications for patents involve over 70 distinct emobodiments of his multi-rotor schemes. Just one is sketched in the terrain-enhanced figure I presented without analysis or prejudice; the line sketch is direct from his application. No reasons or details are shown in the drawing. The deliberate apparent off-facing-the wind does cause aviators to pause, for sure. Why seemingly waste perfectly good lifting rotating blade disks by angling them less than full face? I have not finished full detail study of even one of Doug's patents, but I found in my survery enough to say and share that studying each sentence has a potential to carve out meaningful considerations that seem to spawn interesting secondary topics. I am finding that such runs fairly true for most anyone's sincere commentary. Like your comments...they are for me ever rich in something to consider more carefully. Practicing that respect, I will give some take on the alpha set of the terrain-enhanced Superturbine (R) as depicted in the sketch I brought forward:

Pay the cost of angling the blade sweep disk to win low cost mechanics for the interface of the rotating blade with the torque tube. Robert S.'s mention of universal joint of some sort would compete here. But keeping costs very low, maybe quick blade attached to torque tube might allow a fulfillment of a niche market. Doug has a favoring of mass-produced small turbines in high multiplicity to gain rotational speed to avoid step-up gear boxes; he wants to use direct drive of the generator shaft. Compromises and trades. I have no idea of the theoretical top gains that the shown scheme could give compared to putting its cost into a single central-valley cable-hung wind-facing turbine. By cost I would want to consider full-life cost (make, transport, install, repair, maintenance, replacement, decommissioning, etc.).

OK Dave your link below did not work. I'm still asking for a link to back up your statement.
Thanks.
Doug S.

Doug,

Your genny data is lacking complete data,awg,volts,amps,etc.

Dan'l

http://tinyurl.com/HAWPinItaly

 

This question has been asked and answered; and answered, and answered. When will this thread die? Thanks, guys.

Dave

Thx Joe, you find the best stuff, do you sleep?
Lynn
---- Joe Faust <joefaust333@gmail.com

Challenge: Dynamic length-variable power-transferring endless-loop conveyor

Assume AWECS is transferring power to ground via endless loop conveyor cable and driving an electric genertor. Without taking up much ground space, provide cost-effective mechanical solution that allows non-stop loop movement for driving generator while the net sky-sector length of the working tether is let out and in for launch, work, change to effective altitudes, and flight termination. Use the endless loop both for main tether as well as for transferring power from aloft. The aloft driven line drives a ground generator. Long adjustments are sought.

Easy known methods that use much land area are known. What is sought is a tight low-ground-area-costing solution that would allow 1000 m adjustment of in-sky sector of the working tether.

Working vision: Aloft wind turbines are driving the tether (endless loop). While the low-altitude working system remains dynamic, let out more tether to reach sweeter winds, or at times bring in tether to reach target altitudes or target winds. Winching while working : WWW. Solutions for control-line AWECS have been used, but not known to me is a small-land-footprint solution for dynamic length-variable power-transferring endless loop conveyor.

I've been working on a solution to that problem for several years now and only recently come up with a solution which may or may not be cost effective, I still need to CAD it up to get a better idea of the practicality but in theory it works.  I still have to get the concept witnessed when I get a break in the survival obligations but its on the list of things to do. Its all part of that universal system thing I'm working on.
-brooks

Great Brooks,
Will await your solution.

.....I took a break after reading your reply post and sat by a waterfall and saw the following:

Two hours ago I found a fairly-low footprint for one way to keep haul out endless working loop while keeping it working, but I do not yet see beyond manually doing it; I'll be trusting M.E.s to fill in. A horizontal box holding a gang free-wheeling pulleys at one end fixed; and then at the other end a gang of free-wheeling pulleys not-perma fixed but movable by control and anchorable to a position when wanted. Box is 10 m long and perhaps 1 m square cross-section depending on scale and forces intended. The one side of endless loop weaves left and right, left-and right through 100 set. The moving line moves through all the pulleys driven by aloft driving turbine. When one wants the in-sky sector of the tether to haul out10 m, then let move one of the 100 movable pulleys toward the other end of the box while stopping its move just before touching the other end of the box where the fixed gang of pulley are; to let out another 10 m into the sky, move another boxed movable pulley and set its position just short of interfacing with the other end of the box. Etc. 1000 m can be let out even while the endless loop keeps being driven and driving a generator. Reeling in works in reverse. This is essentially a multiple use of mechanics implied in a extendable conveyor belt patent that is in public domain. I am only seeing my hands doing the releasing for move of the movable pulleys and setting the positions by a tensioner line that is anchored to the one end of the box. Getting servos to do the job would need teamwork for design. It will be fun to find out what Brooks has that he has not yet described to us....that he announced in reply to my post.
Lift,
JoeF
cc: BrooksDesign

..........

Thanks Joe:
Luckily we have someone who 1) knows where to find a piece of data, and 2) is not too web-surfing-challenged to cut-paste a link ;)
The data is not presented on any way that I am familiar with (watt-hours per second?) but at least it is an example of data for energy produced.
Doug S.

Hi Dan'l:
Are you looking for the data for the generator itself, or for machines I have built using these generators?
Doug S.

Hi Doug,

I'm looking for any and all info on your Genny.

thanks Dan'l

P.32 and p.33 of

  Comments are invited
Wind turbines don't operate in cold
Though wind turbines utilize North Dakota's plentiful gusts to generate energy, some agency officials say they are shut down in times of extreme temperature.
Jan 15 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Beth Wischmeyer The Dickinson Press, N.D.

Discuss with eye to AWECS:

• Have % of aloft energy go toward heating the aloft elements for de-icing.
  How would such be done and how much of the gained energy would be used for such?

• ?

That item came up during the nuclear debates here last year. I was so surprised, I didn't jump up with a rude remark. It seems that some wind generator makers chose lubricants, etc, such that the warranty stops at -30 deg, but it is not rocket science to move that limit down. I've never heard of icing, but that could be a rare problem, possibly not worth fixing.

I live at 53 deg north, and we just had a week of almost-thawing weather. Somebody else got our usual air.

Bob Stuart

Dan'l:
Thanks for asking.
The volts per rpm are listed at http://www.PM-ALT.com
This varies between models, which vary only in voltage, said voltage being dependent on the number of turns of wire per phase, which in turn dictates wire thickness.

Now on the one hand I get eggheads who insist on knowing everything from the airgap to the number of poles, the inductance of the windings etc. These people are usually the "mad professor" types who couldn't work on their own car let alone engineer and build a new type of wind turbine, and they are the ones who will (have their underlings) question such a simple and well-defined component to death and never buy one.

Then there are the people who are familiar with wind turbine technology: They say "Oh you rate the voltage by a cut-in RPM of 300. but my turbine cuts in at only 150 RPM, so I'll take the one you're calling a 96-volt model. Realizing that my amps are thus somewhat limited, I'll try to cap the peak power at 1 kW or less."

Anything else you need to know, just ask. I'm happy to supply what are described as unbelievably well-built permanent-magnet alternators, but I don't want to be on the phone all day discussing details of peoples' perpetual motion machines... ;)

Doug Selsam
714-992-5594

Ever-up Smart-positioning Live-cam Kytoons
sending data to central computers ...  or still photography also:

How many ways could such devices save on fuel in the world?

Here is one use noted recently:

• http://208.215.179.155/journal/122342612/abstract  

Reduce helicopter use? Reduce powered aircraft use?

Save on security guard rounds?

Help direct traffic better?

School security improvment?

???

Doug,

I don't wanna be on the horn all day, I was hoping for pdf on tech aspects,tight engineering data on all would be good enough. No run around no reply, just the dry data please.

Thanks Dan'l

Ps. R U selling them?

After examining the Italian effort a second time I have a couple of basic questions that I don't see addressed:

1) What form did this "power" take? Was it electrically-generated power? Or did someone measure tension and multiply it by the distance or speed of lines reeled out?
2) Was this power measured by a full cycle, or just the power stroke?
3) was the energy stored in batteries, or pushed into the grid?

Let's look at an analogy if you did the same thing with a regular wind turbine: you'd place a turbine with no generator on a tower. You'd let the turbine spin free, unloaded. Then you'd let the tower tilt downwind as you reeled out the upwind guy wire using a winch set up to return power rather than use power. Then you'd change the pitch of the blades to have less thrust loading and use some power to reel the line back in. The power you made from the thrust-loading of the rotor, minus the power it took to reel the tower back in against the reduced thrust loading, would be your net gain. Realize that on the power stroke, you're reducing the relative wind speed by however fast the cable is reeling out, limiting your power from the very beginning.

This would be probably the least-efficient turbine ever conceived, or at least a definite contender for the lowest efficiency award. Imagine someone from G.E. telling you how they had modified one of their turbines to operate this way:

"Yes we've given up on constant-speed rotation and have realized that it is the thrust-loading of the rotor that is important, especially as we let it tip downwind. Of course we have to reel it in again so forget about that steady-state power and forget about engineering a machine that just runs at a constant speed. We've decided that while thrust-loading provides a tiny fraction of the power we were used to, this reeling in and out of cable accommodates the wishes of our many technicians who have been tilting towers up and down recreationally for so many years"...
You'd think they had lost their minds. And you would be right. They'd be lucky to generate milliwatts rather than megawatts.

In reality, even a non-reeling guy wire is considered too problematic for utility-scale wind turbines. People have been commenting on the weather in the midwest lately: Freezing, snow, sustained 50-60 mph winds... Anything but the simplest and most robust machine is quickly rendered non-operational in the real world of real weather.

If measuring tension and speed of reeling is all that took place, I don't think that counts as generated electrical power. Hey I can walk across the carpet and get a spark when I touch a doorknob, and even measure thousands of volts, but that is not a new source of industrial power. Otherwise than that, I commend the PDF offered for some interesting ideas like the giant carousel. I have to say though, stuff like the windladder is literally at the level of a kid with little or no knowledge of wind energy, sketching in the margins of his textbooks while ignoring the teacher. I know because I was that kid. :)

Doug S.

for a lot of kite applications intermittent luffing might just shake it off. best bet is to locate in area without icing conditions. for fixed ground wind turbines could be quite a headache both due to imbalance and safety - throwing ice.

It seems to me the biggest problem with the extreme cold is the
turbine blades themselves getting too cold and thus brittle. It is
something to think about later when AWE stats going to high altitudes
as the temperatures could easily be minus 40 degC up there. However,
there are electronics rated for that, and I think most
generators/motors can be used down to that temperature (they'll also
heat up anyway). Batteries for actuators could be a problem though.

Anyway, temperature certainly won't stop AWE once the technology is
good enough to get up very high.

Cryogenic hardened electromechanics & avionics will be a major HAWP requirement. The sheer magnitude of the thermal cycling is daunting. Extended flight at high altitudes is not what normal aircraft experience. They generally count on regular descent in warmer air to buffer average operating temps. Lubricants generally work best in a narrow temperature range. Icing is not a problem of very cold temperatures, its a near 0 Centigrade hazard. Icing conditions typically occur in narrow bands of altitude to be avoided. Membrane kites shake off ice wonderfully in a good breeze. Cold is manageable at a cost. AWE weight criticality seems to strongly preclude conventional aircraft deicing methods (boots & heaters). Cold embrittlement of ordinary polymers is a definite design issue. Even alpine mountain tents must be built heavier to compensate.

http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/archive/2009/12/03/puma-ae-unmanned-aircraft-system.aspx

or same in TinyURL
http://tinyurl.com/PumaTalkingToAWE

An untethered advanced Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS)  seems to be saying something to AWE.
What might it be saying?

 

 

 

Is this the same as, "Hold the kitestring *real* tight, and then run thataway"?

Thought so.  Only it sounds as though you're advocating tossing the whole genny and electrical distribution system over your shoulder while you run. That'll be something to watch!

:-)

Dave

A variant solution seems to be hinted within an AWECS patent drawing, if one was just to multiple the grab, not far from what I visioned a day or so ago:

 

For those with products needing testing for these conditions, I worked on a project with a company called Cincinnati Sub-Zero that makes and rents harsh environment test chambers. Just passing that along.
-brooks

The Hang Glider versions I have witnessed first hand use a winch on the back of a truck with several start up options depending on amount of wind and space. Another option we used was a 500 foot section of bunggie cord. All worked quit well.
-brooks

Attachments :

I've followed the technical news on advanced composites for decades, and have never run across a word about low temperature performance, despite the temperatures that are routine for commercial aircraft at altitude, and early use on control surfaces.

My dad was VP of inspection for a steel company, and when they got a cryogenic refrigerator for the testing department, he knew it would see only intermittent use. Being a practical man, he went right out and bought some ice-cube trays to go with it, for his own summer drinks. He knew to remove the trays using gloves, but then turned them upside down and slapped them on the counter to release some cubes. Everything shattered, but he had some time to sweep up before anything got wet.

Bob

I considered this in detail and it could work but the number of pulleys required to be effective on a long loop scale could introduce allot of friction into the system....unless the distance between them was really long for retraction.
-brooks

That's the only one I've been able to think of either. Each idler usually costs a percent or so, depending on your belt type. Metal is best, with a loss of 1% in a basic drive, and so, much less than 1% per idler. The number of loops can be kept down with a long travel, which would argue for a vertical mineshaft. At the bottom, we could have the lower reservoir for a hyrdopower storage arrangement. Using the wind power directly for pumping water up would reduce the need to reduce fluctuations.

Bob Stuart