Depending on design, insects will play their role in AWES. 

Hi kolleges,
my thoughts about how to move forward in AWE led me to the idea of ​​a small device with problems which differ from the known problems of AWE. The main task - getting constant energy in small sizes. The main difference - all the energy consumed on board. The idea is not new, but in form of hobby it can be an important stepping stone on the way to the development of AWE. I would like to hear your comments on the topic of the main tasks, etc. here or on wattkiting.com . Alex

I told you these idiots were full of crap.
Anyone who knows anything about wind energy knew this at a glance.
It is amazing how much traction people can get for their foolish uninformed ideas. Start with complete ignorance as a foundation and extrapolate from there. Yes let's see... we'll start with the type of turbine known to be more expensive, less powerful, and less reliable, then attempt to optimize it on the basis of a wished-for technicality!

What about applying whale-bumps to the blades? Did the geniuses miss that opportunity to combine more failing ideas into their dubious scheme? Funny how you have Professor Crackpots like this who know nothing about wind energy, getting investors who also know nothing about wind energy, all excited. Between all that combined ignorance, how could they be wrong? Like the thousand flies at the outhouse? A thousand press-releases later, the truth begins to sift thru as someone finally decided to apply a bullshit filter.
WA~ Wa~ wa~
Doug Selsam

Simple.
Take a turbine and let it fly.
Add levels and you have a SuperTurbine(R).
Where's the "kite"?

This technology could be the answer for "offshore wind energy": Use it to monitor the position of a sailboat. Then extract power from a very long mooring line, when not using power to reel the boat back in.
duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh
:O.............

I don't see what is new here.
The notion that most kite systems or AWE systems, as currently envisioned, would be unlikely to maximize the Betz power available in a given area has been discussed years ago on this group. Once the basic beginner concept of the Betz coefficient was introduced to this group, the notion of currently-envisioned AWE systems not reaching Betz was one of the first observations/predictions FROM this group.

I think even Dave S. was able to grasp that and was onboard with the discussion. We already know you can't "beat" Betz. Is the idea here to point out once again that currently-envisioned AWE systems will be unlikely to match the nearly-perfect area sweep by a fixed-position rotor? Sorry but I'm trying to understand what new information is offered.
:)

Hi Joe:
This site is from Siemens in India?
The by-now-familiar illustration is from Grant Caverly, which he called a Skymill? Did I get that right?
Search Google Images for Skymill and you will see multiple images from my U.S. Patent 6616402 where I introduced the concept.

Joe I know you are busy and have achieved more AWE archiving than any human could be expected to do, but posts that contain just a link with no commentary are less meaningful. Some lists don't even allow that. It is most helpful to type in a message that describes what one can expect to find when they click on the link.
As always, Thanks for all you do!
:)
Doug S.

--- In AirborneWindEnergy@yahoogroups.com, "Doug" <dougselsam@... Answer: Siemens concept is a kite system: anchored-tethered-wing.
And the suggested multiplied count of wings in such direction is a kite system having anchored-tethered-wing set. Welcome to kite energy.

Doug seems to have it right that Grant Calverley may be source of the drawing on the Siemens of India blog. So, "concept" shown on the Siemens of India blog ... would be better. Grant?
Thanks,
JoeF

Pointing on target: 

Hi Gabor,
I am of course aware of the Betz limit, I was referring to postings regarding kites and the Betz limit on the AWES forum that Dave Santos pointed me to.
Sean

Hi Rod,
I took a look at some videos of your 'Mothra' arches, very interesting indeed.

If I understand correctly your system distinguishes between aerodynamic structures used to provide a constant, near-vertical force, and wings that fly crosswind.

Our analysis can be applied quite easily in this case (if you want to locate the relevant part of the paper it's at the end of Section 4). Let's say you have two wings (or any structure that generates lift and drag): Wing 1 for vertical lifting and Wing 2 for crosswind. They have area and glide ratio A1, GR1 and A2, GR2 respectively. The upper bound for the power that can be generated by the two wings is (note, I've very slightly simplified the expressions here):

P < (0.5*rho*wind_speed^3)*(4/27)*(A1*GR1^2 + A2*GR2^2)

The key here is that each wing contributes an amount proportional to A*GR^2 to the overall maximum power generating capacity. The bottom line is that if wing 1 has a low GR (= L/D) relative to wing 2, it is not going to help you generate much more power than if you just had wing 2 flying alone. Let's take an example where you have a lifting wing that does not perform well aerodynamically (I imagine that the lifting wing must have a reasonably low L/D to remain stable) compared to the crosswind wing:

Wing 1 (vertical lifting wing): GR1 = 3, A1 = 10m^2 - Wing 2 (crosswind wing): GR2 = 7, A2 = 10m^2 -
So in this case you might be better forgetting about Wing 1 and just fly Wing 2 alone. However, if you can produce a very large area of Wing 1 extremely cheaply, then the scheme starts to make sense.

Can you estimate L/D ratios and areas for the different components in your system?
Best Regards,
Sean

Maybe we did not take them at their word, which was

Hi Joe:
I disagree with your statement attempting to redefine common aeronautical nomenclature.

You can CALL a tethered gyrocopter a kite or a set of rotating kites. Sure and you can CALL the fibers of a driveshaft as kite-strings if you want. One can CALL just about anything by any name you want. People abuse language all the time. You can call war peace. You can CALL starvation a banquet.
It's the kind of manipulative shifting of definitions that lets "scientists" first predict global warming, then change the name to "climate change" so that when it gets cooler instead of warmer, they can say "I told you so".

In this case we've had half of this list declaring specifically that kites with cloth (not paper) surfaces are the answer, while discarding rotating propellers as useless and irrelevant for airborne wind energy. We've been having a discussion about "kites versus rotors" for years now.

I've maintained all along that kites, or kite-like cloth surfaces, formed the original basis of wind power thousands of years ago, and that as the art advanced, it was seen that only hard surfaces had the durability and ability to hold their shape to perform in reliable energy extraction. Makani/Joby/Google have now verified this for AWE, as I had been stating all along. One more team that should have been listening to me from the first day and they would be way ahead of where they are now.

Tethered gyrocopters look most promising for airborne wind energy, as I've explained from the beginning on this list. Unless you want to go inform all the gyrocopter pilots that they are flying around in sets of rotating kites, and that their gyrocopters are not really gyrocopters at all, I'd come back to common English in which a "kite" is not the same thing as a "propeller" or "rotor". Especially if we've defined them as almost "opposites" for the purpose of our sometimes lame-ass level of discussion on this list.

So thanks for the welcome to "kite energy" - I was building kites before most of you were born. And thanks to Dave S. for "welcoming" Sergei Brin to Airborne Wind Energy.

As the living person on this list who has perhaps the longest track record of pursuit of AWE, I'd like to welcome everyone to the world of Airborne Wind Energy. I thought of it before you, whomever you are. Welcome to AWE, and if you don't listen to anything I've been saying for the last 36 years you are probably way behind the curve, whether you know it or not!
:)
Doug Selsam
http://www.selsam.com

Joe:
How 'bout Siemens India is a separate company with lower standards, and someone published Grant's rendering on their website and it has nothing to do with Siemens whatsoever? How 'bout that?
;)
Doug S.

Great Joe
Thanks for clearing that up.
Skymill is basically a copy of a single module of an airborne SuperTurbine(R) as delineated in US 6616402, including the inverted tail. I disclosed it a decade ahead of Skymill.
:)
Doug S.

Dave S.:
How can you take such a simple concept and try to make it so complicated. The Betz concept is a simple one and as real wind energy discussions have always agreed, the type of wind turbine or shape of the blade path is irrelevant. Interesting that you cannot control your urge to argue with me, but you have nothing to say. Why use so many words to say nothing? Why not just sit back and relax and stop arguing with every fact I bring to the table? Didn't anyone ever tell you, you can't argue with proven facts?
:)
Doug S.

Dave:
Only idiots use vertical axis wind turbines. Studies of optimizing windfarm production using VA turbines is a solution in search of a problem. Nobody is goint to start building giant vertical-=axis turbines in windfarms just to try and take advantage of such a dubious or weak effect. That weak effect is by far outweighed by the fact that the V-A turbine is a bad idea to start with. They've mostly failed over history. They use more material to sweep less area, and the stresses on the blades reverse with every rotation as opposed to a rotor where stresses remain nearly constant at all points in the rotation. So what the study is can be called "garbage-in/gargabe-out, like whale bumps. As I've explained, you are looking at "press-release-science" which is completely different than actual progress. Go check the results of 100 "press-release breakthroughs" and see how many panned out.
:)
Doug S.

Nice sketch of a Makani. What's new here?

Scores of rotary-rigid-blade rotary kites  paint history importanly in war and peace. 

The brief sketch did not (unless I missed it) include tether. 

Hi Joe:
I think the last time we discussed insects and AWE, we decided insects do not normally fly very high so insects may not be much of a factor for AWE. That would change if AWE starts out lower than many people currently envision.
:)
Doug S.

The rigid-wing rotary blades that Santos has been exploring form parts of kite systems.  Arthur M. Young
Patent number: 2429502
Filed Aug 21, 1943

Well OK I guess Dave S.' insistence that oscillating cloth sails are the future of wind energy threw me. Eliminate Dave S. from the discussion and I could agree with this. Like I said, you can CALL anything anything you want. It was my impression that our nomenclature here distinguished between a tethered gyrocopter that flies like a kite, and a kite itself. If you want to call a tethered gyrocopter a rotary kite then fine. All wind turbines are now non-flying rotary kites, with hardened surfaces. SuperTurbine(R) is a stack of rotary kites. My car in a sidewind is a non-tethered, non-flying rolling, non-rotary kite. An airplane is a non-tethered, non-rotating, powered kite. A baseball is a spherical ballistic kite. Everything is a kite. Your dog is a kite. If you really like kites, call everything a kite and you will be happy.
:)
Doug S.

In 2008 a colony of bumble bees were discovered on Mount Everest at more than
5,600 metres above sea level, the highest known altitude for an insect. [habitat]

More than the fabric blades is in KiteLab's attention: 

The invitation was open ... "Insects and AWES"     

JohnO mentiioned earlier that AWES sometimes will have reason to be pleasing to the eye!

Hey Bob
Thanks for that interesting information that a beehive can exist 3 miles high. I think the more operative principle here is height above ground, rather than altitude or elevation. I don't see any firm upper limit to how high a land-based bug colony could be, as long as the land is high enough. Although their method of breathing through tubes in their abdomen has limited their size, since the 3-foot dragonflies back in the dinosaur days when they had a much thicker atmosphere. So that same problem that currently limits insects to size=small probably limits how high in elevation they can thrive.

We have plenty of insects in the nearby mountains (where I can't wait to ski again in 3-4 months) at almost 2 miles high. And I had no idea that insects migrate flying at high heights. I had always assumed that bugs stay somewhat close to the ground, where the action is, and that insect soiling of wind turbine blades probably took place as the blades swept the lower half of their circle. But hey I was only assuming, and you know what can happen when one assumes...

Bugs fouling blades is a well-known topic so it should be pretty easy to find out what the data is on insect density versus height. It must obviously vary by location and season. Not too many bugs flying around in the winter, for example. Here in the Gol'dang desert we can sleep with the doors wide open in the summer, because very few bugs live here.

Maybe someone with a lot of aviation experience, like maybe a pilot, or a flight instructor, or an aircraft certifier, or a crop-duster, would have more info on insect density versus height in various climates at various times of year.
:)
Maboomba.

Full Heubeck patent in 1952

If bugs get hungry, they are glad to gamble on an updraft, to improve their dismal odds of individual survival.  Even tiny spiders can ride a thread to 3,000 meters, and travel hundreds of km.  There are so many insects at times that they are showing up on radar like background radiation, in layered migrations.  The Dragonflies make the crossing from India to Africa and back with the seasonal winds over four generations.  Monarch Butterflies also cruise at 1,000 meters.

http://patents.justia.com/assignee/baseload-energy-inc

Three items for this topic: 

Maybe someone in law would interpret what happened in this case: