If good ideas can get development funding from many small donations instead of having to rely on stockholders or government programs, they can serve decentralized power in the political and economic spheres as well as energy.  We may need a new currency (the bitcoin?) as the old order crumbles.  

Good point.  The idea is like a seed, and has to be planted in a team.  If we get away from the notion of a patent system set up to give the originator the lion's share of the profits, in an adversarial relationship to everyone else, there will be a lot more people enabled to "own" an idea because it came up in their team.  Technical minds won't have to be divided to handle business conundrums.  (Edison started five companies, and lost them all to the other directors, because he'd rather go to the lab than the office.)  Instead of feeding a feud of lawyers, an enlightened society will just track down the first people to post on a useful new wrinkle, and give them a share of the savings.  There are decades-old schemes for sharing the proceeds from shareware among successive developers that could be applied with the benefit of taxation instead of just donations, or the horrors of copy protection.  I'd spread the prize around pretty thin, to make sure to get some to the true originator.  For most, it would be like being in the bar when someone buys a round, but the hopes of that happening would also help ideas move around.

-Rich studies by Taras Kiceniuk, Jr.

The following glider is a non-tethered hang glider that could just as well have had some RATs onboard for mining the apparent wind.  The shown is not even with a lofted tether, and thus is not a kite system. Most hang gliders today use the short kite tether and triangle control frame found exampled in a hang glider in 1908 in Breslau; such most common method has the pilot's mass as the resistive falling anchor towing the wing via the short kite line; the whole system is free-flying; and some have been regularly holding apparent-wind kinetic-energy harvesting devices, not the least being airspeed indicator where the apparent wind drives changes in the meter that become useful for tertiary purposes. Apparent wind is used for cooling, pushing wind-flow indicators, powering instruments.  It has been studied: use excess found lift to run a wind turbine to charge onboard batteries to give energy for electrically assisted hang gliding.   Dale Kramer at conference in Chico in 2009 confirmed his study of onboard sailplane RATs, both in single glider as well in his proposed free-flight wings-coupled-by-long-tether soaring system that he took out a patent application for.    Gliding power-off powered aircraft have used airborne wind energy RATs for emergency power for many decades; when main systems fail, then the RATs provide electrical energy to run instruments, air-conditioning, and other onboard systems. The same RATs can charge onboard boatteries to smooth the use of the gained energy.  The same craft have shined lights to lower ground soil (sending some energy to the ground) and likewise light energy to other aircraft for warning of position and direction.   When lift is experienced, then the gliding is extended. Seeking llift is one way of getting that extended lift. 

http://energykitesystems.net/0/FFAWE/untethered.jpg

It is quite a leap, to go from expensive aircraft that require fuel, to even more expensive ones that can stay up for a while without fuel, to inexpensive ones that land with far more "fuel" than they took off with.  However, there could be a fine chance for the sporting flier to indulge in competitions while actually at work.  Maybe it should be straight commission work, since even ag flying gets tedious.  Going along for the ride would hurt performance, but might offer other advantages for a while.  

Bob,

I can't imagine how it can work in hardware case. But it already works with geathering info on this internet site.
All the project are so principal different and so inseparable.... and the end product is not so easy to spread like software. A speciality of our task is an ambiguity of decision, and it's invite our attention.
An attempt to use peer model for device construction is made on instructables.com . All schemes and detail description is presented, but really it's just a forum and reary people make a copy of it to test if it really works

 

Pub. No.:    WO/2013/094623    International Application No.:    PCT/JP2012/082865 Publication Date: 27.06.2013 International Filing Date: 19.12.2012
IPC:	F03D 5/00 (2006.01), F03D 11/02 (2006.01), F03D 11/04 (2006.01)
Applicants:	CAPE ECOLOGY PLAN CO., LTD [JP/JP]; Hibiya Central Building 14F, 1-2-9, Nishishinbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 1050003 (JP)
Inventors:	TAKASAKI, Toshiyuki; (JP)
Agent:	ECHIZEN, Masahiro; Times Building 2F, 1-16-9, Shintomi, Chuo-ku Tokyo 1040041 (JP)
Priority Data:	2011-276569   19.12.2011   JP
Title	(EN) WIND ENERGY RECOVERY DEVICE AND WIND POWER GENERATION DEVICE (FR) DISPOSITIF DE RÉCUPÉRATION D'ÉNERGIE ÉOLIENNE ET DISPOSITIF DE PRODUCTION DE PUISSANCE ÉOLIENNE

http://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/WO2013094623

One the other site, mostly patents that I've seen (about AWE) are not ready to be implement and people just payed money for patenting and waiting for wonder. Of cause, it's not a way to success.
A solution can be follow:
1. Make an inquerer with some questions and find maximal popular answers (find a bigest group of invertors with the same ideas) , for example:
- Task. Possible answer: get an energy from 1km altitude in quantity of 5kWatt and convert it to electricity on the earth.
- What is the best way to transform energy to the earth: ordinal electricity, longitudinal oscillations, pulling rope,...
- What is the best way to capture wind: propeller, savonius, kite oscillations,...
- what is the best way to support system on the air: kite, kite with integratet turbine, helium balloon...

Each answer must have theoretical justification and forum for discussion. Each question must have a possibility to vote.

So, this will determine the best solution, help to find like-minded persons and attract hesitants.

For the moment this forum is too unstructered. And our discuusions also.

Hey Joe:
Isn't this laddermill again?
:)
Doug S.

Well as I have pointed out Dave S. most of my easy ways to do AWE have nothing to do with SuperTurbine(R). Many of them COULD be stacked as a SuperTurbine(R), OR deployed as single turbines.
You say you've done more experimentation on various methods than any other entity on Earth. You're targeting high winds in lieu of low winds. OK it is good that you're that specific. So what's your most successful trial yet? What's the highest you've captured energy from? How much have you captured, from what height? Which high altitude technology do you favor most today, after all that exhaustive targeted experimentation? How soon do you project a working system based on your experiments?
:)
Doug S.

This a very visually-interesting concept.

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "Doug" <dougselsam@... Yes, that is why I used "ladder" in the telling; but the variant suggested concerns the vertical drop down rather than using the main tether set. Such all harks to your 1970s ladder direction, not to the single-kite of recent abuse-of-ladder-term use.
Keep the matter lifted so the harvesting may occur. Lift strongly; keep things taut. Have the vertical set, so the wings stay working to crosswind. At the transition at the top, there is some momentary downwinding.

Long live ladders... that have moving rungs.

"Clearly", kite-flying forms the largest base of past experience in tethered aviation, which is the closest thing to airborne wind energy we know of... right? And of course sailboat technology forms the multi-thousand-year base of experience for nautical utilization of wind energy. Therefore, "clearly" the future of offshore wind energy will utilize sailboat technology, just as AWE will be based on kites. right??? Kitelab? KiteEnergy? KiteSystems? Kite-this and Kite-that? Like sailboat-power. Like the U.S. Navy uses old sailing ship technology to develop cutting-edge offshore wind energy systems, right? OK.

Gábor, 

Seems to me that if someone WANTED wanted to use kites to generate electricity, it would be pretty straightforward to have a working system up and running pretty quickly. Just thinking about the topic brings to mind many simple arrangements that would seem like they would not be that difficult to build and run. The stuff that comes to mind, for me, doesn't involve energy capture by reeling cycles. Seems like kites could easily form a wind energy system. What is so complicated? Why is nobody building them? I'm still perplexed. I feel like everyone should come over to my house and we can get all kinds of systems up and running.
OK now I gotta face the fact that posting these thoughts online is about the least productive things I do in my day. Burnin' daylight, seeya!
:)

Priority date Mar 16, 2009

Studying aircraft and watercraft systems that have or do utilize RATs:            
[kites, gliders, dirigibles, balloons, swing-toys with objects at end of tether, powered aircraft, sailplanes, hang gliders, AWES, boats, UAVs, robot water gliders, bombs, torpedos, boats, ..., at all scales]

Graf Zeppelin returns to New York after world tour 1929 

I see that they chose a modified belt drive for lightness and efficiency, but used a flywheel to reduce the power surges.  

Congratulations!     Excellent!     Cheers!

American Helicopter Society (AHS) International  

http://energykitesystems.net/NykolaiBilaniuk/ClipColorizedNykolaiBilaniuk001.jpg  <<==click if full art below is not showing in group view.

Nice that SOMEBODY is making progress...
in SOME field...
Wish we were reading about a successful AWE project on this list instead.
But, in lieu of success here, we're limited to peripheral topics.
Why? Nobody bothers to build good AWE systems.
Why? Too busy with handwaving and happy-talk.
Or they have a steady job and do not feel the need for actual progress.
With today's version of NASA, Honeywell, and ARPA-E on the case, how could they fail?
All flying kites...
Reminds me of that joke from the outhouse wall:
"How can 10,000 flies be wrong?"
:)
Well how could a million real-estate, mortgage specialists, and college-"educated" bankers have been wrong about the housing bubble?
Clearly, large groups of the best "experts" can be clueless in their aggregate.
:O................
Doug S.

What is in the intersection of the HPH (human-powered helicopter)
and airborne wind energy//kite energy systems?

The AeroVelo team is from the University of Toronto.  Ottawa seems to have no science at all these days, nor students.  I'm particularly impressed at a University team being able to get up to date on technology.  They have always shown poorly at the open land speed competitions, and still have to beat an artist, not an engineer, for the LSR after decades of trying.  (His helicopter, OTOH, was a farce.) I once overheard one student constructor's advice on cutting Kevlar cloth:  Buy a case of Fiskars scissors, and cut about three meters with each pair before Throwing Them Away.  How does a University even find professors who have never heard of sharpening, or industrial tool catalogs?  These may be students who just infest a campus for the facilities, and take responsibility for their own course content.  Todd Reichert, the pilot, just got his PhD, but he could have picked up an honorary one for a previous stunner: sustained level flight in an Human Powered Ornithopter.  I'd love to see the data point on where he would finish in a regular bike race.  

This kite-system's wing is tethered to a powered flying anchor to net a flight above waters and soils

"Fly" the paravane (water kite system) and land with food and fuel that was gained during the flight. 

No it certainly does not.
And it raises many more questions than it attempted to answer.

Three of that group authored: 

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