The Technology Strategy Board have announced a more likely funding stream than the last one I applied for.
The applications are daunting but...
My previous feedback should help targeting for anyone who wants to join in...

Technology Strategy Board Competition Announcement: Emerging Energy Technologies

PLEASE REGISTER AND PUT THE DATES INTO YOUR DIARY!

The Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) are to invest jointly up to £3m in technical feasibility studies to stimulate innovation and support the development and commercialisation of emerging energy technologies.

We have identifies the following as areas where targeted investment is timely and potentially of high impact:

• Improved integration of energy storage technologies into the energy system

• Novel low-carbon heat technologies

• Novel thermodynamic cycles

• Innovations that can deliver a step change in the cost or performance of low carbon sources of energy

Projects must be led by a UK business and may be developed by a single company or be collaborative with other companies and/or universities. Proposals should be for feasibility studies and should be of a maximum of one year duration. The competition for feasibility studies opens on 10 June 20132. The deadline for registration is noon on 17 July 2013, and the deadline for applications is noon on 24 July 2013. The full competition briefing document will be available shortly.

The Technology Strategy Board and the EG&S KTN are organising two networking / brokering events for all those who want to learn more about the competition and discuss and share potential project ideas:

1) Tuesday, 4 June 2013: Manchester Conference Centre - REGISTER HERE.

2) Tuesday, 11 June 2013: Mercure Holland Hotel, Bristol - REGISTER HERE.

Here is Sky WindPower seemingly claiming the same in 2012

Finding effective AWES farm designs?   Smart kite farming?

Do the prices per watt actually go down with increasing unit size, or up with lower volume of production?  It may well be cheaper to just combine the outputs.

We see such long lines of generators at hydro-electric dams that there may be some limit to economies of scale.  Particularly with generators, robotic production of small units may be worth investigation, since they are inherently easy to cool.  

Not directly Voith, 

YUP I like this rendering of a SuperTurbine(R), similar to what I laid out in US 6616402. Dang that was so many years ago now! Seems like a couple of lifetimes. Heck I was living in Huntington Beach, surfing all day and playing in heavy metal bands at night and doing those patent drawings from my girlfriend's apartment while she was at work. Thanks for sticking with the theme. As I say Roddy, you are about the only one who at least somewhat "gets it". I first asked the question "if Mother Nature could "grow" a wind turbine, what might it look like(?), and the answer could be "like a tornado", and also have long postulated that the higher winds at altitude might favor a larger diameter up there.
Nice rendering and video bro.
Anyway, you know the saying...
:)
(P.S. Whatever it is you feel compelled to say Dave S. please save it)

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/04/19/civil_war_helicopter_designed_by_a_confederate_engineer.html?wpisrc=obinsite

The Confederate Helicopter That Never Got Off the Ground
By Rebecca Onion
Posted Friday, April 19, 2013, at 2:00 PM

During the Civil War, advances in technology rendered the conflict bloody and lopsided, as the industrial North churned out weapons, canned food, and uniforms for its far-flung armies and used its superior railroad network to resupply them.

Given this situation, it shouldn't be too surprising that Confederate inventors scrambled to come up with new ideas to tip the balance. One such idea was the CSS Hunley, the first submarine ever to successfully engage in combat. This helicopter, a model of which is held at the National Air and Space Museum, was another.

Living in Mobile, Ala., engineer William C. Powers saw the effects of the Union blockade of Confederate ports firsthand. Understanding that Confederate naval power wasn't equal to the task of breaking the Union line, Powers set about inventing a flying machine that could bomb the blockading ships.

Powers' design used a steam engine for power, and Archimedean screws (four in total, two vertical and two horizontal) for lift and thrust. The design also had a rudder in the rear, meant to allow the operator to steer the helicopter like a boat.

The design had multiple defects. J.G. Leishman, a professor of aerospace engineering, writes that all helicopter models built before the early 20th century suffered from a lack of theoretical understanding of aerodynamics, the unavailability of light and powerful engines and building materials for the machine's body, and a host of other technical problems. "The history of flight documents literally hundreds of failed helicopter inventions," Leishman writes. "More often than not, the machine just vibrated itself to pieces."

Powers' helicopter was never built. Tom Paone of the National Air and Space Museum writes that Powers may have been afraid that a successful helicopter might fall into Yankee hands and be put into mass production in Northern factories, only to return in swarms to wreak havoc on Confederate forces.

Read more about the design, and see some of Powers' plans, in Tom Paone's post on the blog of the National Air and Space Museum.

Thanks for the kind compliments Doug.
There are some fairly important differences between the designs. Mine is a string and cloth affair. keeping a straight shaft axis by being kept in tension between top and bottom rings.

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

New Yorker Article 

Well, now, that would be something ... 

Android is built on Linux.
There's permanently a race (evolutionary fitness) between the mix of packages used in a release.
Open Hardware is born ready.

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

    
kite cone

Nope, some of them had no central shaft, just kitelines in a spiral.
Whaddaya think this is my first rodeo?

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

This misstep marked the end of 1000 years of nobody, including DaVinci, noticing that the wind turbines powering Europe were demonstrating a low-solidity power exchange between a machine and air that could be used to power and/or lift flying machines, such as airplanes and helicopters.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/04/19/civil_war_helicopter_designed_by_a_confederate_engineer.html?wpisrc=obinsite

The Confederate Helicopter That Never Got Off the Ground

By Rebecca Onion

Posted Friday, April 19, 2013, at 2:00 PM
During the Civil War, advances in technology rendered the conflict bloody and lopsided, as the industrial North churned out weapons, canned food, and uniforms for its far-flung armies and used its superior railroad network to resupply them.

Given this situation, it shouldn't be too surprising that Confederate inventors scrambled to come up with new ideas to tip the balance. One such idea was the CSS Hunley, the first submarine ever to successfully engage in combat. This helicopter, a model of which is held at the National Air and Space Museum, was another.

Living in Mobile, Ala., engineer William C. Powers saw the effects of the Union blockade of Confederate ports firsthand. Understanding that Confederate naval power wasn't equal to the task of breaking the Union line, Powers set about inventing a flying machine that could bomb the blockading ships.

Powers' design used a steam engine for power, and Archimedean screws (four in total, two vertical and two horizontal) for lift and thrust. The design also had a rudder in the rear, meant to allow the operator to steer the helicopter like a boat.

The design had multiple defects. J.G. Leishman, a professor of aerospace engineering, writes that all helicopter models built before the early 20th century suffered from a lack of theoretical understanding of aerodynamics, the unavailability of light and powerful engines and building materials for the machine's body, and a host of other technical problems. "The history of flight documents literally hundreds of failed helicopter inventions," Leishman writes. "More often than not, the machine just vibrated itself to pieces."

Powers' helicopter was never built. Tom Paone of the National Air and Space Museum writes that Powers may have been afraid that a successful helicopter might fall into Yankee hands and be put into mass production in Northern factories, only to return in swarms to wreak havoc on Confederate forces.

Read more about the design, and see some of Powers' plans, in Tom Paone's post on the blog of the National Air and Space Museum.

Hey Dave S.
I read something about people who spend more time taking inventory on others than on themselves, being an indicator of low self-esteem. Well besides the pop-psych buzzword, I think it's something we should all watch for in ourselves, me included.

I've noticed you spend an inordinate amount of time trying to tear down the efforts of others, all the while bragging of your own expertise, yet never showing any results, while yet claiming to have more results than anyone else. (One can't make this stuff up?)

The little kids' knee-jerk retort "You're not the boss of me", comes to mind. Guess what? The world does not recognize you as "the world's leading authority". I'd love to be able to post something on here once in a while without you jumping in the middle to start an argument, while you don't really know the facts anyway.

Why not concentrate on your own projects, and stop sticking your nose into everyone else's business? Don't you think it gets a bit annoying? Have you noticed how annoyed people get with your constant efforts to tear apart everyones' efforts?

I say, show us what YOU'VE got.
WHAT have YOU contributed to the art of AWE?
You've been bragging for a month or two, about some huge effort on a farm in Texas. Well? What did you accomplish, after all that bragging? What are your results?

For convenience: 

Guess what? The world does not recognize you as "the world's leading
authority".
I'm just curious: Since you don't actually DO Airborne Wind Energy, what qualifies you to "welcome" people to the field? Especially in such an extrapolating way? Why don't you just stop trying to be "the world's leading authority" and either DO something or stop talking about it?

Dave:
You would be considered "an amazing expert" only by people who don't know any better. To welcome someone to a field would imply you are IN the field, which I see no evidence of.

I don't see that anyone has hassled Makani more than you. Then you get starstruck thinking of the implications that Google bought them.
Hey ARPA-E funded Makani first, so why not welcome President Obama to AWE with great fanfare?

It's not the actual welcome you are really issuing, so much as a self-glorifying implication that you are already IN the field. Nothing but a further rationalization of even claiming to be peripherally involved with the field. If you are welcoming a player to AWE, that's a roundabout way of saying you must be IN AWE, right? But are you? Really?

Sorry but I honestly don't agree. I don't think you are a player. I think you're a big-talker, and what's more, almost everything you come up with is symptomatic of previously-disproven crackpot concepts promoted by people who never got up to speed.

It seems to me you imagine yourself as the "master of ceremonies" for all of AWE, a mustachioed ringmaster from the 1800's, wearing tails and a tall top-hat - the shot-caller for all AWE - that your judgement of each team defines their success or failure at any given moment, and that whether someone is a "player" depends on whether you have "welcomed" them to the field.

And it further smacks of self-glorification in the sense that until now, nobody of a high enough level has been involved, but the founder of Google, whom you are implying is your peer, is finally someone of a high enough stature to merit friendly communication from you, after all those detractive statements tearing down Makani.

If AWE were a marathon, many of the runners, wearing numbers, would be still trying to determine the destination, let alone the route. You would be a little yappy dog running around nipping at their heels.

Hats off to your kite-flying skills and your fantastic level of enthusiasm, but I don't see you as any more than a spectator in AWE, sometimes a fan, and often a detractor of everyone else's efforts.

What's more, I've followed your rants predicting the future domination of flapping or oscillating systems, going so far as to declare that they constitute Bose-Einstein condensates - implying that the future of airborne wind energy depends on your advanced understanding of quantum physics, that the rest of the world will come to understand in due course, after they have mastered your level of thought, which, like your statement of being "an amazing expert" is so silly that I have to laugh. Amazingly ignorant, compared to your bragging statements maybe, but not an expert at all! In fact, sorry to say, you are the opposite of an expert! You tear down everything that could work, and endlessly promote complete silliness.

I came to that first AWE conference, bringing a demo that worked, despite it's homemade primitive nature, to find myself thinking I had walked into the set of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The entire conference seemed to revolve around Wayne German, and whom he had chosen to give a "Wayne German Award" to.

Similarly to you, I don't see that Wayne German has contributed anything whatsoever to the field of AWE. Zip. Like you, he seems to believe that his contribution is high-level thinking that the rest of us will only come to appreciate in due time. Hats off to his enthusiasm, but the last thing I heard from Wayne was more nebulous bragging about what his advanced thinking would produce in the future.

But he has nothing today that makes any power, or anything of the sort. Somehow we never hear from him anymore.

If anyone of you three should get an award, in my opinion, it is Joe Faust, who never brags about anything, yet works tirelessly and relentlessly to archive and organize thousand and thousands of pieces, to put together a big picture of what is going on in AWE at any given moment. Joe has been a steady force for promoting AWE. Well maybe it was Joe who won the Germy - so maybe Wayne and I agree on that, but my thought was I was not hearing anything about AWE, just hypothetical mutually-tethered flying yachts beaming microwaves down to accidentally fry people. And no matter what anyone tried to say, Wayne would keep interrupting them, repeating the flying yacht microwave idea.

To me, if Joe Faust wants to welcome someone to the field of AWE, that would make sense, since, even though he doesn't claim to be a contestant, he nonetheless found an important role to play without having to build any actual machinery. Instead he built a collection of information.

But not everyone can be a player without building anything that works. There is not room for everyone to jump in and think they run the whole kit-and-kaboodle, without contributing anything that works.

Let's say a new owner, bought a car dealer, on a street with a couple of other car dealers. It might make sense for one of the car dealers to welcome the new owner to the area.

But if there had been some guy with a beard hanging around on the sidewalk outside a dealer, agitating and warning people how bad the cars were, telling them not to buy, promoting steam-powered unicycle/pogo sticks instead of cars, all the while declaring himself a genius, such a welcome would seem a bit inappropriate, and maybe even an alarming warning sign.

Well at least you are enthusiastic, and that is an important factor.

OK enough for now.
Have a beautiful, high-flying day!
:)
Doug S.

Doug,  I think your reference class forecasting has come in very handy before. but in this case where the prediction anchor of solidity correlated to power probably doesn't work as the system is reversed and quite a far removed configuration from anything other than spiral air foil.
Loved the article though.

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

Gosh, what a friendly impression we create.  Perhaps this is why Martin hasn't read enough to distinguish between AWEIA and AWEC.  If I were at a previously pleasant party, I'd be yelling at you guys to take it outside.  Then, the rest of us would pummel the winner and dump you both in a cab.  

I think of them as a bickering couple building up overbearing sexual tesion but never getting together.
:-)
Oh AWE will be good when we get it where we all want it.

Either that or they're a good cop bad cop combo. They have stumbled upon a bungled robbery of sensible powering from the world they patrol.

Either way..  What a funny pair of goones they make. Get a room.

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

What alternatives, Makani Power team, are you contemplating 

The Google[x]  arm of Google is not the only Google arm doing some kiting interface: 

This is why I'm glad that Dave doesn't spend all his time brawling with Doug.  I wish we had a separate section in the archives for the pieces of general interest and lasting value.